Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
In dodging calls from his party to remove the two-child cap, Sir Keir Starmer is making one of his first noteworthy mistakes as Prime Minister. Both John McDonnell, the far-left former shadow chancellor, and Anas Sarwar, the soft-left Scottish Labour leader, have called for the Coalition-era policy to go. The cap limits the payment of
Operation Long Arm, the code name for Israel’s counter-terror strikes in Yemen, sends a message almost as forceful as the payload of its F-15s. Iran may have an extensive network of proxies through which to attack Israel but the IDF will go whatever distance necessary to defend itself. In this instance 1,200 miles to Al
Foreign policy will have been low on Donald Trump’s list of considerations when deciding to anoint JD Vance as his running mate. The Ohio senator, a former detractor turned loyalist of the Republican nominee, is now close with Team Trump, and Team Trump rewards loyalty above all else. Vance is also a populist and speaks
Since its launch in Scotland in 2014, the National newspaper has made a name for itself for several reasons, none of them particularly good. It is not merely partisan in the way many British newspapers are, strongly supportive of one party and editorialising thunderously from the front page through to the opinion pages. At the
As the Democrats go into a very public meltdown about Joe Biden’s fitness to be their presidential candidate in November, there is an unusual sound emanating from Donald Trump: silence. In the 2016 campaign and across four years in the White House, Trump proved himself incapable of message discipline, venting against fellow Republicans on social
One of the defining themes of the new government will be devolution. Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner’s plan, according to the Labour manifesto, is to ‘transfer power out of Westminster, and into our communities.’ It’s a signal of the priority they place on these reforms that the Prime Minister and his deputy hosted English regional
Scottish Labour has won 37 of the 57 seats north of the border, an increase of 36 on the 2019 result. This is the party’s best showing in Scotland since 2010 and comes nine years after losing all but one of their seats to the SNP. Labour will be sending its most impressive crop of
The exit poll puts the SNP on ten seats. That is very much at the low end of the spectrum of expectations among the Nationalists. The party won 48 out of 59 Scottish seats in 2019. There are 57 constituencies north of the border, and if John Swinney has managed to win only ten of
Nigel Farage is the most misunderstood politician in Britain. Vilified by the liberal media as ‘far right’ and mistaken by nationalists as a kindred spirit, the Reform party leader doesn’t fully comport with the pub bore caricature sketched by his enemies nor with the blokey everyman persona lapped up by his admirers. He is a
David Tennant’s acceptance speech at the British LGBT Awards was replete with all the telltale signs of ‘Celebrity Activist Syndrome’. He didn’t feel he deserved an award; his views were just ‘common sense’ and ‘human decency’. He has found a cause that just happens to confirm that he is a really great guy, which is
One need not cast around for signs that Britain is no longer a serious country, but the indulgence with which Just Stop Oil is treated stands out more than most. The doomsday cult has now sprayed Stonehenge in orange cornflour to protest our failure to shutter every industry in the land and relocate the entire
The Labour manifesto commits the party to recognising a Palestinian state. It frames this as ‘a contribution to a renewed peace process’. This rationale is as dishonest as the commitment is foolhardy. It is a reminder that progressives will not learn from history if the lesson offends their political sensibilities. The manifesto claims that statehood
Douglas Ross was not a game-changing leader of the Scottish Conservatives in the way Ruth Davidson was but he announces his resignation as the game is being turned on its head. North of the border the Tories are seeing their vote hold up even as the electoral fortunes of their Sassenach brethren implode. They could
Rishi Sunak says it was a ‘mistake’ to leave the 80th anniversary commemorations for D-Day early. That’s one way to describe ditching a memorial to the liberation of Western Europe to record an election interview for the telly. We have heard the various reasons as to why this was such an error. It was dreadful
Not content with being a referee and leader of the Tories in Scotland, Douglas Ross seems bent on making himself even more unpopular with the punters. In doing so, he has alighted upon David Duguid, the Conservative MP for Banff and Buchan since 2017, who wrestled that once true-blue redoubt back from the SNP after
Much worse than the fact of a banana milkshake being chucked over Nigel Farage is the inevitable discourse it has occasioned. This has mostly involved progressives finding it very funny and others trying desperately, and unsuccessfully, to reason with them. This is as good a time as any to reiterate a point I hope to
Full disclosure: I went into the ITV election debate wanting and expecting Sir Keir Starmer to walk all over Rishi Sunak, but from my sofa the Prime Minister looked like the clear winner. How so? He kept it simple: he would cut taxes, Sir Keir would hike them up by £2,000; he would stick illegal
Today we are witnessing a significant failure of the UK state. This morning, the personal finance campaigner Martin Lewis reported that around 30 per cent of families had not received their latest child benefit payment. HMRC, which administers the payments, said it was ‘working to resolve the issue’ and advising claimants to ‘continue to check
The Scottish parliament has voted to suspend former SNP cabinet minister Michael Matheson for 27 sitting days and dock his salary for 54 calendar days. It comes after Matheson was found to have broken the MSP code of conduct on expenses and use of parliamentary resources. Matheson ran up an £11,000 mobile data bill during
The Scottish Conservatives were facing a difficult election this summer but SNP leader John Swinney may have thrown them a lifeline. In choosing to attack Holyrood’s standards committee for proposing a 27-day suspension for nationalist MSP Michael Matheson, Swinney has put his party on the wrong side of public opinion. Matheson was censured for running
