The former first minister of Scotland picks five favourites. Nicola Sturgeon's memoir, "Frankly", is out this week. She will be talking about her life in politics at the Southbank Centre on 29 August.

Sunset Song

Lewis Grassic Gibbon, 1932
This is the novel that ignited my love of literature. Set in the northeast of Scotland during the First World War, it tells the story of a girl torn between her yearning for education and travel and her loyalty to the rural community she was born into. Rooted in a unique place at a pivotal moment in history, it is also a timeless and universal story about coming of age and the pressures and expectations of womanhood.

Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2006
Set during the Biafran War, this is both a beautiful love story and an affecting account of the human impact of civil war. It educates, entertains and moves the reader – all the things a good novel should do.

James

Percival Everett, 2024
A masterful retelling of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", from the perspective of Jim the slave. It will make you cry and laugh, scream with rage – but, ultimately, dare to feel just a bit hopeful about the future of humanity.

The Skeleton Road

Val McDermid, 2014
Part of the Inspector Karen Pirie series, this is a coldcase mystery and historical drama rolled into one. It takes the reader from Edinburgh to the Balkans, with a detour to the spires of Oxford, and is gripping from the very first page. And just when you think it's safe to breathe again, it delivers a final twist that will leave you reeling.

Beloved

Toni Morrison, 1987
I love everything Morrison wrote, but "Beloved" stands above the rest. It is a searing indictment of the physical and psychological trauma of slavery, and the dehumanisation of those who enforce it and those subject to it. More optimistically, it's a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring bonds between mothers and daughters.

"Nicola Sturgeon isn't someone for whom oversharing comes naturally," said The Spectator's political correspondent Lucy Dunn.

Scotland's former first minister has "regularly been labelled 'dour' or 'frosty'" by both opponents and supporters. Her leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic, her stance on Scottish independence, her calamitous Gender Recognition Reform Bill – which "prompted her resignation" in 2023 – and Operation Branchform, the police probe into the finances of the SNP (which led to the arrest of her then husband Peter Murrell), have been "dissected, judged and criticised relentlessly".

But "there don't seem to be many people who really know her". Her memoir "Frankly" seems like "an attempt to shrug off that reservedness" and give people the chance to "see things from her point of view". But "her critics say she is less offering insight, more rewriting history".

'Nigh-on useless'

It's more the latter than the former, said Shona Craven in The National. Two and a half years after she was "grilled" about the implications for Scottish prison policy of saying "trans women are women", she still "stumbles" when asked if rapist Isla Bryson, who was sent to a woman's prison, is a man. "What I would say now is that anyone who commits the most heinous male crime against women probably forfeits the right to be – you know – the gender of their choice," she told ITV's Julie Etchingham.

That position on self-ID differs from what she set out in the book, as well as what she struggled with in 2023. But if she had admitted then that some people could "forfeit" their right to choose their gender, "then self-ID could not have become law and the promises she had made to activists would be broken".

The truth is, Sturgeon "began and continues to fight" the gender row, said Alan Cochrane in The Telegraph. This issue and others, like "the stupid coalition deal" she struck with the Scottish Greens and the "record drug deaths" in Scotland, brought the SNP "to its knees in last year's election". But her book is "getting pretty fair and positive licks in the media" because she "long ago completely conned a large part of the Fleet Street commentariat" into admiring her.

Personally, she has "many good qualities", including a "wicked sense of humour", and she's a "more than decent public speaker". But it's her "gallus nature – Scots for chutzpah – much more than political judgment that's got her to where she is today".

The reality is that Sturgeon was "an extremely poor politician" who "seldom did the right thing". When it comes to her judgement on policies, she was "nigh-on useless".

'Nicola Was Right All Along'

You might ask why "a fierce advocate for Scottish independence" chose London-based Pan Macmillan to publish her memoir, said Kevin McKenna in The Herald.

Indeed, the "gulf" between those who saw her every day and those for whom she was "a more peripheral, and hence more idealised, figure" is obvious from the book's promotional blurbs, said The Times' Alex Massie. None are written by people who live in Scotland.

The "indulgences" granted her by "certain parts of the impeccably right-on London left" included "oodles" of emotional intelligence. This is not just news to those of us north of the wall, "it strikes us as utter poppycock".

Ultimately, her autobiography is "designed to demonstrate, once and for all, that Nicola Was Right All Along". But she "sidles away from the only obvious and inescapable verdict on her record": poor educational and health outcomes, despite Scotland's 25% higher spending per capita than England.

"Still, it is a weakness of contemporary politics that good intentions are expected to substitute for good outcomes. In that respect, Sturgeon was an archetype of a particular type of political success."

Alex Salmond, Scotland's former first minister and champion of his country's independence movement, died suddenly on Saturday at the age of 69.

The former MP and MSP collapsed during a conference in North Macedonia and was pronounced dead at the scene a short time later. His party, Alba, said the probable cause was a heart attack.

Tributes have been paid from across the political spectrum, with Keir Starmer describing Salmond as a "monumental figure of Scottish and UK politics". Salmond served as first minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014, and was leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) on two occasions, from 1990 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2014.

Nicola Sturgeon, his successor as first minister, acknowledged their troubled relationship but recognised their achievements together. "For more than a decade we formed one of the most successful partnerships in UK politics," she said.

What did Salmond do for independence?

The "shock of Alex Salmond's death is reverberating around every corner of UK politics", said Sky News. A "Marmite figure", Salmond certainly "divided opinion", but he was "respected as the giant who was instrumental in delivering the 2014 Scottish independence referendum".

His death leaves "a giant gap in the future of the independence movement" and it is a "testament to his legacy" that figures from across the political spectrum have paid tribute to him over the weekend.

Salmond "cemented his place in British political history" in May 2011 when he led the SNP to an "extraordinary" overall majority at Holyrood, winning 69 of 129 seats in the Scottish parliament, said The Guardian.

The result "established the SNP as a formidable political force" and confirmed "that a referendum on Scottish independence was inevitable".

Although the independence movement would go on to lose the referendum – the no campaign won by 55% to 45% – Salmond had still succeeded in taking independence from a largely fringe view to "normalising independence as a popular position".

But his legacy is marked by controversies. After stepping down as first minister following the referendum defeat, Salmond had a public fallout with Sturgeon over her government's handling of harassment complaints against him. He was also acquitted of sexual assault charges in 2020.

He went on to found an alternative independence party, Alba, and he hosted his own show on the controversial Russian broadcaster RT, but suspended it following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

What will happen to independence now?

Scottish politics is "in flux", said the BBC. After 17 years in power at Holyrood, the SNP under John Swinney heads towards the 2026 Scottish parliamentary election "on the heels of a thumping by Labour in this year's general election". And with the UK Supreme Court ruling that Westminster's approval is needed for another independence referendum, there is "no obvious mechanism" for the SNP to advance its cause in the near future.

Salmond "leaves behind a deeply fractured movement". Yet he predicted in 2014 that the "energised activism" of pro-independence supporters would not fade away. In the "decade since the vote, that has proved prescient", said the BBC. While there is clearly "no immediate prospect of Scotland becoming independent", Salmond championed the cause that is now the "mainstream aspiration of nearly half the electorate".

Can anyone step into his shoes?

Without Salmond, Alba is "unlikely to survive as a political force", said The Guardian. The party's only MSP, Ash Regan, is not expected to win a seat at the next Holyrood election, and in the July general election, Alba won just 0.5% of the national vote.

There are also questions for the wider nationalist movement. "With Sturgeon now a largely inactive backbencher who may not stand again for Holyrood, Swinney is the only established nationalist leader left." There are "a handful of possible candidates in the younger generation", such as Swinney's deputy, Kate Forbes, and the party's Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn. But until the next Holyrood election in 2026, Swinney "will be the last veteran standing".

The challenge for the wider nationalist movement "is to find a charismatic leader of equivalent quality to Alex Salmond to take it to the next level", said Sky News. "The stage is looking for its new star." But it seems "unlikely the movement will ever see the likes of him again".

The favourite to become the next leader of the SNP and first minister of Scotland may be crowned "with no contest", the Scottish Conservatives have warned.

John Swinney is widely tipped to take over from Humza Yousaf, whose resignation leaves a "leadership void needing to be filled in a time of crisis for the SNP", said The Courier. Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Tories, predicted that Swinney will quickly be voted in without a leadership election.

Swinney led the party from 2000-04, in the wake of Alex Salmond's sudden resignation, and served as Nicola Sturgeon's deputy from 2014–23. With such experience, he is considered the ultimate "safe pair of hands" within the party, said The Guardian, and is "known for his quiet charm as well as his steeliness".

Electorally 'ineffectual'

Born and raised in Edinburgh, Swinney joined the SNP in 1979, when he was 15 years old. He was elected to Westminster for North Tayside in Labour's landslide election of 1997, before entering Holyrood two years later, following the establishment of Scotland's devolved parliament.

Now 60, he led the SNP after succeeding Salmond in 2000. His tenure was short-lived and ultimately ended in failure, however, as the party failed to make progress in the 2001 general election and lost MSPs at the 2003 Holyrood election.

His time in office is "considered to be ineffectual because of poor election performances", said the Scottish Daily Express, and he stood down as leader in 2004 after disappointing results in European Parliament polls.

Swinney went on to serve as finance secretary from 2007 to 2016, initially under the returning Salmond, and then as education secretary from 2016 to 2021. He was also appointed deputy first minister by Salmond's successor, Sturgeon, in 2014, remaining in post until her political demise in 2023. 

An active member of the Church of Scotland, he won respect for his protracted negotiations with Westminster after the Smith commission, which gave further powers to Holyrood after the 2014 independence referendum. 

Swinney stepped back from frontline politics last year to spend more time with his children and wife, the TV reporter Elizabeth Quigley. He has remained loyal to Sturgeon, even as she has been engulfed in a crisis around financial mismanagement that has eroded the party's support.

A 'serious person for serious times'

Swinney has yet to confirm whether he is running for the top job again, but senior SNP figures have already given him their backing. The SNP's Westminster leader Stephen Flynn told Sky News that "serious times demand serious politics and serious people", and said Swinney was "the best person to take that forward now" for the party.

Swinney is "a vastly experienced politician", said The Guardian, and "understands the mechanics of government and the dynamic between Holyrood and the UK government better than anyone else in the Scottish parliament". He also understands the "internal dynamics and historic loyalties of SNP politicians and membership" and "would probably be the most favoured by the party's mainstream members because of his long experience and track record as a bipartisan, shrewd and centrist figure".

The current deputy leader, Keith Brown, denied claims made by opposition parties and even some within the SNP that the contest would be a "stitch-up" by "the boys club" at the top of the party.

Swinney "will bring unity hopefully to the parliament but also to the party", Brown said.

Peter Murrell, husband of former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon, has been charged "in connection with the embezzlement of funds" from the SNP, the police have confirmed.

The party's former chief executive was arrested on Thursday morning and charged in the evening after questioning. He has since been released.

Murrell was first arrested in April last year, as part of a far-ranging investigation into the SNP's funding and finances. Detectives searched the couple's home and "confiscated a luxury motorhome parked in the driveway of Murrell's 92-year-old mother's home", said The Guardian. Murrell, Sturgeon and the party's then-treasurer Colin Beattie were arrested and interviewed. All three were released without charge, and Sturgeon has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.

The inquiry "focused on the status of £667,000 in donations for a pro-independence fighting fund", specifically on "allegations it had been used for the SNP's day-to-day spending".

An SNP spokesperson said the re-arrest and charge came as a "shock", while Scottish Labour's deputy leader Jackie Baillie called it "another incredibly concerning development in this long-running investigation".

Police Scotland has been "criticised for the duration of the inquiry" into the SNP's funding and finances, said The Times. First Minister Humza Yousaf said earlier this month he would welcome an end to the investigation. 

For more than two decades, Murrell "played a vital role in the SNP", turning the party into the "dominant force in Scottish politics", said The Scotsman. Given his centrality to the party, the police inquiry "is likely to have a far-reaching effect on UK politics and possibly the next general election", said The Guardian after his arrest last year.

A YouGov poll published this month showed Labour ahead of the SNP in Scotland for the first time since the 2014 independence referendum in a "sign of the governing party's decline", said The Scotsman.

During the pandemic, Nicola Sturgeon was seen by many as "a cut above the others", said Katy Balls in the i news site – a leader whose measured and compassionate response to the crisis was in contrast to that of the "bumbling" Boris Johnson in London. 

How far she has fallen since then, said Balls. Already tarnished by her alleged involvement in a party-funding scandal, Sturgeon's reputation for honesty and transparency now risks being shattered by the Covid Inquiry. 

In 2021, she promised to hand all her WhatsApp messages to the inquiry; yet while testifying last week, she eventually admitted that, in fact, she'd "not retained them". So you deleted them, asked lead counsel Jamie Dawson KC. "Yes," she replied. In her defence, she claimed that she had only used WhatsApp to discuss mundane matters, but evidence from other people's phones has presented a different picture.

'Cynically exploiting the crisis'

Moreover, her government had been aware that any chats risked being made public. At one point, a senior civil servant had sent a warning that such messages fall under freedom of information laws, alongside a zipped-mouth emoji.

So at that "grave moment in Scottish history", members of the SNP government were removing "all traces of their deliberations", said Reaction. To make matters worse, it has emerged that key issues were discussed not in cabinet but in the un-minuted meetings of an inner circle called the "Gold Command", from which even the finance secretary was excluded. What were they afraid might be discovered? 

Perhaps it was the degree to which the SNP was "cynically exploiting" the crisis to serve the cause of independence – crafting Covid regulations not because they were necessarily right, but because they set Edinburgh apart from London.

'Bordering on vindictive'

If Sturgeon struggled at times to separate her political instincts from her role in the Covid crisis, she wasn't the only one, said Ruth Wishart in The National. 

In planning lockdowns, Johnson was influenced by his innate libertarianism; Michael Gove wrote a paper on the need to protect the Union during the pandemic. Nor was she alone in deleting WhatsApps. The Scottish Secretary, Alister Jack, deleted his. 

Sturgeon made mistakes, said Chris Deerin in The New Statesman. So did every national leader. Yet reaction to her testimony has bordered on the vindictive. 

Even the most human moments, when she tearfully admitted that she'd sometimes found her job overwhelming, and regretted every death, were met with derision. It is right that she faces hard questions, but must we deny "our politicians any claim to decency or humanity"?

Nicola Sturgeon told the Covid inquiry she made errors in her handling of the pandemic, admitting there were times she wished she hadn't been Scotland's first minister.

"I was the first minister when the pandemic struck. There's a large part of me wishes that I hadn't been", she said as she fought back tears. After the session ended, Pamela Thomas, who lost her brother James Cameron during the Covid pandemic, said: "Crocodile tears aren't washing with me."

Aamer Anwar, the lawyer representing the Scottish Covid Bereaved group, said that Sturgeon's "carefully crafted image" of sincerity "has been left shattered by her own hands", said the Daily Record.

"Those of a less cynical perspective might choose to take" Sturgeon's "tearful testimony at face value", said The Telegraph's Tom Harris, but others "might draw a different conclusion". 

Whether her delivery was believable or not, Sturgeon admitted to a "number of errors" in her handling of the crisis, The Guardian said. She regretted not telling people about Scotland's first outbreak in March 2020, which "had the potential to undermine public confidence".

However, she "rejected claims" she presided over a "culture of secrecy", said the BBC, despite admitting she deleted all her WhatsApp messages during the pandemic. She also denied that she had pushed for fights with Boris Johnson's government to boost her Scottish independence cause.

The most profound impact of Sturgeon's "fall from grace" will be on her party, said The Independent's Sean O'Grady. Her "wavering, emotional appearance" at the Covid inquiry doesn't detract from the fact that, since her resignation in March 2023 as first minister and leader of the Scottish National Party, the SNP and its principal cause – Scottish independence – "remains in the political doldrums".

Following the political turmoil of 2022, which saw three different prime ministers pass through Downing Street, it was hoped this year would provide a period of relative calm ahead of the rough and tumble of a general election expected in 2024.

But Nicola Sturgeon's resignation as Scotland's first minister set the tone for the year. Rishi Sunak struggled to maintain control of the Conservative Party in the face of Covid revelations and manoeuvrings among his top ministers, while Nigel Farage brought down the head of one of Britain's biggest banks.

Abroad, the continuing war in Ukraine was overshadowed by Hamas's deadly 7 October attacks and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza, which brought hundreds of thousands on to the streets around the world to protest. Across the pond, Donald Trump racked up nearly 100 criminal indictments over the course of the year yet still leads the opinion polls ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Here is how the newspapers covered some of the biggest stories of the year.

Sturgeon resigns

When the Daily Record reported the sudden resignation of the all-powerful Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon in February with the headline "I want my Independence" few could have predicted what would happen next. 

The resignation and subsequent arrest of Peter Murrell, Sturgeon's husband and, for 24 years, the SNP's chief executive, sent the party into a tailspin from which it has never recovered. For years, the SNP was "admired, feared and envied" for its iron discipline, said Severin Carrell in The Guardian, but in just a few short weeks its once "impregnable political edifice" collapsed, and with it perhaps any remaining chance of Scottish independence.

The lockdown files

In a major scoop, The Telegraph obtained more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages sent between the then health secretary Matt Hancock and other ministers and officials at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The conversations were detailed in what the paper called "The Lockdown Files" and they raised "vital new questions about the handling of the pandemic ahead of a public inquiry into the response to Covid-19", said the paper. Among the multiple revelations was Hancock's rejection of expert medical advice on care home testing.

Trump in the dock

In April, Donald Trump became the first sitting or former US president to face criminal charges when he pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records linked to hush money payments allegedly made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his first presidential election campaign.

Many papers led with variations on The Times's "Trump in the dock" headline in what The Independent described as "a day that shook America". But while an extraordinary moment, it was soon eclipsed by further charges brought against Trump related to the unauthorised possession of classified documents, the financial reporting in his organisations and attempts to overturn the 2020 election. 

Despite all these, the former president remains odds-on favourite to win the Republican nomination and is leading Joe Biden in head-to-head polling for next year's presidential election.

A 'happy and glorious' coronation

The organisers of King Charles' coronation in May said it would be an "unforgettable spectacle" and this pledge was "gloriously fulfilled on a day that mixed splendour and sacrament", reported the Sunday Express. 

Thousands lined the streets and millions tuned in around the world to watch the royal procession and ceremony at Westminster Abbey, although the day did not pass without incident after anti-monarchy protesters were detained, causing a significant backlash and pre-empting more recent debates around how police deal with protests.

Nigel Farage vs. NatWest

The Independent reported how NatWest lost £850 million in a single day's trading as Nigel Farage called for the entire board to quit after chief executive Dame Alison Rose stepped down in the wake of his "debanking scandal".

The row, which rumbled on for months, led not only to the departure of Rose but also Peter Flavel, chief executive of Coutts, as well as an intervention from the UK's data privacy regulator. 

In July the Treasury summoned the heads of Britain's biggest banks to explain how they intend to ensure that customers are not cancelled for their political views. The scandal cost Rose millions in pay-outs with Farage announcing in November he would sue NatWest, seeking millions of pounds in damages.

'Britain's worst baby killer'

The conviction of neonatal nurse Lucy Letby – found guilty in August of murdering seven newborns and attempting to kill another six after a 10-month trial – earned her the label of "Britain's worst baby killer".

But it was the Daily Mail that highlighted what was to become the focus of public anger over the coming weeks and ultimately lead to the setting up of a government inquiry, reporting on how hospital bosses had failed to "act on a string of warnings". Letby was sentenced to a whole-life jail term without the prospect of parole.

Hamas attacks

The world was stunned when Hamas launched a murderous attack on Israel in the early hours of 7 October. Some of the most harrowing images from that day came from a video of a student who was abducted from a music festival and heard screaming "don't kill me". Her words made the front page of the Mail on Sunday as people around the world showed their solidarity with Israel.

Yet support quickly turned to anger at what many saw as the indiscriminate targeting of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. The fate of the woman in the video is unknown, with Hamas claiming that 50 hostages taken on 7 October have since died in Israeli air strikes.

Useless *******s morons & ****s

The Daily Record splashed on Dominic Cummings' foul-mouth tirades on WhatsApp that were revealed at the Covid Inquiry. Boris Johnson's former senior adviser said that the government's initial plan for dealing with Covid was a "joke". 

He described the Cabinet Office, at the heart of No.10, as a "dumpster fire" and called Johnson's absence on holiday in February 2020, as Covid loomed, "insane". Cummings thought Johnson returning early from his holiday would have been "counterproductive", said The Times, while The Telegraph said that when Cummings resigned he left the country to be run by a man he described as "unfit for office".

Suella Sacked (but look who's back)

The Evening Standard was the first paper to lead on the dramatic return to frontline politics for former PM David Cameron. While the sacking of home secretary Suella Braverman had been widely anticipated following her inflammatory comments around Pro-Palestinian protests in the lead up to Remembrance Sunday, coverage of the biggest cabinet reshuffle of Rishi Sunak's premiership was dominated by the return of his predecessor-but-three.

Cameron is "well-connected on the international stage, which comes in handy when you're an incoming foreign secretary", said the BBC's political editor Chris Mason, and "he'll have useful words of advice about winning general elections too". But he also comes with significant "baggage".

Boris Johnson, Nicola Sturgeon and Jeremy Corbyn – the three populist politicians who led their parties at the last general election now find their careers and legacies in tatters.

A “damning” report by MPs published today found that Johnson deliberately and repeatedly misled Parliament over lockdown parties, said the BBC.

The former PM, who led the Conservative Party to a “landslide election victory” just three years ago, is now in the ignominious position of being the “first former prime minister to have been found to have deliberately misled Parliament”. The report by the Commons Privileges Committee “demolishes Boris Johnson’s character and conduct”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason.

Its publication followed the arrest on Sunday of Nicola Sturgeon, former leader of the SNP and Scotland’s longest-serving first minister. She was questioned by police investigating allegations of financial misconduct, before later being released without charge.

And Jeremy Corbyn, once Labour leader, has been banned from standing as an MP for the party at the next election over a protracted antisemitism row, with his once influential left-wing allies marginalised in the party.

What did the papers say?

Britain’s style of modern populism has “always been just a bit rubbish”, said Sherelle Jacobs in The Daily Telegraph. It has been dogged by a “distinct lack of leadership vision”, she argued. “Johnsonianism was a greased puddle of incoherent opportunism – all pork barrel promises, green grandstanding and Brexit bluffs,” said Jacobs. Sturgeon’s pro-EU nationalism, meanwhile, was a “contradiction in terms”.

There is an “inauthenticity” to Britain’s brand of populism, said Jacobs. It was always “unclear” whether Johnson “really believed” in Brexit, and SNP politicians “may rail against the remote Westminster elite, but they reside within their own hermetically sealed bubble of NGO professionals, academics and career campaigners”.

The cases of Johnson, Sturgeon and Corbyn may all vary, said Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times (FT), but there are “common threads” in their stories that offer warnings about the “dangers of populism and political monomania”.

What marks their leadership reigns is “the primacy of a revolutionary zeal that refuses to be tempered by economic and political realities”, alongside “fanatical supporters and the concentration of power in a purist vanguard”.

Neither Johnson nor Corbyn became leaders “because their parties believed they would be good at governing”, but rather “as vehicles for a faction’s goals”. Their personal failings were “ignored or dismissed as smears” as their “flaws mattered less than the cause”.

The troubles facing the SNP are more “complex”, but Sturgeon’s current problems spring, in part, from her “fierce control” of the party: “Sturgeon was no figurehead,” wrote Shrimsley, “but the astute and undisputed chief.”

While Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer may have, to some extent, “restored normal service” in British politics, “what was true before can be true again”, warned Shrimsley. “In Westminster, activists have seen that the most effective way to advance a hardline ideology is to enter and take control of a party.”

What next?

Those who believe in a pluralist democracy should be cheered by the investigation into the SNP’s alleged financial misconduct, as well as the “quiet courage” of the Conservative MPs on the Privileges Committee. “It’s the system, however ill, eventually pushing back,” said Andrew Marr in The New Statesman.

But “politics never stops”, he said, and there will one day be “more populists” in British politics. Starmer, however, could soon have the opportunity to make the 2024 election “not the moment of another, possibly short-lived, Labour interruption in British politics but the beginning of a long, left-liberal hegemony, as long-lasting as the Conservative one has been”. That could be achieved through voting reform, suggested Marr.

The Labour Party has shown support for implementing a proportional voting system, and recent polling indicates that a majority of Labour voters and party members also back this change. But there is a risk that another referendum, this time on PR, “would revive, even energise, the right-wing English populism which has taken such a knock in recent days”, added Marr.

A Conservative ‘divorce’?

British Conservatism has been an “uneasy coalition” for many years, with the 2016 split between Brexiters and Remainers evolving into something more like a split between populists and realists”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian.

With the two factions “barely capable of pulling together in power, it’s hard to imagine them coexisting blissfully amid the bitter acrimony of defeat”, should Labour win the next general election, she added.

Indeed, some Conservatives are now “privately pinning their hopes” that a Labour minority government will introduce a PR-type system, under which “a breakaway party could finally become viable”. But should there be a Conservative “divorce” there is a question over who retains the established Conservative brand name and who is “deemed the splinter party”.

If the Conservative Party is beaten in the next election, will its members interpret that “as a sign that they somehow still hadn’t moved far enough right, or as a warning that the country had had enough of populists?”

Recent political history suggests that it would be “brave to bet on a defeated party in 2024 jumping to the obvious conclusion”, said Hinsliff.

Scotland's First Minister Humza Yousaf is facing mounting pressure to suspend his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon following her arrest yesterday.

The former leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) was questioned for seven hours on Sunday, before being released without charge in connection to a police investigation into the party’s finances.

In tweeted statement following her release, Sturgeon said: “I know beyond doubt that I am in fact innocent of any wrongdoing.”

‘Sturgeon suspended others for an awful lot less’

Denials of wrongdoing aside, “when she was leader, Sturgeon welcomed the suspension from the party or relinquishing of the whip by other SNP politicians involved in police investigations”, said The Guardian Scotland’s Libby Brooks and Severin Carrell.

Her arrest “is a profoundly serious moment for the SNP” and Yousaf, who “styled himself as the ‘continuity candidate’ and appears unable to escape Sturgeon’s shadow”.

Yousaf faced further embarrassment after describing Sturgeon – his mentor during her term as Scotland’s longest-serving first minister – as “one of the most impressive politicians Europe has seen over the last couple of decades” on Sunday, just hours before her arrest was announced.

He is now “facing renewed pressure to intervene”, said the i news site’s Scotland reporter Chris Green, after having “previously resisted calls to take disciplinary action against Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell and MSP Colin Beattie, who were also arrested by Police Scotland officers”.

Some SNP politicians have joined opposition parties in calling for Sturgeon to stand down or be suspended, including former leadership hopeful, Ash Regan.

Regan told BBC Radio Scotland that “decisive action” was needed and that Yousaf should “consider” his former boss if she did not resign her party membership voluntarily.

Angus MacNeil, one of the SNP’s longest-serving MPs, called for “political distance until the investigation ends either way”.

“This soap opera has gone far enough, Nicola Sturgeon suspended others from the SNP for an awful lot less,” MacNeil tweeted.

‘A smashed reputation for the SNP’

Talking to BBC Scotland today, Yousaf said: “I’ll not suspend Nicola’s membership. I’ll treat her in the same way I’ve treated, for example, Colin Beattie.”

Yousaf said in April that Murrell would not be suspended from the SNP because he was “innocent until proven guilty”.

“Whatever happens”, said Freddie Hayward in The New Statesman, the furore around the former first minister “won’t help the party revive its flagging position in the polls (cue smiles in Labour HQ)”. Nor will it “boost Sturgeon’s chances of swanning around the UN’s Geneva headquarters anytime soon”.

According to The Times, Labour is “increasingly confident that the scandal will cause the nationalists to lose seats in Scotland” and could be “pivotal” in helping Keir Starmer get into No. 10.

Although Sturgeon is currently focusing on constituency work as a backbench MSP, her arrest makes it impossible for either her or the party to move on, said the Daily Mail’s Eddie Barnes.

Her hopes “of a new life – perhaps on the international political circuit — have been dashed for now”, Barnes continued. And “whether or not Sturgeon is charged, this scandal has already smashed the SNP’s reputation”.

Police in Scotland are investigating whether Nicola Sturgeon deliberately shut down scrutiny of the SNP’s finances as part of their ongoing inquiry into £600,000 of missing donations.

The crisis has already led to the arrest of her husband, Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the party, and sent the once all-powerful Scottish nationalists into an existential tail-spin.

Emails from June 2021, published by Scotland’s Sunday Mail, reveal how a proposal to hire a fundraising manager to oversee the party’s finances and donations was rejected by Sturgeon.

A leaked video from March 2021 also released by the Sunday Mail appears to show Sturgeon playing down concerns about the party’s finances.

‘Sub-optimal’

Believed to “have been recorded without her knowledge”, the footage from a meeting of the National Executive Committee shows Sturgeon warning officials to be “very careful” about suggesting there are “any problems” with the party’s accounts because of the effect it might have on donors, said the BBC.

Sturgeon claimed the SNP’s finances had “never been stronger” after three members resigned from the finance and audit committee. One, Allison Graham, listed a “catalogue of concerns over governance and transparency”, said the Sunday Mail.

The online meeting took place just days before the first complaint was made to police about SNP finances, said the BBC. “A pro-independence activist is said to have raised concern that nearly £667,000 of funds raised for a future independence campaign may have been used for other purposes.” A police investigation was opened a few weeks later.

Both Sturgeon and Murrell have declined to comment on the video, the content of which was described by The Spectator’s Steerpike as “er, sub-optimal, to say the least”.

‘Absolutely not’ quitting

The opposition is putting pressure on the new first minister, Humza Yousaf, to suspend Sturgeon from the party.

Jackie Baillie, the deputy leader of Scottish Labour, accused Sturgeon of being “central to the secrecy”. Yousaf “must consider suspending her party membership and that of her husband… until the investigation has been concluded”, said Baillie.

Also calling for the couple’s suspension from the party, Scottish Conservative Party chairman Craig Hoy said the timing of Sturgeon’s claims about the health of the party’s finances was “frankly astonishing”.

As Sturgeon is “dragged deeper into the scandal engulfing the nationalists”, there is a “growing expectation” inside the SNP that she will quit as an MSP “sooner rather than later”, said The Telegraph.

She had planned to remain at Holyrood as a backbencher until at least 2026. But there are fears that any contributions she now makes as a backbencher “would be leapt on by opponents to draw public attention to the SNP’s turmoil and the ongoing fraud investigation”, the paper said. It quoted a senior SNP source who said that with Sturgeon’s reputation now “in tatters”, it was hard to “see the advantages to her in staying”.

However, the party’s former Westminster leader Ian Blackford said Sturgeon would “absolutely not” quit as an MSP. “There is no reason for that at all,” he told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme, adding: “There is nothing which is in any way untoward on that clip which was shown over the course of the weekend.”

Finland’s Sanna Marin has become the latest female leader to stand down, following a closely fought election.

Marin’s failed bid earlier this month to secure a second term as prime minister came weeks after the resignations of Nicola Sturgeon, who stood down as Scotland’s first minister (and first female leader) after eight years, and Moldovan leader Natalia Gavrilița, who cited a lack of “support and trust at home”. New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern announced in January that she was too burned out to continue as PM, and Liz Truss quit in October after just six disastrous weeks at the helm of the UK government.

“It has been a dismal few months for women in politics,” said Harriet Marsden in The New Statesman. Since Angela Merkel stepped down as German chancellor in December 2021, “the world stage has been lacking heavyweight female players”, but the recent spate of resignations “should force us to face the reality for women in power, and question why anyone would even want the job”.

Growth has plateaued

“Fewer than a third of the UN’s 193 member states have ever had a female leader,” said The Guardian’s Jonathan Yerushalmy. “And while the last two decades have seen a huge proportional rise in the number of women at the top of global politics, the actual numbers remain incredibly low.”

Giorgia Meloni was elected to be Italy’s first female PM in October, and Ursula von der Leyen has been president of the European Commission since 2019.

But only 12 UN member states currently have female leaders, down from 17 in 2022.

According to UN Women, as of 1 January 2023, a total of 34 women were serving as heads of state and/or government in a total of 31 countries worldwide.

Statista reported that the “highest position of executive power” had been held by a woman “in just 59 countries since 1960” as of the start of this year.

Countries that currently have female prime ministers include Iceland, Samoa, Denmark, Estonia, Namibia and Uganda. Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed is the longest-serving female leader of any country, at 19 years.

The UK has had three female PMs: Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Truss. All three resigned following challenges from within their own party.

Current female presidents include Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen, Nepal’s Bidhya Devi Bhandari, Xiomara Castro in Honduras and Peru’s Dina Boluarte, who replaced the impeached Pedro Castillo in December.

Despite Ardern’s recent resignation, New Zealand has achieved gender equality at the highest level of government, with 10 women sitting with 10 men in cabinet. Parity was reached with the appointment of Willow-Jean Prime as conservation minister by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.

UN Women reported that while gender quotas in parliaments have helped to increase the numbers of female lawmakers, only 13 countries were at “gender parity”. At the current rate, said the agency, gender equality in power will not be reached “for another 130 years”.

Not designed for women

Looking at the data, “it’s little wonder” that so many female leaders are quitting, wrote Susan Armstrong for euronews. The workplace in general “often isn’t designed for women” and staying in top jobs “takes a massive toll – in time, emotional labour, and physical labour”.

“As the viral quote goes, ‘Women are expected to work like they don’t have families, and parent like they don’t have jobs,’” Armstrong added.

In a survey by the Fawcett Society of of female MPs in the UK, 93% said that online abuse or harassment had a negative impact on how they felt about holding their role.

New Zealand’s Ardern said she no longer had “enough in the tank” when she quit, after experiencing violent threats over her stance on lockdown and Covid vaccinations. She also cited sexism and the pressures of a young family.

Sturgeon described the “brutality” of politics, the lack of privacy and the need to give “absolutely everything of yourself to this job”.

In Finland, Marin was subjected to “intrusive and often sexist scrutiny”, The Guardian’s Yerushalmy. After a video showing Marin dancing at a private event provoked a public outcry, she was forced to take a drugs test “for her own legal protection”.

Experts have warned that the invasion of Ukraine may also indirectly lead to a further decline in numbers of female leaders. A survey by the Pew Research Center in 2018, when a record number of women ran for the US Congress in 2018, found that most voters believed female leaders were more effective in areas such as healthcare and education – but less effective in security and defence.

UN data shows that women in government are more likely to be given roles related to family or gender than economics or defence. “That means the traditional path to power – rising up through government and senior cabinet positions – remains more difficult,” said Yerushalmy.

“Women in leadership positions will get asked certain questions that men do not,” wrote Farida Jalalzai, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech, in an article on The Conversation. Women will be criticised for appearing “too hard and too aggressive”, but also if they are seen as “overly soft and emotional”.

And “there isn’t an easy way” around that major problem facing our female leaders, she added.

Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf said it had been a “difficult day” for the Scottish National Party after its former chief executive Peter Murrell was arrested in connection with an investigation into the party’s finances.

Murrell, who served as the party’s chief executive from 1999 until resigning last month, is the husband of Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister who stood down in March.

He was arrested and held for questioning over the probe into the SNP finances. “Officers are investigating claims that £600,000 of donations given in 2017 to support the campaign for a second independence referendum were used for other purposes," said The Times.

After being questioned for 11 hours, Murrell was “released without charge pending further investigation”, said The National. As well as his arrest, the police have conducted searches at the home Murrell shares with Sturgeon and the SNP headquarters in Edinburgh.

The arrest capped an “extraordinary two months” for Murrell and Sturgeon, said Politico’s London Playbook. Sturgeon, “who once looked all-powerful, is no longer first minister, and we have all spent the day following the extraordinary footage from their Glasgow home, suddenly transformed into a crime investigation scene”, the newsletter added.

Who is Peter Murrell?

Born in 1964 in Edinburgh, Murrell attended school in the city before studying at the University of Glasgow. He “worked his way through the ranks in politics”, including a stint in the office of Alex Salmond, Sturgeon’s predecessor as first minister as SNP leader, said The Sun.

He became known as “the ultimate backroom operator” during his time as chief executive of the SNP, said The Times, a role he took over from Michael Russell in 1999. Murrell was a “key part of the nationalists’ election-winning machine” and was viewed as a “respected organiser who professionalised and modernised the party”.

He’s “partly credited with the success at the 2007 elections”, said The Sun, but he’s always “tried to keep a low profile”, added The Times.

Murrell first met Sturgeon while “she was still a teenager during an SNP youth weekend in Aberdeenshire” in 1988, said The Express, but the pair didn’t become a couple until 15 years later in 2003.

They married in 2010 in Glasgow while Sturgeon was deputy first minister. When she became first minister in 2014 and her public profile grew, she said that Murrell was not the type of man to “feel threatened” by it and that he is “very self-assured”, said the BBC.

It clearly suited Murrell to “be in the background”, the BBC added, but he found himself at the centre of controversy after Alex Salmond was cleared of sexual assault charges in 2020. The MP Kenny MacAskill called for an investigation after being tipped off that Murrell had sent messages calling “for the police to be put under pressure over the Salmond case”, said The Times.

He was also accused by Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser of giving a “false statement” under oath to a Holyrood committee about the Scottish government’s handling of the Salmond case. Murrell “absolutely refuted” the claim he lied.

Why did Murrell resign from the SNP?

Murrell’s role as chief executive came under intense scrutiny after Sturgeon indicated she would resign and a leadership election was triggered. One of the candidates, Ash Regan, said it was a “clear conflict of interest” to have the outgoing first minister’s husband run the election for a new leader, but did not go as far as to explicitly say he should stand down.

It was a “row over the party’s membership numbers and transparency” that led him to resign on 18 March, said The Herald. Despite remaining “the largest and most dominant political force in Scotland”, according to the paper, the SNP’s membership slipped from 125,000 in 2018 to 72,186 current members who could vote in the leadership election.

It was a “point of pride” for Murrell that membership had increased under his tenure as chief executive, said the BBC. His press office also denied a report in the Sunday Mail that membership had dropped by 30,000, calling the report “not just flat wrong… wrong by about 30,000”.

After succumbing to pressure to make membership figures public, it was revealed the number had dropped by over 30,000 since they were last publicised as 104,000 in 2021, “vindicating the newspaper”, The Times said.

Murrell said the “responsibility for the SNP’s responses to media queries about our membership number lies with me as chief executive” and offered his immediate resignation, but said there was “no intent to mislead”.

Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell has been arrested in connection with an investigation into the funding and finances of the Scottish National Party, police have confirmed.

The former SNP chief executive is currently being questioned by detectives, and remains in custody.

Several locations are being searched as part of the investigation, and this morning the couple’s home was cordoned off by police officers.

Police Scotland has been “probing £600,000 raised by the SNP for independence campaigning after allegations on donations fraud”, The Independent said.

Allegations emerged in 2021 that money had been taken from a “ring-fenced” fund to fight a Scottish independence referendum, leading several senior SNP figures to resign.

Money had been going into the fund since March 2017 when Nicola Sturgeon, then Scotland’s first minister, demanded a second referendum on independence from the UK. To finance the coming campaign, the SNP launched an online drive to raise funds.

However, “it is alleged the money instead was used to help with the party’s day-to-day running costs”, said The Guardian.

The investigation is now “casting a threatening political cloud over the SNP at a crucial moment for the party and its mission of ending Scotland’s three-century-old union with England”, the Financial Times said last month.

Sturgeon has previously dismissed suggestions that the referendum funds were diverted to the party, telling broadcaster STV in 2021 that no money was missing. “We don’t hold separate accounts,” Sturgeon said. “We’re under no legal requirement to do that; our accounts are managed on a cash-flow basis.”

In a short statement concerning today’s arrest, police said: “A 58-year-old man has today, Wednesday, 5 April 2023, been arrested as a suspect in connection with the ongoing investigation into the funding and finances of the Scottish National Party.

“The man is in custody and is being questioned by Police Scotland detectives. Officers are also carrying out searches at a number of addresses as part of the investigation.

“A report will be sent to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. As the investigation is ongoing we are unable to comment further.”

The newly elected leader of the Scottish National Party faces a huge challenge to reunite his party and see off the growing threat posed by Labour north of the border.

Humza Yousaf narrowly beat Kate Forbes in the race to replace Nicola Sturgeon, following a bitter contest that revealed not only a party in disarray but also divisions within the wider independence movement.

But “while the ‘SNP establishment’ will be cheering the result and breathing huge sighs of relief”, said The Express’s political editor David Maddox, the Labour Party “is the real winner” .

What did the papers say?

Former health secretary Yousaf secured victory as a continuity candidate who ran on his record in government. But that now presents a problem for his party, which has been in power in Scotland since 2007 and is already facing sliding poll numbers amid growing anger over worsening public services.

Scottish Labour peer George Foulkes told the Daily Mail that while Yousaf “will no doubt try and distance himself from Nicola Sturgeon’s failures”, the new boss “will have to answer for the SNP’s record at the election”.

“It is a very good result for Labour,” said former minister Foulkes, who added that the opposition had got “a lot of good ammunition” to use against Yousaf “from his own comrades”.

Pro-independence columnist Neil Mackay of Glasgow-based paper The Herald told Politico that Sturgeon had “clearly allowed all this toxin to fester, and now all the pus has burst all over the body politic of Scotland”.

Despite having been tipped for greatness and promoted by Sturgeon and her predecessor, Alex Salmond, the new first minister “has been a catastrophe in every ministerial job he has held”, said Maddox in The Express. From driving without insurance while he was transport minister and calling Scotland “too white” during his time as justice secretary, to overseeing a spike in drug-related deaths while heading the health department, Yousaf “embodies the ongoing failures of the SNP government in Scotland over 16 long years”.

But these failures “are finally catching up with them”, Maddox added.

Labour is being “inundated with applications from prospective candidates”, said the i news site’s Alan Roden. “Not so long ago it struggled to find people willing to stand.”

“The calculation for Labour is simple,” said The Times’s Steven Swinford. During Yousaf’s tenure as health secretary, NHS waiting lists in Scotland “soared to record levels”, a failure that the opposition “plans to weaponise before the next general election”. Labour SMPs believe Yousaf’s arrival as first minister will allow them “to ram home criticism of the SNP’s domestic record on health and crime”, according to Swinford.

The Telegraph’s Alan Cochrane also said that Yousaf is viewed by Labour as “easily the weakest of the candidates”.

But that does not necessarily mean the SNP will be easier to defeat at the next election, polling guru John Curtice warned. Curtice told the Financial Times that Yousaf was better placed to reunite the party than Forbes, whose conservative views might have resulted in further internal divisions.

What next?

Attention now turns to the next general election, which is widely expected to take place next autumn.

Sturgeon’s departure represented a “huge opportunity” for Starmer, who has made several trips to Scotland in recent weeks as his party seeks to rebuild the so-called tartan wall, said The Guardian's political editor Pippa Crerer. Yousaf “also neutralises the perennial Tory attack advert that depicts the Labour leader in the SNP’s pocket, as he lacks the profile of either of his predecessors”.

With Labour riding high in UK polls and comfortably in second place in Scotland, party strategists believe Starmer could pick up as many as 20 seats north of the border at the next election – possibly delivering him a working majority in Westminster while dealing a near-fatal blow to the SNP’s momentum.

But looking longer term, Curtice told the FT that nationalism in Scotland was “utterly structural – think Northern Ireland”. And some 90% of voters who favoured independence supported the SNP in the last Holyrood elections.

All the same, “SNP insiders acknowledge the threat Labour represents to them for the first time in a generation”, according to The Guardian's Crerer.

“There remain significant areas of difference – such as Brexit and migration – where they can set themselves apart,” she added. But Yousaf “does not have long to prevent his coalition of support from splintering”.

For years, the SNP was “admired, feared and envied” for its iron discipline, said Severin Carrell in The Guardian. But just a few weeks after Nicola Sturgeon’s shock resignation, a once “impregnable political edifice” looks close to collapse.

Consider the extraordinary events that led to the resignation last week of Peter Murrell, Sturgeon’s husband and, for 24 years, the SNP’s chief executive.

‘A dented capacity for winning elections’

A few weeks ago, the media reported that the SNP had been haemorrhaging members. The story was rubbished by the party’s press office, but when the candidates vying to succeed Sturgeon demanded to know exactly how many people were eligible to vote in the contest – amid concern about possible vote-rigging – the SNP had to admit that it now had around 72,000 members, far below the 104,000 it had been claiming.

The SNP’s head of communications, Murray Foote, resigned, but in so doing, he implied that he’d been lied to by his own colleagues. A day later, Murrell was advised to resign, to avoid a no-confidence vote. Murrell and Sturgeon had exerted a “vice-like grip” over their party and the “government machinery”, said Tom Harris in The Daily Telegraph.

Nothing happened without their say so; and Sturgeon’s power of patronage extended well beyond the SNP.

Yet none of the scandals that hit her administration – not even the police inquiry into the missing £600,000 that was crowdfunded to fight a second referendum – dented the SNP’s capacity for winning elections.

‘Sturgeon hegemony has crumbled’

Now, however, the Sturgeon hegemony has crumbled, and it’s all going to pot. The SNP has been revealed as “a rabble at war with itself”, said Neil Mackay in The Herald (Glasgow).

In this leadership contest, we’ve seen candidates trashing each other and the SNP’s entire record; “Stop the Steal-type claims countered by howls of ‘Trumpianism!’”; and threats of court intervention.

The SNP sells itself as a progressive party, yet one of the three candidates, Kate Forbes, is a social and fiscal conservative. On paper, she looks unelectable, said Stephen Bush in the FT, leaving the race clear for Humza Yousaf to win.

Although his ministerial record is ho-hum, he benefits from the support of the party establishment. Or there is Ash Regan, the slightly bolder choice. But this race is hard to call, because the SNP is such an odd beast.

It now looks like a conventional party of the centre-left, but it is not, because to support it, you still need to believe in only one thing – an independent Scotland. Beyond that, we don’t know much about what members think or want. Next week, we may start to find out.

Humza Yousaf is the first Scottish politician from an ethnic minority to become first minister after winning the race to replace Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader.

Following a “bitter contest”, said The Times, a majority of “senior figures in the SNP supported Yousaf, over Kate Forbes, the finance secretary, who finished second”. But it was a close-run thing, with Yousaf winning 48.2% of the vote in the first round and then 52.1% in the second, after outsider Ash Regan was eliminated.

Yousaf “couldn’t be anymore the SNP establishment choice if he tattooed ‘Nicola Sturgeon 4eva’ on his forehead”, said the Financial Times’s Stephen Bush. So the new leader should have a “relatively easy time putting together a cabinet and bringing the party back together in parliament”, said BBC Scotland political correspondent Philip Sim.

But “it is inescapable that Yousaf’s margin of victory was razor-thin” and “a big, big chunk of the SNP voted for candidates promising change”, Sim added.

Who is Humza Yousaf?

Born in 1985 in Glasgow, Yousaf, whose grandfather emigrated from Pakistan in the 1960s, was privately educated at Hutchesons’ Grammar School before attending Glasgow University, where he studied politics and was elected president of the Glasgow University Muslim Students Association.

On his own website, Yousaf claims he never dreamed of becoming a politician. “Although I studied Politics at Glasgow University, I always thought I would do political research or some other work that involved being in the background – where I was always most comfortable,” he wrote. But in an interview with The Times last year, Yousaf said: “As an angry 16-year-old Muslim growing up in the West in the aftermath of 9/11, with all of the Islamophobia that ensued after that, I wanted to change the world, and change attitudes. Politics has given me a platform and a voice to do that.”

Involved in nationalist politics from a young age, after leaving university he worked as parliamentary assistant for several prominent MSPs, including then first minister Alex Salmond and then deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon.

In 2011 he was elected to the Scottish Parliament for the Glasgow region, taking his oath in both English and Urdu. Appointed minister for External Affairs and International Development just a year later, he was elevated to justice secretary in 2018, the first non-white cabinet minister in the Scottish government, and finally becoming health secretary in 2021.

What kind of politician is he?

At just 37 years old he may be from a younger generation than Sturgeon, but politically Yousaf “is evidently the SNP establishment’s candidate”, said Alex Massie in The Times.

Announcing his candidacy in Clydebank, where his grandfather worked in a sewing machine factory, he spoke about the importance of family and promised to “reach across the divides” and ‘heal divisions” within the SNP and the country.

He took swipes at Brexit and the UK’s immigration policy and vowed to maintain the SNP’s coalition with the Scottish Greens. On the contentious issue of gender recognition reform, which has seen rare divisions emerge in the SNP, “there is no indication he would take a different tack”, said the Independent.

He is very much “within the SNP’s ideological mainstream (socially progressive and gradualist on the constitution)”, said The Spectator, and while he may have spent his entire career at Holyrood, the father of two “has a carefully crafted public image as an Irn-Bru-swigging, Celtic-supporting, Urdu-speaking Glaswegian”.

He has also faced hostility from sections of the public, and “continues to engender a considerable amount of antipathy on social media, where much of [the] criticism for his stewardship of the NHS feels personal”, said political magazine Holyrood.

Following the furore over Forbes’ revelation that she wouldn’t have supported the legalisation of same-sex marriage, he made clear his own stance on the issue on LBC’s Tonight with Andrew Marr.

“I’m a supporter of equal marriage … I’m a Muslim. I’m somebody who’s proud of my faith … But what I don’t do is, I don’t use my faith as a basis of legislation”, he said, although The National noted he actually missed the landmark vote back in 2014.

On the most important issue for the SNP – Scottish sovereignty – he has said he has a full plan for achieving another independence referendum but, in a break from Sturgeon, said he did not believe ade-facto referendum via a snap Holyrood election was the solution.

In an interview with the Daily Record, he said he wants to “grow support” for independence before deciding on the exact mechanism for another constitutional vote.

How will he go down with voters in Scotland?

“One of the SNP’s most senior and high-profile ministers”, according to the Independent, “he will hope to tap into the same base of activist support as the First Minister, particularly in Glasgow – which they both represent at Holyrood”.

But “the question now will be the extent to which the ‘continuity candidate’ seeks to differentiate himself from his predecessor’s agenda”, said BBC Scotland’s Sim.

Yousaf “needs to turn around his broader appeal if he is to drive the SNP’s election-winning machine forward”, said Sky News. “If he fails to do this, he could be a lame duck first minister,” the broadcaster added.

In Sturgeon, the SNP had perhaps Britain’s best political operator and communicator. She leaves massive shoes to fill, but “being the continuity candidate feels like a mistake. How can Sturgeonism without Nicola be better than Sturgeonism with her? By definition, leadership elections are moments of change but Yousaf’s initial pitch to the party is timid, dull, and lacking strategic insight,” said Massie.

Furthermore, while he may have the support of the SNP hierarchy and Sturgeon herself, it is yet to be seen whether he will cut through with the Scottish public, as “Yousaf’s estimation of his own abilities is not always matched by other people’s appraisal”, Massie concluded.

Kate Forbes could become Scotland’s youngest ever first minister after emerging as the frontrunner in the race to replace Nicola Sturgeon.

After more than eight years as head of the Scottish government, the SNP leader shocked the UK by announcing she is to step down. Sturgeon will stay in office until her successor is elected and among those tipped to replace her are Deputy First Minister John Swinney and Health Secretary Humza Yousaf.

But, according to polling taken by The Sunday Times last week, 32-year-old Kate Forbes is currently the narrow frontrunner for the job.

Sturgeon herself has “privately intimated” that Forbes, currently her finance secretary, is “the most talented of her potential successors”, said The Times. A “strong media performer” who is “widely admired for her grasp of complex issues”, she could soon become “Scotland’s Jacinda Ardern”, said The Independent.

Who is Kate Forbes?

Born in Dingwall in the Highlands to parents who were missionaries, Forbes “spent part of her childhood in India” but when in Scotland studied at a Gaelic school “where she became fluent in the language”, said The National.

She went on to study history at the University of Cambridge before completing an MSc in diaspora and migration history at the University of Edinburgh. She then studied to be an accountant, later working for Barclays.

In 2016, Forbes became the MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, having worked for the constituency’s former MSP, Dave Thompson. In 2018 she was appointed minister of public finance.

Rising political star

“A rising star from the moment she entered parliament”, Forbes’s political career was accelerated in 2020 when Finance Secretary Derek Mackay resigned after it was revealed he had been sending inappropriate text messages to a teenage boy, said The Times.

Although just 29, Forbes was seen as the “obvious, and perhaps only, plausible successor” and had to present the Scottish budget at Holyrood – at just an hour’s notice – on the day Mackay stood down.

It made her the first woman to deliver the budget, as well as one of the youngest people to have ever held the cabinet position. The move firmly “cemented her status as a rising star from the SNP’s post-Sturgeon-and-Salmond generation”, said Politico. And in the three years since her appointment as finance secretary, her “handling of the tricky economy brief has earned her admirers”.

Religious beliefs and social conservatism

Forbes is one of the SNP’s “most socially conservative politicians”, said The National. She is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, “whose views on gay rights and trans people may cause concern among SNP members and fellow politicians”, said the paper. A devout Christian, she has previously said that “politics will pass” while her faith will remain part of her life forever, noted The Telegraph.

She is also believed to hold differing views to Sturgeon on “a key culture wars issue”, said Politico – namely the Scottish government’s bid to change gender recognition laws. While it was this issue that landed Sturgeon in hot water over the final weeks of her premiership, Forbes’s views could still pose difficulties for her in an upcoming leadership contest.

While Forbes “never publicly voted or spoke” against Scotland’s gender reforms, she was one of a small number of SNP politicians who signed a letter expressing their concerns over the legislation in 2019, and “has avoided offering full-throated backing to the plans”.

Is Forbes preparing a leadership bid?

In political circles, Forbes’s appeal as a potential successor to Sturgeon was “enhanced by her lack of ambition – she was all the more appealing for being seemingly unavailable”, said The Times. The paper noted that the “received wisdom” among Scottish politicians was that she “harboured no leadership ambitions”.

But sources speaking shortly before Sturgeon announced her resignation earlier this week say Forbes is reconsidering her political future and may be contemplating a leadership bid. They say she is “refreshed and ready for the challenges ahead” as she prepares to return from maternity leave after having her first child last August.

The search for a new first minister of Scotland is underway after Nicola Sturgeon decided to stand down.

The SNP leader, who made the surprise announcement after more than eight years in the job, plans to remain in office until her successor is elected.

As speculation begins about the runners and riders for the role, questions are also being asked about the impact Sturgeon’s impending departure will have on her party – with one SNP MP telling Politico they doubted whether the party itself will survive.

What did the papers say?

The surprise departure is “seen as a game changer” for Labour as the party “sets its sights on the next general election”, said the Mirror. Party insiders hope “the end of her nine years leading the Scottish National Party will kick-start Labour’s revival north of the border”.

The mood around Anas Sarwar, the Labour leader in Scotland, is “buoyant”, wrote The New Statesman’s deputy political editor, Rachel Wearmouth, because Labour MSPs believe Sarwar is “well placed to build a coalition of soft independence voters and unionists”.

A Labour source told Wearmouth that “it’s slowly dawning on members of Scottish National Party that they’re in a political cul de sac” because “they’ve had decades to keep a sustained majority for independence in Scotland” and “they’ve blown it”.

If the new leader “fails to create the strength of feeling” generated by Sturgeon and her predecessor Alex Salmond then the SNP’s “grip on Scottish politics might start to loosen, to the benefit of unionists and the Labour Party”, said Yahoo News.

Westminster Tories have also predicted the downfall of Sturgeon’s party, reported The Times. Her resignation shows that the SNP are “played out”, said Neil O’Brien, a health minister.

In the face of these developments, some are posing existential questions about the nationalist party. Asked if the party could survive without her, an SNP MP described as “not a dyed-in-the-wool Sturgeon backer” told Politico: “I doubt it.”

However, wrote professor of politics and polling expert John Curtice in The Scotsman, the last 15 months have “illustrated how relatively difficult it remains for the [Labour] party to win over nationalist supporters”. Labour have failed so far to persuade Yes voters to join their “enterprise” of gaining more powers for Holyrood and a better relationship with Westminster.

“If I were in Labour’s shoes, I would be a little wary of being too cock-a-hoop about it,” Nicola McEwan, professor of territorial politics at the University of Edinburgh, told Politico’s London Playbook. “The SNP is a formidable electoral machine and they haven’t got to where they’ve got to purely on the back of Nicola Sturgeon. It’s much more than that.”

A small snap poll for Find Out Now overnight found that 16% of respondents were less likely to vote SNP after Sturgeon’s resignation – with 9% saying they are now more likely to do so.

What next?

The SNP’s national executive will meet to decide the timetable for a leadership race with the winner automatically becoming Scotland’s next first minister.

The party will also now decide how much of Sturgeon’s vision it wants to retain. Her plans to change the law on gender self-identification are “now set to be ditched” by the party, said The Telegraph.

A special SNP conference on independence due to take place next month could be postponed, the Daily Record reported. Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, said: “I think it’s sensible that we do hit the pause button on that conference and allow the new leader the opportunity to set out their vision.”

Prior to Sturgeon’s resignation, The Times’s Kenny Farquharson predicted that the planned conference would be a “watershed moment for Scottish nationalism”, and a test of whether the SNP is a “mainstream party with a serious plan for independence or a rabble looking for a rammy”.

He predicted a “tonsil-jangling roar” as rival party members thrash out their differences and Politico agreed that a “bunfight” is on the cards.

As the party members discuss whether to opt for a de facto referendum, or a call for a reconvened Yes campaign, Scottish nationalism is “looking for a last ditch to die in”, added Farquharson. “On March 19 it may just find one.”

Nicola Sturgeon has called the UK’s decision to veto a landmark piece of legislation passed in Holyrood a “full-frontal attack on our democratically elected Scottish Parliament and its ability to make its own decisions on devolved matters”.

Under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack has effectively blocked the controversial Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill from becoming law.

The move is expected to be challenged legally by the SNP-led government in Scotland, but has already sparked a constitutional crisis that could have far-reaching implications for the future of the union.

How does Section 35 work?

According to the House of Commons Library, Section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 effectively sets out the Secretary of State for Scotland’s “veto” power for devolved legislation.

“The power is exercised through a negative statutory instrument presented to the UK Parliament, which would provide a legal instruction to the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament not to present a bill to the King for Royal Assent,” it said.

In this case it means that although the Scottish Parliament has passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, it would not become law.

A 2012 Memorandum of Understanding said Section 35 should be used only as “a matter of last resort,” where the Scottish Secretary has “reasonable grounds to believe” that a Holyrood bill would either be “incompatible with the UK’s international obligations or not in the interests of national defence” or “would modify the law on reserved matters in such a way as to have an ‘adverse effect’ on the operation of the law as it applies to reserved matters”.

Under the provision, the Scottish Secretary has 28 days from the date the bill was passed by Holyrood to invoke Section 35.

Addressing MPs on Tuesday ahead of Thursday’s deadline, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack said the bill would impede operation of the UK Equality Act, and have an adverse impact on single-sex clubs, associations and schools and protections such as equal pay.

What happens next?

A Section 35 order “has never been used before and to government critics it is an undemocratic intervention by London to override the decision of elected representatives in Edinburgh, effectively undermining devolution”, said The National, which claimed the “move will unleash a constitutional war between Sunak’s government and the Scottish administration”.

“That is the reason it has been described as the ‘nuclear option’,” said The Guardian, which suggested a “slightly less confrontational alternative would have been for the UK government, under a provision also contained within the Scotland Act, to refer the bill to the UK supreme court for justices to decide whether it related to reserved matters outside Holyrood’s legislative competence”.

In response to Jack’s decision to invoke Section 35, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason that he was making a “profound mistake” and accused him of launching a “direct attack on the institution of the Scottish Parliament”.

She said it would “inevitably end up in court” and that the Scottish government would “vigorously defend this legislation”.

How will the stand-off be resolved?

The Scottish government could choose to amend and reintroduce the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, although almost nobody thinks this is likely.

This leaves a challenge to the UK Government’s Section 35 order via judicial review. The Commons Library website stated that “such a challenge could argue that the Secretary of State for Scotland lacked ‘reasonable grounds’ for believing the Bill would have an adverse impact on how the law operates with respect to reserved matters. A court would either find that the order was made lawfully or unlawfully. If the latter, then it would cease to have any legal force or effect and the Presiding Officer would be able to present the Bill for Royal Assent.”

The problem, said Sebastian Milbank in The Critic, is that “when Nicola Sturgeon calls the veto a ‘full-frontal attack on our democratically elected Scottish Parliament and its ability to make its own decisions on devolved matters’, and when Stonewall says it will ‘unlock constitutional strife’, they are talking nonsense. Constitutionally our democratically elected UK parliament has the ultimate say in this matter; and indeed whether devolution continues at all.”

Yet even if the legal route to resolution ultimately decides in favour of the UK government, as legal experts suggest, it may be overtaken by the constitutional crisis the Section 35 order has provoked.

Rishi Sunak is set to provoke a “constitutional row” by blocking a new Scottish bill that makes it easier for people to change their gender, according to reports.

In December, the Scottish parliament at Holyrood passed the Gender Recognition Reform Act, which cuts the waiting time for legally changing gender, lowers the minimum age for applying to 16 and eliminates the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

But The Times reported that the prime minister has now received legal advice that the legislation, also known as the “self-ID” bill, “will have an adverse impact on UK-wide equality legislation, enabling ministers to block it”.

The paper said a final decision was expected within days on whether to prohibit Holyrood’s presiding officer from submitting the bill for royal assent – a move that would “be an unprecedented intervention in 25 years of devolution”, said Sky News.

What did the papers say?

Gender recognition is a devolved matter and the SNP-Green government in Scotland has insisted that the changes do not affect England and Wales. But UK ministers “fear it may lead to gender tourism”, The Times reported, and “allow biologically male Scottish inmates in English jails to demand to be put in women’s prisons”.

Concerns are also said to have been raised about people who change gender in Scotland having a different legal sex in England and Wales. Some opponents point out that “IT infrastructure used to administer benefits would have to be overhauled”, said the paper, and that “organisations offering single-sex spaces for women could be forced to adopt differing policies depending where they are in the UK”.

A senior government figure told the Financial Times that “there isn’t much disagreement that legally we have to act”.

In a foreword to a new report by the Policy Exchange think tank, the former advocate general for Scotland, Richard Keen, said: “It would not only be impractical but constitutionally improper for the UK government to permit a devolved legislature to enact a provision that had a material impact upon the operation of the law throughout the United Kingdom.”

Citing such concerns, Sunak last month insisted it would be “completely reasonable” for the UK government to consider blocking the gender reforms.

What next?

Section 35 of the Scotland Act allows ministers an effective veto on Scottish law, by preventing the presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament sending the bill to the King for royal assent. This has to happen within 28 days of the bill passing into law, which would give Sunak until Wednesday to act.

While technically legal, blocking the gender bill would be the “nuclear option”, said The Spectator’s new political editor Katy Balls. Invoking a Section 35 order for the first time ever “would lead to a clash both on devolution and the trans debate – with women’s rights campaigners warning that the proposed legislation could put women and girls’ safety at risk”.

With the SNP already accusing Westminster of “denying democracy” by vetoing a second referendum on Scottish independence, said HuffPost UK, “this would be the political equivalent of throwing a match into a box of fireworks”.

The Scottish government said any attempt to undermine the democratic will of the Scottish Parliament will be “vigorously contested”. A constitutional expert predicted that the row would end up in the Supreme Court.

“Using such a radical mechanism as a veto power does rather play into the SNP narrative that Westminster is denying democracy, which seems to me to be politically risky,” the unnamed expert told the news site. “As we approach the 25th anniversary of devolution, it is a big moment.”

The Financial Times reported that in a bid to “appease equalities campaigners”, Sunak intends to bring forward “long-delayed UK legislation to ban conversion therapy, including for transgender people”.

But in a further headache for the prime minister, LGBTQ+ campaigners have accused his government of instigating a “trans travel ban”, after Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch last week announced plans to review the list of countries and territories whose process for changing gender on legal documents is recognised by the UK.

Campaign group Stonewall warned that the government was sending “a message” that trans people are viewed “as a threat to be contained, not citizens to be respected”.

Nicola Sturgeon has vowed to “find another democratic, lawful and constitutional means by which the Scottish people can express their will” on independence, after plans to hold a second referendum were blocked.

The UK Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish parliament cannot stage an indyRef2 without Westminster’s consent, dashing the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) leader’s hopes of holding a vote next October on whether Scotland should break away from the UK.

Speaking hours after the court’s ruling was delivered, Sturgeon said that her party would instead approach the next general election as a “de facto referendum”.

But which way Scottish voters will swing remains unclear. Polling shows that public opinion has remained fairly evenly split since the 2014 referendum, as arguments about the pros and cons of independence rage on.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?

• Supermarkets across the UK are rationing eggs as the country is hit by its worst ever outbreak of avian flu
• Germany’s national football team took part in a silent protest ahead of their first match at the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar
• The only known letter to Marilyn Monroe from her estranged father is going up for auction
• A legal appeal against the removal of Shamima Begum’s UK citizenship began
• And a British angler made headlines by hooking a monster goldfish weighing almost 30kg (4st 10lb).

The Scottish National Party (SNP) will approach the next UK general election on the basis of it being a “de facto referendum” on Scottish independence.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said that while an actual referendum would be the “best way” to achieve independence, “we must, and we will, find another democratic lawful and constitutional means by which the Scottish people can express their will”. “In my view that can only be an election,” she added.

The first minister was speaking after the UK Supreme Court ruled the Scottish Parliament could not legislate for a second independence referendum – the so-called IndyRef2 – without agreement from the UK government.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Rishi Sunak was challenged by the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford to allow a new referendum with Blackford telling him the Scottish people voted last year for a government with a mandate for a referendum. He added that blocking a referendum meant “the very idea that the United Kingdom is a voluntary union of nations is dead and buried”.

In response, Sunak said: “The people of Scotland want us to be working on fixing the major challenges that we collectively face, whether that is the economy, supporting the NHS or indeed supporting Ukraine.”

Looking ahead, Sturgeon said it was now “necessary to agree the precise detail of the proposition we intend to put before the country” and that her party will hold a special conference in the new year to “discuss and agree the detail of a proposed de facto referendum”.

But can a “de facto referendum” really bring about Scottish independence?

What did the papers say?

In her speech today, Sturgeon “spelt out what would define a ‘win’ in her books” at the next election, tweeted The Telegraph’s political editor Ben Riley-Smith, which was a “‘majority’ of Scottish votes, rather than winning a majority of seats”.

It is “an extremely high bar in an election where any number of other issues could be at play”, said BBC Scotland’s political editor Glenn Campbell.

“Clearing it is unlikely to get easier if Labour continue to be seen as serious challengers to the Conservatives in the battle for No. 10 and an alternative route to political change,” Campbell added.

James Mitchell, professor of public policy at Edinburgh University, agreed, telling The Times this strategy may have boxed the SNP leader into a corner. A recent Survation poll suggested that if the next election were a de facto referendum, 44% of Scots would vote for the SNP. Mitchell asked “If the SNP fights the next election solely on independence and fails to get 50% of the vote, what next? Does that put the issue back for a generation or are they going to fight on that issue at the next election after that?”

Indeed, if the SNP falls short, the UK government may say that the “nationalists had their referendum and have lost it”, at which point "it is game over for Nicola Sturgeon", said The Spectator’s Alan Massie.

Because of this, Sturgeon could look to include “the pro-independence Scottish Greens share of the vote under her definition”, said Riley-Smith, giving her a better chance of reaching the 50% mark.

In any case, the hope for the Unionists is that this ruling “paves the way for Scotland’s political landscape to be transformed, that real issues like health, education and the economy will start being given the same level of priority and urgency that the nationalists have given to flags in the last ten years”, said Tom Harris in The Telegraph. “That may be overly optimistic. But there can be little doubt that the court’s decision today is a crucial milestone in Scotland’s history,” he added.

What next?

At the heart of the current impasse lies “a new fissure in the British constitutional set-up – the fact that the Scottish Parliament and UK Parliament’s relationship to each other is developing, changing and much more contested than was envisioned when the devolution settlement was established in 1998��, tweeted Global broadcaster Lewis Goodall.

“The fact the Supreme Court was even ruling today was (to some extent) testament to that fact,” he added.

Even if there is not an independence referendum next year, many commentators believe it is a question of when, not if, for IndyRef2. “Is it sustainable for Westminster to ignore the SNP’s run of election wins where they put independence front and centre? What is the route to ending the debate?” said Sky News’s Connor Gillies.

“Almost every domestic issue in Scotland is seen through the prism of the constitution,” he added. “Might this be the moment Prime Minister Rishi Sunak realises this isn’t going away and he agrees to enter talks about settling the issue once and for all?”

However, the “consent which matters is not in Downing Street but, rather, in Scotland itself”, said The Spectator’s Massie. “If it were clear that a significant majority of Scottish voters thirsted for a referendum it would be impossible to deny that desire”, he wrote. “This is not where we are at present,” Massie added.

Indeed “as has essentially been the case since the wake of the 2021 elections, this is now in the court that really matters – Scottish public opinion, and how much right now they care”, said Goodall.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is the latest British politician to be described as “divisive” after she spoke of a migrant “invasion” of Britain.

Most Tory MPs “loved it”, said Sky News. “She spoke for the nation in saying we need to control this problem,” said Sir John Redwood, a fervent Brexiteer.

There was support in the media, too, with Sam Ashworth-Hayes arguing in The Spectator that Braverman’s critics “ignore an uncomfortable truth” that her statement is “essentially correct”. The Sun’s political editor Harry Cole agreed, telling LBC: “Yes it was divisive, yes it was punchy, yes it was controversial but she was saying what lots of people are thinking.”

However, said Braverman’s opposite number for Labour, Yvette Cooper, “no home secretary who was serious about public safety or national security would use highly inflammatory language on the day after a dangerous petrol bomb attack on a Dover initial processing centre”.

Even some Tory ministers have distanced themselves from Braverman. Graham Stuart, a Foreign Office minister until September, said that “unfortunate language” had been used, and Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick told BBC Radio 4's Today: “It’s not a phrase I’ve used.”

Braverman is something of a new breed of UK politicians that has emerged in the wake of Brexit. The vote to leave or remain in the EU “scrambled partisan affiliations and created new, polarised political identities around one dominant issue”, Matthias Matthijs, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Vox.

The Week takes a look at some of the other politicians who have divided public opinion since June 2016.

Nigel Farage

Named “Briton of the Year” by The Times in 2014, Farage is credited by many as the man behind Brexit. A “man of the people”, said Sky News in a 2015 profile, who understood public opinion, Farage is also seen as the man responsible for the uncertain state of the country following the UK’s exit from the European Union.

He “has been (and remains) one of the most divisive figures in British politics of the post-war period”, wrote Dr Andrew Roe-Crines for UK in a Changing Europe. Farage is a “hero to many, and a villain to many others”, and “very few would claim to have a neutral opinion” of him.

Jeremy Corbyn

To his admirers, the former Labour leader was a beacon of hope for progressive, left-wing and compassionate policies. To his detractors, he was an extremist, whose plans made Labour unelectable and who failed to sufficiently challenge anti-Semitism in his party.

“If there’s one thing everyone agrees on when it comes to Jeremy Corbyn,” said The Guardian, “it is that he is a divisive figure.” His legacy within the party is seen in the reign of his successor, which has taken the party in a very different direction.

Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer took over as leader of the Labour Party in the wake of the 2019 general election defeat and has since courted controversy by suspending his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, expelling members on the left of the party and facing accusations of pulling his punches in his dealings with the Tory government.

However, his supporters have praised his approach as a sensible breath of fresh air. “Finally, there’s a grown-up in charge,” wrote Ian Dunt, for Politics.co.uk. With Labour taking opinion poll leads as high as 36 points, his supporters feel Starmer’s measured manner has been vindicated.

Nicola Sturgeon

The Scottish nationalist was described by a political opponent as “the most divisive politician since Margaret Thatcher”, noted The Scotsman. Her tireless quest for a second independence referendum is as loathed by her opponents as it is cheered by her supporters.

Last month, Sturgeon was accused of “divisive rhetoric”, said the BBC, when, asked if she would prefer a Labour or Tory government, she said: “I detest the Tories and everything they stand for so it’s not difficult to answer that question.”

Boris Johnson

Fans of the former prime minister were charmed by his bumbling style and say his reign in Downing Street was marked by him “getting Brexit done”, overseeing the speedy roll-out of Covid vaccines and backing Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

However, Johnson’s critics argue his time as PM was symbolised by rule-breaking parties and by the UK having one of the highest Covid death rates in Europe. There were also “accusations of sleaze and cronyism”, said the BBC.

Nicola Sturgeon is closing this year’s SNP conference amid fresh vows to deliver an IndyRef2, but pundits question whether the party is any closer to realising that dream after 15 years in power.

The Scottish National Party is undoubtedly “the dominant political force in Scotland”, said Holyrood. Sturgeon is the longest-serving first minister in the history of devolution, after the party secured a third successive term with a record vote share at the last Scottish election.

But “it is also a party under fire over its record in government on ferries, education and health, and one that is no longer seen as squeaky-clean, following scandals involving a number of high-profile figures at Holyrood, Westminster and at council level”, said the political magazine.

Reporting from the conference in Aberdeen, BBC Scotland political correspondent Philip Sim said that while “there was “total belief” in Sturgeon as leader, “in all honesty, this doesn’t feel like the gathering of a party that’s a year away from a referendum”.

What the papers say?

The SNP retains “what many believe is an unassailable position of dominance after the local elections of May 2022”, wrote left-wing academic Gregor Gall, a visiting scholar at Glasgow University’s School of Law, in an article on The Conversation. But “the cracks are starting to appear in the notion that Scotland is a de facto ‘one party state’ under the SNP”.

“The announcement of the intention to hold a further referendum on independence in October 2023 is likely to crystallise these tensions further,” he added.

Chris Deerin argued in The New Statesman that despite the “ideological smoothness of the handover of power” from former SNP leader Alex Salmond to Sturgeon in 2014, “the landscape of big, bold projects is depressingly sparse”, amid “a mysterious absence of strategic planning” and almost no cross-party collaboration.

Alex Massie in The Times suggested that the SNP’s “greatest achievement has been to make itself Scotland’s natural party of government”.

“The detail of success or failure in individual policy areas is less significant than the sense there is no plausible alternative to nationalist hegemony,” Massie continued. Yet “the national question overshadows everything else in Scotland these days, fostering the impression of a country in a state of some kind of suspended animation, being neither quite one thing nor the other. An unsettled Scotland, and a fractious one at that.”

SNP activists continue to insist that IndyRef2 will take place next October. “This is the most desperate of straws,” said Alan Cochrane in The Telegraph, “but given the wreckage of Sturgeon’s record it seems to be the only thing that keeps them going.”

Pointing to recent polling that suggested support for independence is falling, he added: “It is clear that she is running out of time, both in the eyes of her party and the public, who are finally waking up to the dreadful legacy of SNP rule.”

What next?

In “very handy timing for a party desperate to rally the pro-indy troops”, said Politico’s London Playbook, the UK Supreme Court will hear arguments this week on whether Holyrood has the power to call a second referendum even without the consent of Liz Truss’s government.

Sturgeon told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg yesterday that she was “confident” an October 2023 referendum “can happen”. The first minister said former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling, who campaigned against independent in 2014, had told the Scottish people that independence “would threaten our membership” of the EU, “imperil people’s pensions” and “cause a currency crisis”.

But “look at where we are right now”, Sturgeon continued. “Out of the European Union, pensions within hours of falling through, and the currency plunging. These are the consequences that people are paying the price of right now. And these all flow for Scotland from not being an independent country.”

Politico predicted that Scottish voters will “hear plenty more along those lines if the Truss growth plan doesn’t come good (or, let’s be honest, even if it does)”.

However, The Sunday Times argued that changing political fortunes south of the border could have a negative impact on the SNP. “There is growing concern in nationalist ranks that a resurgent Labour, with Sir Keir Starmer now more popular in Scotland than Sturgeon, could leave the SNP even further from its goal,” the paper reported.

With both Starmer and the Conservatives ruling out a second referendum in the foreseeable future, Sturgeon has warned that if the courts throw out the Scottish government’s case, her party will fight the next general election as a “de-facto referendum” in a bid to force negotations.

But “will a politician who has built her reputation on being sensible and measured really go for the nuclear option and use a general election to force change?” asked Rachel Wearmouth in The New Statesman.

“Or will Sturgeon decide she has taken the movement for independence as far as she can? Her address today will be pored over for signs on how she views the future.”

Traditionally, it is in August that Edinburgh “casts off its staid reputation” and shows itself off to the world as a “vibrant, cosmopolitan, cultural centre”, said The Daily Telegraph. But this year, the hundreds of thousands of people who flocked to the city for the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe met a sight described by some as nothing short of apocalyptic. Owing to a strike by refuse workers, mounds of rubbish bags lay piled up on the streets; noxious slime oozed onto pavements from overflowing public bins; and a foul stench hung heavy in the air.

Initially, the SNP Government tried to pin the blame on Edinburgh’s Labour-run council, said The Times, but that strategy unravelled when workers in a string of other local authorities walked out too. Nor is there yet an end in sight. This week, unions rejected an offer of a 5% pay rise, plus a one-off payment for lower earners, saying it would do too little to help the half of Scottish council workers who are paid less than £25,000pa.

Scotland is in the midst of a summer of discontent, said Tom Harris in the Daily Mail: next week, schools and nurseries will close for three days as a result of strikes by cleaners and other support staff. And though Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP administration has now offered extra funding to help settle the disputes, critics blame it for slashing local authority budgets in the first place, leaving them ill-prepared for the cost-of-living crisis.

This is yet another setback, to add to the long list the SNP has presided over. It suits Sturgeon to blame Westminster; but the country’s real problem is that it is governed by people who’ve no real interest in the day-to-day grind of government. They haven’t joined the SNP to raise school standards, or cut NHS waiting lists. They have only one real goal: the creation of an independent Scotland.

You might expect the escalating strikes to pose a threat to Sturgeon’s grip on power, said Lukanyo Mnyanda in the FT. But the divisive issue of independence remains very potent in Scotland, and while that debate rages, other matters “tend to take a backseat”. Her Government has survived a barrage of questions about its record, after 15 years in power, so it’s unlikely that the rubbish on the streets will prove a tipping point.

Scotland’s longest serving first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has resigned after eight and a half years in the role.

Announcing what BBC Scotland’s Philip Sim called “a bombshell which will send shockwaves through Scottish politics”, Sturgeon told a hastily arranged press conference: “My decision comes from a place of duty and of love.

“Essentially I’ve been trying to answer two questions. Is carrying on right for me? And, more importantly, is me carrying on right for the country, for my party and for the independence cause I have devoted my life to? I’ve reached the difficult conclusion that it’s not.”

Described as “the most formidable British politician of the last 15 years” by The Times’s David Aaronovitch, Sturgeon “remains one of the most popular figures in the drive to separate Scotland from the United Kingdom”, said Politico.

But she has had a rocky start to 2023 with troubles recently over her backing for gender law reform, the placement of Isla Bryson, a trans woman rapist, in a women’s prison and her failure to deliver a promised second referendum on independence.

Her decision remains a shock, though, “because her government stands at a pivotal moment” in the pursuit of independence, Sim added, with a special conference next month being held to decide how it should move the issue on. With “no clear successors waiting in the wings”, if Sturgeon isn’t running the independence campaign, “it’s not clear who will be placed to call the shots”, said Sim.

Indeed, “it’s hard to see how her departure can do anything but weaken the cause of independence in the short term”, said Aaronovitch.

Who is Nicola Sturgeon?

Born in Irvine, Ayrshire, in 1970 and educated at the nearby Dreghorn primary school and Greenwood Academy, Nicola Sturgeon went on to graduate from the University of Glasgow with a law degree.

Her parents were working-class – her father was an electrician and her mother a dental nurse. The family wasn’t political, Sturgeon told The Guardian in 2015, and she was an unremarkable child. “There was nothing in my childhood that said, ‘She’s going to be first minister of the country one day.’” Indeed, when she was younger, Sturgeon had considered becoming a children’s author.

Nevertheless, her commitment to Scottish independence runs deep, earning her the title of “the most dangerous woman in Britain”, according to the Daily Mail. She joined the Scottish National Party (SNP) at the age of 16 and has been campaigning ever since for Scotland to end its more than 300-year union with the rest of Britain.

She took over as SNP leader in November 2014 and was sworn in as first minister soon after. Her predecessor, Alex Salmond, had quit after the independence referendum two months previously, in which Scots voted to stay in the UK by 55.3% to 44.7%.

Sturgeon and Salmond had worked closely together at the heart of the first SNP administration at Holyrood, but their relationship later soured. The Scottish Government’s “botched handling” of harassment complaints against the former first minister triggered their falling out, The Herald said.

A “talented campaigner and confident communicator”, said The Times, the first minister “excelled at making life difficult for her opponents”. While she has ruled effectively unopposed in Scotland for eight years, even her detractors “don’t dispute that she was Scotland’s, if not the UK’s, champion campaigner”, said the Financial Times’s Lukanyo Mnyanda.

“No present-day party leader understood the significance of doorstep politics as early as she did,” wrote Ian Jack for The Guardian in a profile in 2015. “And no other party leader was so persistent in the face of such frequent defeat”.

From invincible to divisive

On the face of it, Sturgeon has been an electoral tour-de-force, guiding the SNP to wins in three general elections, two Holyrood ballots, two council contests and even a post-Brexit European Parliament poll. Even one SNP opponent admitted to Huff Post: “To be fair to Nicola, if I’d been first minister for 10 years and my party was still polling at 44%, I’d be feeling pretty invincible.”

But “her critics undeniably have a point”, one SNP source told The New Statesman. Until now, Sturgeon “has got away with blaming ‘Westminster Tory austerity’, but Scots are beginning to realise that austerity begins at home”, said The Spectator’s Iain Macwhirter. “Mismanagement of the Scottish economy, and the underperfoming tax base, cannot be blamed on Westminster,” he wrote.

Where “once her judgement was impeccable”, added The Times, now “she is making bad calls that undermine her authority and may be damaging her mission to win independence”.

It was this point that Salmond, her former mentor, picked up on, accusing her of having “thrown away” years of work building public support for independence with “self-indulgent nonsense” on reforming gender laws.

Sturgeon “made two important statements” in her leaving speech, said ITV’s political editor Robert Peston. That “she no longer has enough energy for the all-consuming fight, and she recognises she has perhaps become too divisive a figure,” he tweeted.

Independence missteps

After Sturgeon announced the SNP would fight the next general election as a “de facto” referendum on independence, polling of more than 2,100 people by Lord Ashcroft found a large majority – including many sceptical SNP supporters – were not behind that move.

Writing in Holyrood magazine, Ashcroft said his polling showed that Sturgeon wasn’t “immune to the laws of political gravity”. He concluded: “Could it be that a party claiming to be uniquely in tune with Scottish people is losing touch?”

Brian Taylor, a former BBC Scotland political editor, told BBC Radio 5 Live: “I think [Sturgeon] is - to use a word Scots will know - I think she’s scunnered - a combination of tired, fed up, seen it all, done it all.” He added: “The strategy with the independence referendum is thwarted, it’s been thwarted by the UK supreme court, it’s been thwarted by the UK government. I think she’s just had enough.”

Inevitably thoughts will turn to Sturgeon’s legacy, but that may only be defined by what happens next. “I believe I have led this country closer to independence, I believe we are in the final phase of that journey,” she said in her resignation speech. “I believe that my successor, whoever he or she may be, will lead Scotland to independence.”

But backing for independence has dropped from its recent 50-plus level: No is once again ahead (56 per cent to Yes’s 44 per cent), “close to the 55-45 result of the 2014 referendum”, said The New Statesman’s Deerin.

“If this is truly a turning point for Scottish democracy,” he added, then, “as Ernest Hemingway said of bankruptcy, it has happened gradually and suddenly”.

Politicians in Scotland have said “heart-breaking” new drug death statistics are a “badge of shame” for Nicola Sturgeon.

Although the number of people who died of drug misuse last year dropped by nine to 1,330, Scotland continues to have “by far the highest drug death rate recorded by any country in Europe,” said the BBC.

Deaths up among women

The new data, from National Records for Scotland, showed that of those who died, 65% were aged between 35 and 54 and 70% were men. Drug-related deaths among women increased by 8.5% to 397 – a record high.

Over the five years to 2021, Dundee city had the highest death rate (45.2 per 100,000 population), followed by Glasgow city (44.4) and Inverclyde (35.7).

‘Utterly shameful’

Opposition parties blame cuts to drug rehab and addiction programmes by the Scottish government.

Scottish Conservatives leader Douglas Ross said the SNP government must “accept their current approach isn’t working”. Scottish Labour's drug policy spokesperson, Claire Baker, said the “utterly shameful” new figures showed the government was not making sufficient progress.

In June, a report found that Scotland’s addiction services have failed to achieve key targets that were set to reduce drug deaths. Nearly 60% of services did not give addicts the option to start treatment the same day they turned up. Writing for The National in 2020, Martin Powell, head of partnerships at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, said that “just 40% those who need treatment are in it”.

Areport by Audit Scotland has urged ministers to provide more transparency about initiatives aimed at tackling the scourge of addiction in the country.

Root causes

Poverty has also been blamed. The new data showed that people in the most deprived areas were 15 times more likely to have died from drug use than those in the least deprived areas.

It is a familiar story: in 2019, Scottish Drugs Forum’s chief executive, David Liddell, declared that “poverty is the root of Scotland’s fatal drug overdose crisis”.

In a guest post for the Poverty Alliance, Liddell wrote that Scotland’s drug problem “has its roots in the harsh climate of 1980s deindustrialisation and the economic and social impact in the subsequent decades”. Addiction took hold because Scotland did not “chose a more interventionist approach by which the state created alternative employment and opportunity during these changes”, he argued.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has previously admitted that the number of deaths was “a national disgrace”. She acknowledged that her government had not done enough to tackle the problem.

Scotland’s drugs policy minister, Angela Constance, said the problem could be alleviated if the UK government stopped “criminalising some of the most marginalised and vulnerable individuals”.

Speaking to The Herald, Constance said the stats do not mean her “national mission” to tackle drugs deaths is having no meaningful impact. She called for the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act to be overhauled so that Scotland could legally open safe consumption rooms.

Nicola Sturgeon is limbering up for battle, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. The SNP leader launched her new bid for Scottish independence last week “with speeches, a 72-page economic dossier and the promise of a referendum next year”.

It will be an uphill struggle. Under devolution rules, the UK Government needs to agree to the vote, and “it won’t”: it argues that the Scots roundly rejected independence in 2014. The SNP could, in theory, appeal to the Supreme Court. That’s “a long shot”, but say it works, and she gets her referendum, “what then?”

Polls show a slim majority for staying in the UK even now, after Brexit, an inflation crisis, and with a law-breaking old Etonian in No. 10. Barely a third want a poll next year. It would be different if the SNP had a decent record, after 15 years in power: in fact, it’s genuinely atrocious. Schools are in “decay”, drug deaths are the highest in Europe and public spending has reached 61% of GDP.

Sturgeon’s independence plan now involves rejoining the EU, which would create a hard border with England and “massive and permanent economic disruption”. Project Fear is back, said Joyce McMillan in The Scotsman. Note the “profoundly unattractive” mixture of threat, negativity and insult in unionist arguments.

By contrast, the SNP dossier puts a very positive case, examining ten “comparator countries” – including Denmark, Norway and Ireland – which all have higher GDP per capita and lower inequality than the UK. And really, the unionist Tories who “gave us Brexit” have a cheek lecturing Scotland about the dangers of creating “a fierce EU border between Berwick and Carlisle”. Besides, it all depends how such borders are handled: trade is “largely frictionless” across the EU frontier between Norway and Sweden, for example.

The anti-independence parties are “running scared” of Scottish democracy, said Paul Kavanagh in The National. The SNP has been the biggest party in Holyrood since 2007. The current SNP-Green coalition has a “legitimate” mandate to seek a vote. Westminster cannot veto that and still hold to the “traditional unionist understanding” of the UK as a “voluntary coalition of nations”.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, Sturgeon knows what she’s doing, said Brian Taylor in The Herald. She wants to refresh the case for an independent Scotland. A series of papers on issues such as currency, the EU, pensions and the welfare state will follow. The idea is to “show progress” to her more plaintive, querulous party members; and “pick a fight with the UK Government”.

The big question that the SNP and the Greens are posing is this: if other smaller nations can thrive, then “Why Not Scotland?” Those words are likely to become the campaign slogan. And while the path to “Indyref2” could well be a rocky one, the “studied disdain” of the Tories along the way could bolster the SNP politically. What we’ve seen so far is “just the prologue. Act One and more to follow.”

Scotland is on course to elect a pro-independence majority of MSPs next year, giving fresh hope to those hoping to secure a second independence referendum and ultimately break away from the UK.

Despite the ruling Scottish National Party being mired in controversy, pollsters Survation predicted the SNP would win 55 seats in the Scottish Parliament if the election were held today. Added to 10 seats for the Greens and one for Alba, parties that support independence would have a narrow majority of 66 MSPs out of 129 at Holyrood.

It appears to confirm that, just six months after the SNP's poor showing at the UK general election, "its fortunes are already reviving", said the Financial Times. Support for independence is at 54%, according to recent polling – "the highest level in four years".

Here are the arguments for and against an independent Scotland.

Pro: rejoin the European Union

In the 2016 Brexit referendum, 62% of Scottish voters called for the UK to remain in the European Union, compared to England’s 46.6% of Remain voters.

In the years since, "attitudes towards Brexit have become deeply intertwined with where people stand on Scotland's constitutional status", said the National Centre for Social Research.

Analysis of data from the Scottish Social Attitudes survey and the Scottish Centre for Social Research shows that "on most issues, voters are more likely to think that Scotland would be better off inside the EU but outside the UK, than inside the UK but outside the EU".

As an independent country, Scotland could make a bid to rejoin the EU as a member state once a separation agreement was settled with England. The country could then begin to negotiate its access agreement, looking to benefit from access to the EU single market, as well as the free movement of labour, goods, services and capital.

But "political support around the EU table" could pose a challenge, said Politico. Spain, for example, "has professed opposition to Scottish membership due to its possible implications for Catalonia", with concerns that other separatist movements across Europe could follow Scotland's lead.

Con: trading problems

"The rest of the UK is by far Scotland's biggest trading partner," said Economics Observatory, a relationship that could be put to the test if Scotland were to opt for independence. In 2021 – the most recent year for which figures are available – the UK accounted for 61% of Scottish exports.

Scotland's sales to the rest of the UK are worth more than three times exports to the EU, "demonstrating the strength and critical importance of the UK Internal Market", said Gov.uk.

This could become more complicated still if the country were to rejoin the EU, thereby "tearing Scotland out of the customs union and single market of the United Kingdom", said The Spectator. Analysis indicates that EU membership "would not offset Scotland's economic losses from increased border costs with the rest of the UK" should a hard trade border be imposed, said the Economics Observatory.

Pro: power over policy

"The loudest arguments made around Scottish independence focus on the issue of self-determination," said Politics.co.uk.

While it enjoys some autonomy under devolution, a fully independent Scottish government would have control over constitutional matters, health, energy, environmental policies, and immigration. It would also be able to dictate its defence, social security and foreign policies.

In its "Building a New Scotland" reports, the Scottish government has laid out its vision for an independent Scotland. It includes creating its own constitution, introducing a Scottish pound, setting up an independent Scottish central bank and reforming employment law.

Yet "many unionists believe that the nationalist proposition would not stand up to scrutiny from an inquiring electorate during a campaign", said the FT. Sam Taylor, of These Islands, a pro-union group, said that "independence as an abstract and distant concept is much more popular than painful details".

Con: debt and deficit dilemma

Economic policy and growth are "at the heart of debates about the effects of independence on Scotland's public finances", said the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS). While it remains in the union, Scotland's budget deficit "is subsumed within the wider UK budget deficit" but "under independence, that would change".

Scotland's net fiscal balance showed a deficit of £22.7 billion in 2023-24 – or 10.4% of GDP. By comparison, the deficit for the UK as a whole was 4.5% of GDP.

In August last year, Scottish Finance Secretary Shona Robison said the deficit was a "reflection of UK government choices" but Westminster's Scotland Office said the figures proved the "collective economic strength" of the UK.

The Scottish government's expenditure and revenue figures show that people in Scotland benefit from £2,417 more per head of additional spending than the UK average, as a result of the redistribution of wealth throughout the UK – known as the Barnett Formula.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves' "record funding settlement for Scotland has allowed the SNP to spray cash into higher benefit payments, the NHS and housing", boosting its standing among Scots, said the FT.

Pro: Vote left, get right

"In terms of political identity, Scotland has traditionally sat further left than England on the political spectrum," said Politics.co.uk.

Despite the large number of powers now held by the Scottish Parliament, the SNP has enjoyed electoral success over the past decades by emphasising the benefits of being free from Conservative governments in Westminster.

While the return of Labour should usher in a period of greater ideological alignment between Westminster and Holyrood, the rise of Reform UK will likely be utilised by progressive nationalists to warn voters that Scotland could one day come under the control of a far-right government led by Nigel Farage.

Con: position on world stage

At least in the short term, Scotland would lose its access to transnational organisations including the global trade division at the UN, the G7 and Nato, which is currently granted through its union with the rest of the UK. The country would need to apply for independent membership of these organisations.

Without representation at these organisations, Scotland could lose its ability to have its voice heard on global issues including climate change and international peacekeeping.

This has taken on a "renewed importance" as the global security environment "deteriorates" and Europe is ramping up defence spending, said The Herald.

The Scottish independence movement has long been "anti-nuclear" – both in terms of weapons and power – said The New Statesman, "yet these are areas that will be prominent in the national discussion as Europe rearms against the Russian threat in the face of US withdrawal".

In a "blow" to Scottish independence, the Scottish Daily Express reported new polling that found most Scots believe that they are more secure and have more influence as part of the UK, and also want to retain the nuclear deterrent.

Eoin McLaughlin and Seán Kenny of University College Cork on the economic lessons to be drawn from Ireland’s 1922 split from the UK

The UK local elections in May saw gains for nationalists in Scotland and Northern Ireland, raising the prospect of increased debates over the future make-up of the country. In Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is hoping to hold a second independence referendum in 2023.

The economic context may have deteriorated since 2014 due to Brexit and Covid, but two key issues remain pertinent: Scotland’s choice of currency and whether its public finances would be sustainable. On both subjects, there are some useful lessons that can be drawn from the last secession from the UK, namely that of Ireland in 1922.

Sturgeon has indicated that an independent Scotland would be open to “sharing” the UK pound for a while to help bring stability. Ireland took the same approach until 1928, when it launched its own currency, the punt, pegged one-for-one to the pound sterling, which made sense because Ireland was heavily integrated into the UK economy.

The peg was managed by a currency board and was comparatively stable for over 50 years. The price for Ireland was the loss of monetary policy, choosing to follow UK interest rates, set by the Bank of England, instead. This is in line with the so-called “policy trilemma” in economics that says that a country cannot maintain a fixed exchange rate, control over interest rates and free capital flows at the same time, but must choose two out of the three alternatives.

Had interest rates not been harmonised, foreign investors might have pulled their money out of Ireland for fear that the currency peg wouldn’t hold and they would lose out as a result. Such a withdrawal would only increase the chances of a currency collapse, potentially making necessary imports unaffordable (this is known as a balance of payments crisis). Indeed, this happened in 1955 when Ireland did not raise interest rates in line with the Bank of England, resulting in a sharp recession and increases in emigration.

Over the years, UK monetary policy was also a constraint on the Irish government’s budget. Although in theory it was free to decide how to tax and spend, the need to maintain the sterling peg prevented various Irish governments from deviating too far from the UK’s approach to borrowing.

An independent Scotland is likely to face similar constraints. In 2018, the Sustainable Growth Commission (SGC), an economic body set up by the Scottish government to come up with credible financial plans for independence, stipulated that a pegged Scottish currency would require significant fiscal discipline. It noted that the “6% to 7% fiscal deficit is not sustainable”. In 2022-23, Scotland’s deficit is projected to exceed 10%.

The punt abandoned its sterling peg in 1979. By that time, the Irish volume of trade with continental Europe had grown significantly, following its accession to the pre-EU European Economic Community in 1973. Sterling was in the midst of a major appreciation in value on the back of the discovery of North Sea oil, rising 55% between 1977 and 1981.

However, Irish fiscal policy now lacked its traditional disciplinary anchor. Ireland’s debt grew significantly after 1979 and began to look precarious until the government reined in its budget and introduced pro-growth policies, including devaluing the punt, in the second half of the 1980s.

Fiscal liabilities

Among the most challenging issues for any dissolving nation state is apportioning government debts. In 2014, in language remarkably similar to the Anglo-Irish Treaty a century before, the UK Treasury issued a communiqué stating that, “[an] independent Scotland would become responsible for a fair and proportionate share of the UK’s current liabilities”.

With Ireland, that wasn’t what transpired. It ended up being granted the largest debt relief in modern history, in return for accepting the status quo border with Northern Ireland. Scotland doesn’t have a comparable bargaining chip, though the British nuclear submarine base at Faslane near Glasgow is very contentious. Perhaps the Scottish government would be allowed to write off debts in exchange for abandoning its anti-nuclear stance and allowing the UK unfettered access to Faslane.

Having said that, the Irish civil war (1922-23) and the Northern Ireland troubles (1969-97) demonstrate that the people may still decide that sacrificing something of great political importance in exchange for a debt write-off may ultimately be a step too far.

Fiscal constraints

Scotland currently runs a slightly different income tax policy to the rest of the UK. It charges an extra percentage point of tax to those in its two higher income bands: 41% on earnings between £43,663 and £150,000 and 46% on earnings above £150,000. It also has slightly wider bands than the rest of the UK so that people pay these rates on more of their income.

Instead of extracting greater revenue from wealthier citizens, Ireland was compelled after independence to lower the income taxes of these people who had supported the British union to discourage them from taking their money out of the country. The government then had to raise revenues in other ways, such as via budget cuts and increased duties on alcohol and tobacco. This increased inequality by inflicting most of the pain on the (predominantly nationalist) working classes.

This was quite a shift for Ireland. In contrast to 19th century nationalist rhetoric, Ireland had received comparatively generous social spending in the final decades of the union. A significant share of the Irish economy had also benefited from free trade with Britain. Again, the same could be said of Scotland.

A final contentious issue is pension contributions. While the SGC said back in 2018 that they would be affordable, the nation has an elderly population. Would the state pension be compatible with a balanced Scottish budget? Ireland learned that tackling the pension issue can produce a disproportionately negative political response, when the electorate voted against the ruling Cumann na nGaedheal party in 1932 for “tampering with the old age pensioners”.

There is no doubt that Scotland, like Ireland in the early 20th century, could succeed as an independent state. Indeed, key strengths such as oil and gas, renewables, financial services and higher education suggest it would start off in a wealthier position.

But managing the transition won’t be straightforward. Ireland’s experience shows that the need for fiscal discipline may be politically costly and adjustment may not be shared equally. Those who are promised the most through independence may be the ones that find themselves having to do the bulk of the heavy lifting.

Eoin McLaughlin, senior lecturer in economics, University College Cork, and Seán Kenny, post-doctoral researcher in economics, University College Cork.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

1. Studying health inequalities has been my life’s work. What’s about to happen in the UK is unprecedented

Michael Marmot in The Guardian

On impending calamity

“Studying the relationship between social conditions and inequalities in health” has been “my life’s work”, says Michael Marmot in The Guardian. A decade of austerity “damaged public health and made health equity worse”, writes the director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, but “the cost of living crisis – and the chancellor’s failure to deal with it – is unprecedented” in terms of “its threats to the health and wellbeing of the nation”. Taking away even £10 a week from someone struggling to get by “can mean not just the choice between heating and eating but doing without both”, he warns, “and that will be bad both physically and psychologically”. Poverty is “literally a matter of life and death for those on the margins”. In the 2010s, “improvement in health in the UK slowed dramatically, inequalities increased, and health for the poorest people got worse”, he says. This was “all amplified by the pandemic”. Unless we deal with the “inability of people to meet their basic needs, by adequate income and services”, we are “in danger of inflicting a humanitarian calamity in one of the richest countries in the world”.

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2. As Ukraine braces for a second round, the West has a duty to step up

David Ignatius in the Washington Post

On a moral obligation

With the “second bloody round” of the war in Ukraine about to start, the West must “move quickly” to provide Kyiv with heavier weapons to resist a “savage” new Russian assault, says David Ignatius in The Washington Post. After the first round of the war produced a “decisive defeat for Russian invaders”, Moscow is now regrouping for a campaign to control a slice of Ukraine stretching from the Donbas in the east all the way to Odessa at the western edge of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, he adds. If this is successful it could lead Moscow to “partition the country”. Moving heavier weapons into Ukraine is “urgent” while Russian forces are still regrouping, he says, and “transport from Nato countries that ring Ukraine should be easier now, with most Russian forces gone from the north and west of the country”. It should be up to Ukrainians to decide what they are willing to concede, and how much risk and punishment they are willing to endure, he says. But if the Ukrainians are “determined to repel the invaders”, the US has a “moral duty” to do what it can to help them succeed.

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3. Nicola Sturgeon never has to pay a price for failure

Alex Massie in The Times

On unaccountability

When the “final reckoning” of Covid-19 is made, says Alex Massie in The Times, few of our political leaders are likely to emerge from the pandemic in credit. “All shall be blamed save one,” he predicts, “for the ordinary rules of accountability do not apply to Nicola Sturgeon.” He accepts that “it is true that, for much of the pandemic, she has proven a more assured communicator” than Boris Johnson. But the Scottish first minister’s “supposedly” assured handling of the pandemic “made no difference whatsoever” because “outcomes in Scotland have been broadly the same as outcomes in England”. He cites a study published in The Lancet that found England has endured a slightly greater rate of Covid deaths than Scotland, but notes that when measured in terms of excess mortality, England has “marginally outperformed Scotland”. Therefore, “Sturgeon’s decisions, her insistence on organising matters differently from England, had no measurable effect”. Not that Massie believes this will damage her brand. “Just as the Conservative Party has dominated English politics for decades, so there is no reason to suppose the SNP’s hegemony will end at any point in the foreseeable future.”

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4. The return of Jeremy Kyle to TV is a scary prospect in times of economic struggle

Kuba Shand-Baptiste on the i news site

On nasty narratives

It’s just under three years since The Jeremy Kyle Show was last on air, writes Kuba Shand-Baptiste on the i news site. But following an inquiry that exposed “dark practices” and the details of the tragic death of guest Steve Dymond, she finds it “absurd” that “in a few short weeks”, Kyle will be back on our screens hosting a show on Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV. How long, she wonders, before the “same dog-whistle rhetoric about the poor rears its head again – especially as the cost of living crisis worsens”. The Jeremy Kyle Show launched in 2005, “a time when the poor were increasingly being demonised for their reliance on the welfare state”. She remembers the “performative” rants of “privately-educated Kyle”, including when he told a guest struggling with cocaine addiction: “Go ahead mate. Get lost. Do one. Kill yourself.” It is “significant” that he will make his “big return as poverty increases and resources continue to dwindle”. “It’s time we all stopped accepting false narratives about working-class people.”

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5. A ‘no-fault’ divorce? Playing the blame game can fuel a marriage

Rowan Pelling in The Telegraph

On the joy of fault-finding

“I suppose I should be gladdened by the advent of no-fault divorces, which came into effect on Wednesday,” says Rowan Pelling in The Telegraph. But “the concept of being blameless in marriage feels disingenuous”. For Pelling, who has been married for 27 years, finding fault is “the one enthralling marital game that anyone with a wedding ring on their finger can play”. According to Pelling: “Everyone, absolutely everyone, is keeping score from day one – even if they don’t know it yet.” Many – if not most – marriages “break down into saints and transgressors, headteachers and juvenile delinquents, judges and criminals”, she says. “Passion should still have its due, in the shape of a meticulous hand-written litany of faults, spanning the entire marriage – a sign both parties cared enough to note them.”

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1. Sally Rooney has discovered that novelists are cursed

James Marriott in The Times

on literary criticism

“There’s a weird media alchemy that transforms a novelist into a ‘public intellectual’,” writes James Marriott in The Times. While some novelists “yearningly pursue cultural relevance” others “stumble into the role” and find their works “are doomed to be interpreted not as works of the imagination but as public statements, their every action scrutinised for its socio-political significance and evidence of moral rectitude”. Novelist Sally Rooney “embarked on this melancholy trajectory this week” after criticism of her decision to boycott an Israeli publishing house. It seems that “controversy is now unavoidable for a publicly celebrated novelist”, writes Marriott. “The danger now is that our novelists get no freedom at all and we cage them in with our bad-faith readings, hatred of context, excessive literalism and obsession with politics over art. After all, I want to read another Rooney novel,” he concludes.

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2. Anti-British, anti-Brexit Macron has turned France into a hostile state

Allister Heath in The Telegraph

on fraught relations

“Tragic doesn’t even begin to describe it,” writes Allister Heath in The Telegraph. “Relations between France and Britain, Europe’s two greatest nations, the country of my birth and the country of my home, are at a multi-generational low.” And the “real stumbling block to renewed post-EU friendship” is Emmanuel Macron himself, says Heath. He is “an arrogant, uninspiring president desperate not to end up a one termer like Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande”. With an election looming Macron hopes to “shore up his nationalistic credentials in a country that is shifting Right-wards culturally.” Our two nations are “desperately” in need of “reconciliation”, says Heath. “But only a fool would be optimistic.”

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3. The Guardian view on austerity: get ready for its return

The Guardian editorial

on the Budget

“In British politics, unquestionably the best salesman of his generation is Boris Johnson, who has made the electorate some unbelievable promises: get Brexit done, ‘level up’ the country, race to net zero,” writes The Guardian. “The result won him a landslide at the last general election and still-healthy poll ratings today.” But in two weeks, “his government will have to disclose its cash position”, continues the paper. “When Rishi Sunak reads out those figures in the budget and the three-year spending review” the “strange jubilation” that has hung over the party this autumn will “dissipate”. “Reality will bite and, the early forecasts indicate, it has sharp teeth.”

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4. Prince William is wrong: let Bezos go to space!

Tom Chivers on UnHerd

on indulgences

Jeff Bezos’ $7 billion space mission certainly feels “indulgent”, says Tom Chivers on UnHerd, “especially when you’re taking William Shatner to space for four minutes”. But Prince William’s assertion that we should concentrate on saving this planet first, is “wrong and silly”, according to Chivers. It is not an “either-or” situation. “You could say to Jeff Bezos that all the money he’s spent on Blue Origin could have been spent on developing green energy,” he writes. But “if he’d done that, the $7 billion he’s spent might have covered … a bit more than 20% of the cost of the Hinckley Point C nuclear power plant”. He continues: “Seven billion is a rounding error – less than a rounding error – in the effort to prevent climate change. Complaining that we’re wasting money on it is like worrying you’ll empty the sea with a teaspoon.”

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5. Nicola Sturgeon is right – democracy must prevail

Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times

on the union stalemate

“[Nicola] Sturgeon made two forceful points on tactics” in her recent interview with the Financial Times, writes Robert Shrimsley in the same paper. The first – and most important – was that “democracy must ultimately prevail: a nation consistently voting for parties demanding a new referendum cannot indefinitely be ignored”, he writes. While it “cannot be a given that her patience will be rewarded” we should be mindful that “the Union exists by consent and it cannot be maintained indefinitely by denying expression”. If the government insists on denying Scotland another referendum it would “undermine both democracy and the nature of the Union”. “While Sturgeon admitted she did not know how the stalemate would play out, she maintains ‘it will resolve itself on the side of democracy, because actually, the alternative is pretty unthinkable’.” Shrimsley concludes: “Ultimately she has to be right. If the nationalist tide does not soon ebb it will have to be confronted. Democracy can be delayed. It must not be denied.”

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“When is a coalition not a coalition?” When it’s called a “Co-operation Agreement”. That, said Chris Deerin in the New Statesman, is the name for the newly-minted deal between the SNP and the Scottish Greens, by which the two pro-independence parties will “jointly run Scotland for the next five years”.

Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP gets a built-in majority for its legislation in Holyrood – for which it was previously “one MSP short” – but still retains nearly all the power. The Greens are given two ministerial roles, and the profile of their party and its co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater will be raised.

The Scottish Greens are “by far the most left-wing party ever to have held power in the UK”: their manifesto for May’s Scottish elections displayed an “open hostility to business and the private sector”, and a “student politics” approach to tax. The new 50-page “Bute House Agreement” tries unconvincingly to reconcile “Green puritanism with Nat pragmatism”.

But ultimately, this “cynical alliance” has only one aim: Sturgeon wants a second referendum, and she thinks that having another nationalist party in government bolsters the case for holding one.

Still, you’d have to agree that it’s a “political masterstroke” on Sturgeon’s part, said Stephen Daisley in The Spectator. “Folding the Greens into her government takes an entire opposition party out of the picture, gives the SNP a partner in crime with whom the blame for failings can be shared, and silences the potential for criticism from the pro-independence left.” Just look back to the Cameron-Clegg coalition to see how they work: “the dominant party gets stability and the junior partner gets the flak”.

Don’t underestimate the Greens, said Gerry Hassan in The National. They are the fourth most-popular party in Scotland, with eight seats at Holyrood. They have already gained many concessions from the SNP in return for their support at crucial votes. Yes, they take a hard line on the climate and “the self-destructive nature of capitalism”, but so do many voters. This agreement merely formalises the important role that the Greens already have.

I have one small question about this “joyous new union”, said Euan McColm in The Scotsman: “What point does it serve?” The SNP could rely on support from the Greens in Holyrood anyway, before this “heavily caveated” deal. There are some pretty big chasms between the two parties, not least that the nationalists are in favour of economic growth and the Greens are against it. This pact is “pointless and risky” for them both. Opposition parties should be “delighted”.

Scottish parliament cannot legislate for a second referendum without the UK government’s consent, the Supreme Court ruled today.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon “set herself on a collision course with Downing Street” earlier this year by submitting an application arguing for Scotland’s right to self-determination, said The Guardian. It stated that the devolved country has “the legislative competence to legislate for a referendum on Scottish independence”.

She had hoped to hold a second referendum – known as IndyRef2 – on 19 October 2023, and to use the same question put to voters in 2014: “Should Scotland be an independent country?” This morning, the Supreme Court’s Lord Reed ruled that Scotland did not have the power to legislate for the vote.

But, “it doesn’t mean the question of independence will go away”, said the BBC’s chief political correspondent Nick Eardley.

A ‘stand-off’ with Westminster

The issue of Scottish independence has “never really faded from the front line of politics north of the border since 2014’s referendum” and was bound to “rear its head again” in 2022, the i news site’s Scotland editor Chris Green predicted at the start of the year.

The 2023 deadline “set the stage for a heightened constitutional stand-off with the UK government”, said the Financial Times.

Successive prime ministers have ruled out allowing a re-run of the 2014 referendum, arguing it was a once-in-a-generation vote that had been settled decisively, with the No campaign securing a 55% win. However, two years later, Scotland voted to remain in the European Union and Sturgeon said there is a “strong and compelling case” for independence, blaming some of Scotland’s problems on a “Brexit we did not vote for”.

What Scots are saying

For six months in 2020, polling consistently showed strong support for separation, with up to 58% in favour. But at the start of 2021, the tide began to turn, with support relatively divided for the following 12 months.

A Survation opinion poll last month found only 35% of Scots wanted a referendum next year. Separate polling suggested a small but consistent lead for the No campaign. In The Herald, Deltapoll data, which tracks voting intention to September this year, showed No leading by 47% to 42%, with 7% undecided.

This large group of undecided Scots “would tip the vote either way”, said the paper.

It is important to note that the latest polls were conducted before Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership and the economic fallout of her mini-budget, which may have driven up support for independence from Westminster after 12 years of Tory rule.

Leading poll watcher, Professor Sir John Curtice from the University of Strathclyde, has consistently said that a second referendum is too close to call, and that neither side would be confident of winning, based on poll data.

Bookies’ bets

Political pundits aren’t the only ones split on whether Scottish voters really want independence. Online gambling firm PaddyPower is offering 5/6 on stay and the same odds on leave, while William Hill is offering 4/5 on stay, and 10/11 on leave, according to Oddschecker.

Legal considerations

The “starting point” for the Supreme Court was the Scotland Act 1998, explained a House of Commons briefing paper on the legal issues surrounding a Scottish independence referendum. While both governments agreed that Scotland “cannot unilaterally end the union” and achieve independence, “they differ as to the ‘purpose’ and ‘effect’ of referendum legislation”.

Political and academic opinion was also divided as to whether the Scottish parliament could legislate for a referendum. Ahead of the ruling, many on both sides of the constitutional debate were “building themselves up to a fever pitch of anticipation”, reported the Scottish Daily Express.

A panel of five judges at the Supreme Court heard arguments from the Scottish and UK governments in London in October. Today, Lord Reed announced that the Scottish Parliament does not have the power to legislate for an independence referendum.

It means ministers in Westminster “aren’t faced with an imminent crisis over what to do next”, said Eardley at the BBC. “But there is still an unanswered political question: If the Scottish Parliament keeps voting for a referendum, can the UK government keep saying no?”

Nicola Sturgeon is today expected to fire the starting gun on a new Scottish independence referendum, even as polling shows support for separation from the rest of the UK stalling.

The first minister is expected to unveil the first in a series of papers setting out an updated case for Scottish independence ahead of a referendum she has promised will take place next year.

However, “there are major doubts over her ability to deliver a fresh vote”, said The Telegraph, “with the UK Government opposed to any new referendum and experts believing it is not within Holyrood’s powers to organise a meaningful referendum itself”.

Speaking to Politico, the UK Scotland Secretary Alister Jack has previously indicated Westminster would not block a second referendum if there was sustained public support for it. “If you consistently saw 60% of the population wanting a referendum[...] and that was sustained over a reasonably long period, then I would acknowledge that there was a desire for a referendum,” he said.

Yet opinion polls show that most Scots do not want another referendum next year while support for independence is at similar levels to 2014, when 55% voted to remain in the UK.

From the economical implications to international alliances, here are the arguments for and against Scotland going forward alone.

Pros

Rejoin the European Union

In the 2016 Brexit referendum, 62% of Scottish voters called for the UK to remain in the European Union, compared to England’s 46.6% of Remain voters. “On this point, at least, it’s clear what Scots want,” said Time’s foreign affairs correspondent Ian Bremmer.

As an independent country, Scotland could make a bid to rejoin the EU as a member state once a separation agreement was settled with England. The country could then begin to negotiate its access agreement, looking to benefit from access to the EU single market, as well as the free movement of labour, goods, services and capital.

“As a symbolic trophy prize of Brexit” Scotland’s value to the organisation shouldn’t be underestimated, wrote The New European’s James Ball. However, Ball notes that rejoining “could be a long slog” coming “at a cost of relations and travel with the rest of the UK”.

Scotland would need the approval of all 27 member states to join the union – but doing so could stir up pre-existing tensions. Indeed, Bremmer noted that “Spain, fighting Catalan separatism, has reason to make things difficult for Scotland to avoid setting a dangerous precedent”.

‘Protect’ the NHS

Scotland has controlled the operation of its health service since the devolution settlement of 1999. However, funding and overarching policy decisions currently remain with Westminster.

Sturgeon’s Covid-19 response has erred on the side of caution at points when compared with England, providing the SNP with a “new argument” for independence. Although Scotland’s Covid death rate has previously surpassed England’s, polls indicated that the Scots had greater faith in their government’s handling of the pandemic than the rest of the UK's trust in Westminster.

Preventing NHS privatisation is high on Sturgeon’s and other pro-independence campaigners’ agenda. In February 2021, the SNP put the NHS Protection Bill to Westminster, calling for legislation to prevent the privatisation of the NHS. At the time, Scotland’s former chief medical officer Sir Harry Burns was “in no doubt that Brexit has opened the door for US private health firms”, the party said in a blog. Writing for The Scotsman, Burns said: “an independent Scotland within the EU will sound very appealing to many more voters”, should NHS services be tendered to US companies.

Power over policy

The Scottish government would have greater power over its defence, social security and foreign policies were it to become independent from the UK. It would also have increased control over constitutional matters, energy and environmental policies, and immigration.

Indeed, a critic of the Home Office’s immigration policy, Sturgeon called for the creation of a “Scottish visa” in 2020, which would “scrap the hefty application fees, salary threshold and employer sponsorship” currently required by Westminster for a British visa, The Guardian reported.

The SNP manifesto also promised to deliver the first “feminist foreign policy”, promoting gender equality around the world, while accelerating “the transition to zero carbon energy” closer to home, “supporting areas like Aberdeen and the North East to diversify its economy”.

Cons

Trading places

England is Scotland’s largest trading partner, a relationship that could be put to the test if Scotland were to opt for independence. The UK accounts for 60% of Scottish exports (excluding oil and gas), compared to the EU’s 19% and global exports of 21%, according to Scottish Government statistics.

This could become more complicated still if the country were to rejoin the EU, thereby “tearing Scotland out of the customs union and single market of the United Kingdom”, said The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson. The BBC said the international border between Scotland and England would be likely to increase the cost of trade, as “the checks currently delaying trucks at Calais would also be necessary at Gretna”.

A London School of Economics and Political Science report examining the financial impact of Brexit, trade and Scottish independence found that “the costs of independence to the Scottish economy are likely to be two to three times larger than the costs of Brexit”. Rejoining the EU “would do little to mitigate these costs”. The expert’s trade model found that Scotland would be “considerably poorer” if it left the UK.

Although the SNP’s manifesto stated a wish to “control our economic policy” and “create high-quality, sustainable jobs”, Sturgeon told Channel 4 News that the “economic blueprint for independence” is “completely out of date”.

Debt and deficit dilemma

Projections by the Institute of Fiscal Studies revealed Scotland’s public deficit is greater than that of the rest of the UK. It spent £36.3bn more than it raised in tax revenues in 2020-21, according to the Scottish government’s own figures reported in the Telegraph.

Scotland “would not, at least in its early days, be able to run a budget deficit that large for long”, said The New European’s Ball.

Scotland has previously received a higher percentage of UK public spending per person than the rest of the UK, the Financial Times reported, and reducing the deficit could mean significant cuts to public services, and increases in annual tax rises.

And if Sturgeon were to seek credit from external sources, investment strategist David Riley warns “investors would want assurances that the government has a credible macroeconomic policy framework, including critically a plan to reduce its budget deficit”, the paper continued. The financial repercussions of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic could make independence a costly decision.

On top of this, Professor John Kay, a former economic advisor to the Scottish Government, warned that an independent Scotland would start life with a £180bn share of UK debt, and having to borrow a further £20bn a year.

Global player

At least in the short term, Scotland would lose its access to transnational organisations including the global trade division at the UN, the G7 and Nato, which is currently granted through its union with the rest of the UK. The country would need to apply for independent membership of these organisations.

And while rejoining the EU could help Scotland to establish ties with potential trading partners and forge its own political alliances, this too could come at a cost. In 2019, the UK’s net public sector contribution to the EU was estimated at £9.4bn, according to government figures.

Without representation at these organisations, Scotland could lose its ability to have its voice heard on global issues including climate change and international peacekeeping.

Nicola Sturgeon has blamed the UK government’s Home Office for creating a “dangerous” situation in Glasgow yesterday after activists became involved in an eight-hour stand-off with immigration officials.

After two men were seized in a dawn raid, “growing numbers of peaceful protesters surrounded a Home Office van”. One demonstrator “crawled underneath and prevented it from transporting the detainees”, Politico reports.

Following an all-day stand-off, during which a number of scuffles broke out between protesters and police officers, the two men, both Indian nationals who have lived in Scotland for 10 years, were released. The front page of The National this morning read: “Glasgow 1, ‘Team UK’ 0”

‘No one is illegal’

The demonstration began when “hundreds of demonstrators descended on Kenmure Street” in Glasgow as “UK Border Force officials apparently attempted to deport a pair of men from a property there on Thursday morning”, The Scotsman reports.

Footage from the confrontation shows “a small number of local residents rushing to block a Home Office van from leaving”, before one activist managed to “position themselves under the van” where he would stay for the ensuing eight hours, the paper adds.

After the initial group of neighbours rushed to block the van, the crowd quickly grew to around 200. Some held banners that read “no one is illegal” and chanting “leave our neighbours, let them go” and “cops go home”, The Herald says.

And as the crowd swelled, the Home Office van was “surrounded by protesters, with some sitting on the road in front of it and a crowd gathering down the street”, the paper adds.

After being released from the van, one of the two men, Lakhvir Singh, told ITV: “I’m so happy that my fate brought me to live here in Glasgow, where the people are so connected that they’ll come out onto the streets to help one of their own.”

Scottish First Minister Sturgeon, who was yesterday being sworn in as a member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) following last week’s elections, tweeted that she was “deeply concerned” by the Home Office’s actions, adding that the raid was especially harmful “in the heart of a community celebrating Eid”.

Sturgeon continued that she “will be demanding assurances from the UK government that they will never again create, through their actions, such a dangerous situation. No assurances were given - and frankly no empathy shown - when I managed to speak to a junior minister earlier.

“I disagree fundamentally with [the Home Office’s] immigration policy but even putting that aside, this action was unacceptable. To act in this way, in the heart of a Muslim community as they celebrated Eid, and in an area experiencing a Covid outbreak was a health and safety risk.”

‘Lawful removal’

The Home Office has gone on the defensive following Sturgeon’s criticism, with an unnamed source telling BBC Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall that “it is completely unacceptable for a mob to stop the lawful removal of people living in our country illegally. We 100% back the frontline in removing those with no right to be here.”

Scottish politicians from across the spectrum leapt on the quote, with the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) Michael Russell, Scotland’s constitution secretary, tweeting that the comment was “utterly tone deaf”.

The Home Office source’s stance was proof, “if further proof was needed, that the gulf between Scottish consented governance and UK Tory imposition is now so great as to be completely unbridgeable”, Russell added.

This was echoed by Patrick Harvie, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, who tweeted: “The people who put themselves at risk to defend their neighbours from state violence today are not a ‘mob’. Today we saw the best of Glasgow, and the worst of the racist Home Office.”

Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf shared a video in which he said that after “hours trying to get the Home Office to abandon their operation, without success” he was “pleased” to see the release of the two men.

In a second tweet, Yousaf continued that he “abhors Home Office immigration policy at the best of times”, adding that “to have taken the action they have today is at best completely reckless, and at worst intended to provoke”.

The people of Scotland will cast their votes tomorrow to elect the 129 members of the Scottish Parliament.

MSPs have the power to pass laws on health, education, transport and some aspects of taxation and welfare in Scotland. But tomorrow’s vote is being eagerly watched in Westminster because of its potential impact on a second Scottish independence vote.

Win a majority – as the Scottish National Party (SNP) is on course to do – and party leader and first minister Nicola Sturgeon will claim a mandate for a second referendum, “paving the way for another showdown with Downing Street over independence”, The Courier reports.

Independence games

According to a survey of 1,008 voters for The Courier, Sturgeon’s SNP “appears to be far enough ahead to pick up three more seats than in 2016”. Those three seats would give SNP 66 MSPs in total, just over the threshold for an overall majority in Holyrood.

Research conducted by Survation for the paper suggests that “the Conservatives could cling on as the largest opposition group – but only just at a reduced 24 seats”, while “Scottish Labour could slip back again by one seat to 23 despite signs of growing popularity for new leader Anas Sarwar”.

The Scottish Green Party is also in favour of a second referendum, meaning that an overall majority of pro-independence MSPs is all but guaranteed if it secures 11 seats as the Survation polling suggests.

Such an outcome would be “vital in deciding the constitutional future of both Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom”, ITV says, boosting “calls from nationalists” for the government in Westminster “to allow a second independence referendum”.

Sturgeon’s plan

Appearing during a Scottish leaders’ debate last night, Sturgeon denied that she would hold a wildcat referendum if the SNP secures a majority, the BBC reports. “I will be responsible about that and I will build, and ultimately I think win, the case for independence through patient persuasion of people across the country,” said Sturgeon.

Responding to claims by Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross that the SNP would pursue an “illegal” referendum, the SNP leader added: “What I have said consistently all along – sometimes to criticism from people on my own side of the argument – is that I would not countenance an illegal referendum, not least because it would not deliver independence.”

Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that “he will refuse any such demand, as the government has the right to do”, The Times says. But ignoring the tide of opinion north of the border risks “fuelling grievances, thereby deepening the rift between Westminster and Edinburgh”, the paper adds.

Any referendum on Scotland’s independence would “reverberate across the Irish Sea, impacting on Northern Ireland's future as part of the United Kingdom”, ITV reports. Journalist Neil Mackay told the broadcaster that “if the trajectory in Scotland is one of an exit trajectory, away from the gravity of the union, then that will play very strongly in the minds of unionists in terms of scaring them about their future”.

And the memory of Brexit could also come into play, with polling expert Professor John Curtice adding: “If Scotland indeed as an independent country is going to go back into the European Union, what do we do about the border between Gretna and Berwick?”

Sturgeon appears to have successfully “tapped Scottish resentment over Johnson and Brexit”, the Financial Times says, with polls suggesting that “despite concerns over economic cost of independence, the SNP leader is on course for victory”.

The stakes in Scotland “could hardly be higher”, The Times says, with a second vote on independence potentially unleashing “destabilising consequences across these islands”.

With the UK “just emerging from a five-year slump” triggered by the “uncertainty created by Brexit”, a second referendum “would plunge the country into another prolonged bout of inward-looking uncertainty”, the paper adds.

1. The SNP’s plans for rejoining the EU don’t add up

Oliver Kamm in The Times

on Scottish rejoiners

“The Scottish National Party is a latecomer to the pro-European cause,” writes Oliver Kamm in The Times, having “recommended leaving the Community in the 1975 referendum now it has the zeal of a convert”. However, “the SNP’s plans, like the Brexit campaign itself, promise speculative benefits while ignoring real trade-offs”. Were Scotland to rejoin, “it would enjoy some gains from being part of its internal market but at the price of erecting trade barriers to the rest of the UK”, Kamm says, while “the concessions previously enjoyed by the UK within the EU, such as the budget rebate and opting out of the euro, would probably not be on offer.” If Scotland plans to pursue a strategy of getting their feet back under the table in Brussels, they will have to recognise that “EU governments want Britain back but not at any price”.

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2. The landmark report on racism should clear the way for a realistic debate on inequality in Britain

Fraser Myers in The Telegraph

on modern Britain

“Since the Black Lives Matter protests last year, an unflattering picture of Britain has been painted”, writes Fraser Myers in The Telegraph. “Britain, we are told, is institutionally, systemically and irredeemably racist”, with discrimination running rife in “our education system, in our workplaces, in our culture and even in our unconscious thoughts”. So will the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, released today, “challenge this doom-laden view”? It does not paint the UK as an “apocalyptic wasteland of racism”, instead suggesting that it is a “beacon” and a “model” for “other white-majority countries”. “The saturation of the ‘Britain is racist’ message has consequences, including for ethnic-minority Brits”, Myers adds. “Let’s hope this report opens up a more balanced – and realistic – debate about inequality in Britain.”

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3. It’s right to get rid of ‘Bame’ – but this report minimises racism in the process

Amanda Parker in The Independent

on absolving complicity

“Along with others who’ve been lobbying for change, I’m definitely raising a glass in celebration of the decision to stop using” the term BAME, writes Amanda Parker in The Independent. But “my joy falls flat with the rest of the race disparities unit’s conclusions”. The report “concludes that because students of African and Indian heritage have higher than average education outcomes at GCSE level, this is proof that we’re no longer a racist society”. But what it fails to account for is that “despite performing least well in education”, white Britons “outperform their ethnically diverse peers in employment and social mobility”. The unit “overlooks what’s happening in GP surgeries and hospitals”, while ignoring “data on redundancies during the pandemic”, she adds. Despite the unit’s findings, racism in Britain remains “nuanced and complex”.

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4. If the Queen has nothing to hide, she should tell us what artefacts she owns

Dan Hicks in The Guardian

on looted heirlooms

“As with ethical consumption in fashion retail, today people want to know where the culture they consume comes from – how it got here, and whether anybody is asking for it back”, says Dan Hicks in The Guardian. “This question of transparency comes into focus” after it was revealed that “Her Majesty’s private estates were exempted from the 2017 Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Act”. “In the colonial era, British royal power commemorated dispossession as a source of its legitimacy”, Hicks says. But “in today’s very different world cultural legitimacy requires that stealing is neither triumphantly displayed nor hidden away or covered up”. From “our nation’s museums to whatever it is that hangs from the picture-hooks of Sandringham House, the British public and the world deserve openness when it comes to questions of theft”.

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5. Your Tinder match will soon be able to run a background check on you

Dr Karen Levy in The New York Times

on dating data

“There’s something to be said for the idea that intimacy is based on having discretion to share information with others”, writes Karen Levy in The New York Times. But Match Group – which owns Tinder, OKCupid and Match.com – is taking steps to make getting to know your partner easier by helping “run background checks on potential dates”. “It’s easy to understand why Match Group is making this move”, she says, as “potential partners sometimes deceive each other”, while “gender-based violence is a serious and prevalent problem”. But “it’s not hard to imagine how background checks might open the door to other kinds of data”. “Should I know whether someone has filed for bankruptcy or been married before or owns property? Should I be able to sort partners by their credit score?”, she asks. Introducing this level of checking “seems at odds with how we typically learn about one another – gradually, and with the benefit of context”.

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In the space of 24 hours, two reports on the Sturgeon-Salmond affair have been released, with what appear to be two opposing conclusions.

The first, an independent report from James Hamilton, former head of Ireland’s public prosecution service, yesterday cleared Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of breaching the ministerial code in her response to sexual harassment complaints against her predecessor Alex Salmond.

The second, by a cross-party Scottish parliamentary committee, published today, found that she had misled MSPs in her account of a key meeting with Salmond – who was cleared of all the harassment charges at trial.

The Scottish Conservatives will “press ahead” with their plans for a motion of no-confidence in the first minister later today following the “damning parliamentary report”, says The Daily Telegraph. Scottish Tories leader Douglas Ross insisted yesterday that she “is not free and clear”.

However, Sturgeon looks set to “easily defeat” the vote, says the Financial Times, with the political impact of the committee’s findings likely to be “blunted” by the earlier Hamilton report. The Greens are refusing to back the motion in light of the independent inquiry’s findings.

Indeed, Sean O’Grady of The Independent believes Sturgeon can “breathe a small sigh of relief for now”. He describes Hamilton’s judgment as “unequivocal”, while the committee of Scottish parliamentarians has an opposition majority and was split on party lines.

The first minister is likely to get the chance to fight for a fresh overall majority, and “personal vote of confidence from the Scottish electorate”, in the Holyrood elections on 3 May, says O’Grady – although he adds that “the last few weeks have hardly been edifying”.

Meanwhile, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar noted yesterday: “This entire process has deeply damaged public trust in our politics at a time of national crisis, and there are absolutely no winners today.”

Nicola Sturgeon is in a fight for her political life after Holyrood’s inquiry into the handling of abuse allegations against Alex Salmond found she misled parliament in her written evidence to the committee.

A narrow majority of five votes to four found the first minister gave an “inaccurate account” of her meetings with Salmond in a ruling leaked to Sky News from inside the committee room last night.

The broadcaster’s Scotland correspondent James Matthews said the committee found that Sturgeon, who succeeded Salmond as leader of the SNP and first minister of Scotland in 2014, had “misled parliament and potentially breached the ministerial code of conduct”.

The ruling centres around an April 2018 meeting between Sturgeon and Salmond, and whether she offered to intervene in the government’s investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against him, a claim Sturgeon denies. But Salmond insists Sturgeon did make such an offer and the inquiry agreed.

“Taking account of the competing versions of the event, the committee believes that she did in fact leave Alex Salmond with the impression that she would, if necessary, intervene,” the committee’s findings are expected to read, according to Sky News.

Sturgeon last night disputed the findings of the inquiry, which she said she found “not that surprising”. She told the broadcaster that “opposition members of this committee made their minds up before I muttered a single word of evidence”.

It’s a “remarkable conclusion”, says The Guardian, “but the committee has stopped short of ruling she did so ‘knowingly’”. It is this distinction that could be key to saving the first minister’s political career as the Scottish ministerial code reads that “ministers who knowingly mislead the Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation”.

Regardless, “the decision is likely to increase pressure on Sturgeon to stand down before May’s election”, says The Herald, adding that opposition parties have “scented blood”.

Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross called for her resignation, saying: “We cannot set a precedent that a first minister of Scotland can mislead the Scottish Parliament and get away with it.” Ross has already made preparations to push for a vote of no confidence against the SNP leader, but this is likely to be “doomed”, Politico's London Playbook reports.

“Without wishing to dismiss the importance of the Salmond inquiry, the investigation that really matters is that of James Hamilton,” The Scotsman says.

Hamilton’s investigation into whether Sturgeon broke the ministerial code is expected to be published very soon. If it finds in her favour, it will provide Sturgeon with a much-needed “buffer” against the allegations, the paper adds.

Former Brexit secretary David Davis has told the Commons that Scottish National Party (SNP) officials made a “concerted effort” to “encourage” allegations of sexual abuse against Alex Salmond.

The Conservative MP used parliamentary privilege to reveal messages from SNP staffers who allegedly pushed for Salmond’s accusers to come forward. Davis also accused the Scottish government of “actively withholding information” from the Holyrood inquiry into the handling of the complaints against the former first minister.

The Tory told fellow MPs yesterday that a whistle-blower had handed him a “download of text messages from the telephone” of the SNP’s chief operating officer, Sue Ruddick, that reveal “a very strong prima facie case” for Salmond’s claim that party officials conspired to remove him from public life.

“The whistle-blower clearly agrees with those charges,” said Davis, who argued that Holyrood needs to be given the same “powers and privileges” afforded to Westminster politicians, to enable a proper investigation into Salmond’s counter-allegations.

In a further blow to Nicola Sturgeon, David “also claimed that the messages he received showed that the first minister’s chief of staff knew about the allegations against Mr Salmond months before originally asserted”, The Scotsman reports.

“I have it on good authority that there exists from the 6 February 2018 an exchange of messages between civil servants Judith McKinnon and Barbara Alison, suggesting the first minister’s chief of staff is interfering in the complaints process against Alex Salmond,” Davis told the Commons.

“If true, this suggests the chief of staff had knowledge of the Salmond case in February, not in April, as she has claimed on oath.”

Seizing on this claim, Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross later said that the signs pointed to “an outrageous breach” of the “privacy and confidentiality” of the women who brought the harassment complaints.

Davis’s intervention came as the QC tasked with examining the Scottish government’s procedures published “a range of recommendations about how complaints against serving ministers could be investigated”, the BBC reports.

In a review that comes ahead of “two other keenly anticipated reports relating to the bungled civil action” against Salmond, Laura Dunlop suggested that “probes concerning former ministers should be independent”, the broadcaster continues.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Sturgeon brushed off Davis’s allegations, saying that “as with Mr Salmond’s previous claims and cherry-picking of messages, the reality is very different to the picture being presented”.

“Every message involving SNP staff has been seen by the committee previously. Their views have been widely reported as dismissive of them,” the spokesperson added.

Records of two meetings attended by Nicola Sturgeon and senior government lawyers about the Alex Salmond sexual abuse allegations have been lost, the first minister’s deputy has claimed.

John Swinney, the deputy first minister of Scotland, yesterday told the inquiry into the handling of the claims against Salmond that “we have not identified any record of minutes having been prepared or previously held by the Scottish government”.

The lost notes refer to a meeting attended by Sturgeon, Scotland’s most senior civil servant Leslie Evans and the Scottish government’s legal counsel on 2 and 13 November 2018 during which “Salmond’s legal challenge to the investigation of sexual misconduct claims against him” was discussed, The Telegraph reports.

Asked whether inquiries had been made into whether the lawyers present held any notes from the meeting, Swinney replied that only “a small number” of emails exist that indicate that “adjustments to the pleadings for the judicial review” were discussed.

Responding to Swinney’s claim that the minutes were either lost or never existed, Jackie Baillie, the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party and a member of the inquiry, said that it was “frankly laughable” to suggest that no notes would have been taken.

Ahead of what the Daily Mail describes as a “dramatic vote of no confidence” in Swinney tabled by the Scottish Conservatives for this afternoon, Baillie added that Labour MSPs would have “no choice” but to back the motion if no further information was forthcoming.

However, the paper adds that the “pro-independence” Scottish Greens may have “saved Swinney from having to resign after stating they would oppose the motion”. The party said that the vote was a “Tory plot” to try and claim a “political scalp”.

The vote comes “amid fury at the refusal to release full legal advice” given to Sturgeon over the handling of the investigation into Salmond, the Daily Mail adds. The first minister has repeatedly “denied breaking the ministerial code by defying lawyers and continuing to fight a judicial review brought by her predecessor”.

1. Now, more than ever, the PM must hold firm on refusing a Scottish independence referendum

Henry Hill in The Telegraph

on the Salmond inquiry

The scandal unfolding in Holyrood over the Scottish government’s botched attempts to deal with sexual harassment accusations against Alex Salmond has revealed “a political culture in a dire state”, says Henry Hill in The Telegraph. A skilful performance from First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at Wednesday’s inquiry means “it seems unlikely… that the chaos will lead to the immediate downfall of the first minister”. But to ensure the health of the union, Boris Johnson must refuse a referendum, forcing the question of independence “beyond Sturgeon’s time in office” and thus negating her “unique connection to Scottish voters”.

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2. Boris Johnson has double standards on the IRA

David Aaronovitch in The Times

on historic admissions

Roy Greenslade, the former editor of the Daily Mirror and a journalism ethics professor, revealed he was a silent supporter of the Provisional IRA in an “unrepentant admission” featured in the British Journalism Review this week, writes David Aaronovitch in The Times. “Yet,” says Aaronovitch, “such is the character of the prime minister that I couldn’t help wondering whether, had Greenslade become an enthusiastic Brexiteer late in his career, he might have avoided the condemnation and won instead a seat in the House of Lords.” That’s what happened last summer when Claire Fox, formerly of the Irish Freedom Movement, became Baroness Fox. “So IRA-supporting Greenslade is to be condemned but the even more IRA-supporting Fox is to be ennobled. And why?” asks Aaronovitch. “It’s simple: Johnson doesn’t care and he and his coterie don’t think you care either.”

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3. The pandemic has laid bare the social care crisis as never before

Cathy Newman in The Independent

on a creaking system

“It’s getting on for two years since Boris Johnson stood outside Number Ten and promised, in his first speech as prime minister, to ‘fix the crisis in social care once and for all’,” writes Cathy Newman in The Independent. But so far “an ominous silence” has descended over those plans. The coronavirus crisis has revealed the scale of the social care crisis. “A lack of staff, years of underfunding and a fragmented system have all contributed to what they [those working within the sector] believe was a preventable tragedy,” Newman adds.

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4. Rishi’s nightmare: will inflation crush the recovery?

Kate Andrews in The Spectator

on the spring budget

“At first” increasing corporation tax “seems to make no sense”, says Kate Andrew in The Spectator. “Britain is in the middle of the worst economic crash in recorded history, with a Chancellor who is famously keen on low taxes, spending control and sound money.” So why is Rishi Sunak increasing taxes on business? “The explanation most Tories comfort themselves with is that Sunak wants to explain to a high-spending Prime Minister that today’s cash splurge is tomorrow’s tax rise,” she says. But Sunak is “motivated by something else… not dreams of fiscal sanity… but nightmares… [about] an inflation resurgence that could crush Britain’s economic recovery”.

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5. Irish outrage at Pontins obscures the truth about anti-Traveller racism

Seamas O’Reilly in The Guardian

on blatant discrimination

“I was well into my adult years when I realised a word that I… had been using as an insult was actually a name,” Seamss O’Reilly writes in The Guardian. “You could be called this word if you had scuffed trainers, or if your school uniform had gone a little threadbare.” It meant you were a “cheapskate, ingrate, reprobate and wretch”. He continues that he was reminded of the “power of that word” when news broke that holiday chain Pontins had a list of surnames that it banned from staying at its resorts. “We know that no one in Ireland is more Othered than members of the travelling community,” he adds.

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Nicola Sturgeon was battling for her political life yesterday as she faced a Holyrood inquiry into the handling of sexual harassment complaints against Alex Salmond.

During a marathon eight-hour appearance before the committee, the first minister denied her former ally’s “absurd” claims that she had conspired with Scottish National Party (SNP) colleagues to remove him from public life.

Sturgeon gave her testimony amid calls for her resignation, following claims from two other witnesses that she lied to her parliament. But the Scottish leader looks set to dodge that bullet, according to political pundits including Magnus Linklater, who writes in The Times that Sturgeon emerged from yesterday’s “interrogation” with her reputation “largely intact”.

Cool in the hot seat

Sturgeon told the inquiry that while her recollection was “not as vivid as I would like it to be”, she had not deliberately misled parliament about when she learned of the claims against her predecessor - which would represent a breach of the ministerial code.

The first minister had told MSPs that she was first informed of the allegations during a meeting with Salmond at her home on 2 April 2018. But Salmond’s former chief-of-staff Geoff Aberdein told the inquiry on Tuesday that the claims had been discussed during a meeting at her Holyrood office four days earlier, on 29 March.

However, Sturgeon told the inquiry that her memory of the initial meeting had been “obliterated” by her subsequent showdown with Salmond, who was acquitted of sexual assault charges in a criminal trial last year.

Her spirited defence appears to have paid off, says The Times’ Linklater, who concludes that “Nicola Sturgeon has survived” the potential threat posed by the inquiry.

Despite “weaknesses in her evidence, some points where questions were left lingering”, she fended off the accusations against her with “confidence but, perhaps more importantly, with passion”, he adds.

The first minister was on “formidable form”, agrees Chris Deerin in the New Statesman. Sturgeon defended her government’s investigation into Salmond with the “surgical precision and occasional shiftiness of the lawyer she once was”.

She admitted to just one major failure: an attempt to defend the government’s complaints process against a challenge by Salmond in the civil courts cost taxpayers more than £500,000.

But otherwise, Sturgeon “had an answer for everything”, Deerin continues. Despite “holes enough in her evidence and doubts about its veracity”, there appears to be no “smoking gun that can force Sturgeon from office”.

This lack comes as no surprise to The Telegraph’s Alan Cochrane. The committee was not “the best vehicle to sit in judgment” on the “failed” investigation into Salmond’s behaviour, Cochrane argues.

Sturgeon was helped by “badly constructed questions” from MSPs, which she was able to “easily bat away”.

The most striking moment in her otherwise “methodical” testimony came when she spoke of her disappointment in Salmond’s conduct during his tenure in the top job, says Dundee-based paper The Courier.

Sturgeon told the inquiry: “That he was acquitted by a jury of criminal conduct is beyond question. But I know, just from what he told me, that his behaviour was not always appropriate.

“I refused to follow the age-old pattern of letting a powerful man use his status and connections to get what he wants.”

What next?

Sturgeon is facing a second investigation headed by James Hamilton QC, the former head of public prosecutions in Northern Ireland, over whether the SNP leader broke the ministerial code. Questions also linger about who leaked the name of one of Salmond’s accusers to the former first minister’s team.

And not all of the inquiry members who heard evidence from Sturgeon yesterday are fully convinced by some of her answers.

As the committee begins drafting its report on the evidence given, Scottish Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland that Sturgeon “had no corroborating evidence to back herself up. That is why we are still of the view that Nicola Sturgeon has broken the ministerial code and has misled the Scottish parliament.”

Sturgeon may also be facing a possible motion of no confidence, after Scottish Tories leader Douglas Ross leader warned earlier this week that his party would be “submitting a vote of no confidence in the first minister”.

Nothing Sturgeon could say at the committee hearing would “counter the claims of numerous witnesses”, he added.

Nicola Sturgeon is facing calls to resign after appearing before a government inquiry following claims from two other witnesses that she lied to the Scottish parliament.

Testimonies given yesterday by two former special advisors “contradict the first minister of Scotland about when she knew of a sexual harassment investigation into her predecessor” Alex Salmond, The Times reports.

But Sturgeon came out fighting today as she gave her version of events to MSPs probing the handling of abuse claims against Salmond, insisting that she was never “out to get” her former ally. Here are five key claims made at the inquiry.

1. No intervention

Salmond claimed last week that SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, who is married to Sturgeon, “deployed senior figures to recruit and persuade staff members to submit police complaints”.

However, Sturgeon today “told MSPs she did not intervene in the process of the Scottish Government’s investigation”, The Telegraph reports. To do so would have been an “abuse” of her position, she said.

She also said that she had agreed to meet with Salmond as rumours of the allegations against him began circulating, after his former chief of staff “told her he was worried about Mr Salmond’s state of mental health and that he was considering resigning from the party”, the paper adds.

“Given what I was told about the distress Alex was in, it was suggested to me that he intended to handle matters, it is likely that I still would have agreed to meet him as a friend and as his party leader,” she said.

2. Not the leaker

Salmond has called for a police investigation into how details of the complaints against him were handed to the Daily Record in August 2018. The former Scottish leader claims the leak came from within the government and was politically motivated.

Sturgeon said that she did “not know where the leaks came from”, adding: “I can tell you where I know they didn't come from, they didn't come from me, they didn’t come from anybody acting on my authority or on my instruction or at my request.”

She added: “Since I first became aware of what Alex Salmond was facing, the thought of it becoming public, the thought of having to comment on it horrified me, absolutely horrified me, made me feel physically sick.”

3. Big mistake

Sturgeon admitted that the government made “a mistake, a very serious mistake” in how the investigation into Salmond’s alleged wrongdoing was handled, but insisted that she was not “out to get” her predecessor.

A successful judicial review by Salmond saw the investigation ruled unlawful and “tainted by apparent bias”, with a £512,250 payout for legal fees. However, Sturgeon told the Holyrood inquiry that there was not “a shred of evidence” to support Salmond’s claim of a “malicious and concerted” effort to remove him from public life.

Will the Sturgeon-Salmond split sink Scottish independence?

4. Complaints policy

Sturgeon also played down claims by Salmond that she moved to have the Scottish government’s harassment policy rewritten in an effort to target him.

Salmond claims that the complaints procedure was signed off in February 2018, about four months after the SNP were first made aware of the allegations him, in October 2017.

But Sturgeon said that the policy was signed off in December 2017 and that the first “formal complaints were [made] in January 2018”.

“The procedure was in place from the 20th December,” she told the inquiry. “It wasn’t published until February but it was in place and clearly being used.”

Rulebook change raises ‘serious questions’ for Sturgeon

5. No confidence

Sturgeon is under growing pressure after a former special advisor gave evidence yesterday “backing up” some of Salmond’s claims, says The Times.

Former SNP MSP Duncan Hamilton, who is now Salmond’s lawyer, “said that Sturgeon initially offered to intervene and help Salmond embark on a mediation process with the women”, the paper reports. Sturgeon has denied this claim in parliament - so should it be proved to be true, she will have breached the ministerial code.

Following Hamilton’s testimony, Scottish Conservative Douglas Ross leader said that “Sturgeon must resign” and that the Tories would be “submitting a vote of no confidence in the first minister”. A spokesperson for Sturgeon called the threat “utterly irresponsible”.

1. Alex Salmond inquiry’s credibility has been undermined and Crown Office’s independence trashed

John McLellan in The Edinburgh Evening News

on a fishy inquiry

“It doesn’t matter whether you think conspiracy or cock-up was at the heart of the botched inquiry into complaints of sexual harassment” against Alex Salmond, writes John McLellan in the Edinburgh Evening News. “All you need to know is the Scottish government was warned it would fail but pressed on.” McLellan says “you don’t need to be a Salmond fan to accept this needs examining, or that having been subjected to a biased government investigation... he’s entitled to put forward his side of the story”. Whether the end result is a finding of corruption or incompetence, “the inquiry’s credibility [has been] undermined” and “the Crown Office’s independence trashed”.

Read more

2. Rishi Sunak must deliver a workers’ budget to ensure a post-Covid recovery

Frances O’Grady in The Guardian

on a green revival

“We all hope the pandemic is receding”, writes Frances O’Grady in The Guardian, “but what it leaves behind is the prospect of mass unemployment and whole industries fighting for survival”. The general secretary of the Trades Union Congress says that at next week’s budget, “working people across the UK need the chancellor to set out a new vision of good jobs for everyone”. Calling for job creation, she adds that “a powerful green stimulus package would revitalise communities that have lost traditional industries, transform firms and provide better opportunities”.

Read more

3. A £100 dog licence would make buyers think first

Janice Turner in The Times

on licensing pets

Janice Turner is upset by a “new delicacy” that contains salmon, peanut butter and sweet potato and is “100% natural, with no added salts, sugars or preservatives”. What’s got her so hot under the collar about this snack? That it is for dogs. With the “doggy pound” soaring as more people buy dogs and splash cash in pet stores, she calls for a return of the dog licence, abolished in 1987. “Make registration £100, with a compulsory microchip, add a £50 annual fee easily paid online”, she says in The Times. “It’s a modest fee given that some salmon-snacking dogs eat better than families who use food banks.”

Read more

4. It’s time to stop tampering with literary classics

Ben Lawrence in The Daily Telegraph

on unedifying rewrites

“Publishing houses love delving into classic novels for ‘re-imagined’ follow-ups”, writes Ben Lawrence in The Telegraph, but he is no fan of the results. “Literary classics are classics for a reason”, he argues, and “tampering with them in prequels, sequels or alternative versions does little to edify the original”. He wonders whether Ken Loach will soon produce a cinematic version of The Great Gatsby, “relocated to the sugar beet fields of Norfolk with a migrant worker in thrall to his enigmatic boss”.

Read more

5. It’s not a ‘home smear test’ trial – it’s a ‘home HPV test’. Here’s why the distinction matters

Lydia Brain in The Independent

on clear messaging

“News of the first NHS trial for HPV self-testing... is a positive step forward for anyone at risk of cervical cancer”, says Lydia Brain in The Independent. But its announcement “has also shone a light on the confusion that exists around the current cervical screening programme”. Even Health Secretary Matt Hancock got “the difference between a swab for HPV (the virus that causes the vast majority of cervical cancers)” and a home HPV test mixed up. And his mistake “really goes to show is that the language around cervical screening has become quite confusing”. But the differences between the HPV and a “smear test” are key. “It’s too important to leave this set of health messages to chance”.

Read more

Alex Salmond’s former Scottish National Party (SNP) colleagues made a “malicious and concerted attempt to banish him from public life”, according to his newly published submission to the Holyrood harassment inquiry.

Salmond is due to give evidence tomorrow to the committee investigating the government’s handling of harassment complaints against the former first minister - and says he has “documentary evidence” of a plot to destroy his reputation.

Nicola Sturgeon has played down what Politico’s London Playbook describes as a series of “explosive allegations” made by Salmond, telling reporters just hours before the submission was published that the claims had been put forward “without a shred of evidence”. Here are four things we learned about the alleged conspiracy from the near-8,000 word document.

1. Police complaints

SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, who is married to Sturgeon, is alleged to have “deployed senior figures to recruit and persuade staff members to submit police complaints” against Salmond, Sky News reports. Murrell has denied conspiring against his wife’s predecessor, while the SNP has echoed her in claiming that the allegation is “just more assertion without a shred of evidence”.

2. Jail plot

Salmond claims that “but for the protection of the court and jury system”, the plot against him could have resulted in not only the loss of his good name but also his freedom. In his written submission, he says that “a range of individuals within the Scottish government and the SNP” wanted to “damage my reputation, even to the extent of having me imprisoned”.

3. Secret text messages

The former first minister “alleges the strongest evidence of a conspiracy is contained in text messages in the evidence from this trial, which the Crown Office has refused to release for legal reasons”, The Guardian reports.

But despite that refusal, “he argues evidence already given to the committee clearly showed the Scottish government’s complaints policy was designed to snare him, by making its terms retrospective to include previous ministers”, the paper continues.

Sturgeon and Leslie Evans, the permanent secretary of the Scottish government, are alleged to have made the change to the draft policy at meetings in late 2017, when complaints about Salmond’s behaviour were first raised with the SNP.

4. Old friends

Salmond is “angry with his political protege” Sturgeon and “would be happy to see her drummed out of office”, writes the Daily Record’s political editor Paul Hutcheon. His evidence states that Sturgeon misled Parliament over the investigation, breached the ministerial code of conduct and made “wholly false” claims.

As Hutcheon notes, Salmond “knows more than anyone the gravity of these allegations which, if upheld, would warrant an immediate resignation”.

A rule that would have meant Nicola Sturgeon was informed immediately of harassment claims within the Scottish National Party (SNP) was altered weeks after allegations were made against Alex Salmond, it has emerged.

Initial policy drafts from November 2017 - when complaints about Salmond’s behaviour were first raised with the SNP - relating to dealing with staff issues stated that Sturgeon should be told about any accusations that involved former ministers.

However, in a “key change”, the wording was altered a month later to state she should only be informed about an investigation after it was completed, The Scottish Sun reports - raising “serious questions” over what she knew and when.

The first minister is facing growing scrutiny over whether she misled the public and MSPs by saying that she only found out about the internal probe in April 2018.

Critics are sceptical about that claim, with Liberal Democrat MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton telling The Scotsman that Sturgeon had signed off on a procedure that “insulated her from the process playing out just outside her office”.

Jackie Baillie, a Labour MSP, added: “These revelations demand straight answers from the first minister.”

Salmond is due to give evidence on Wednesday to the ongoing inquiry into the investigation of the harassment claims against him. He is expended to accuse the government of overseeing a “pantomime of deception and secrecy” when he delivers his “explosive evidence”, the Daily Record says.

A jury at the High Court in Edinburgh last year found the former first minister not guilty of 12 charges of attempted rape, sexual assault and indecent assault, and returned a not proven verdict on a charge of sexual assault with intent to rape.

The inquiry into the Scottish government’s handling of sexual assault allegations against Alex Salmond may be handed fresh - and allegedly damning - evidence as a result of a newly mounted legal challenge by The Spectator.

The magazine is asking for Scotland’s second-most senior judge to amend a court order imposed during the former first minister’s trial last year that “is being held up as a reason why a dossier of allegations against Nicola Sturgeon cannot be put before MSPs”, The Times reports.

After being acquitted last March of multiple counts of sexual assault and an attempted rape, Salmond described the allegations as “deliberate fabrications for a political purpose”.

“Certain information” that he had been unable to disclose during the trial would “see the light of day” in the future, he added.

Some pundits interpreted his comments as a threat against Sturgeon over her role in the prosecution. And that theory is being fuelled by suggestions that the information at the centre of the new court battle could include damaging disclosures about Salmond’s successor.

The Spectator is believed to be seeking a ruling from the High Court in Edinburgh in order to publish details from Salmond’s submission to the ongoing Holyrood investigation into the “government’s botched internal inquiry” into the allegations against him, according to The Guardian.

The legal bid comes as Sturgeon is drawn into a war of words with “Conservative and Labour leaders over her private meetings with Salmond where they discussed harassment claims against him”, the paper adds.

Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson has claimed that Sturgeon’s written evidence about the meetings “utterly contradicted” what the first minister had initially told her parliament about them.

Along with Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s acting leader, Davidson has called for Sturgeon to quit if found to have broken the ministerial code.

The row over whether to release Salmond’s submission has split the committee of MSPs leading the investigation into the government’s inquiry. During a four-hour meeting on Tuesday, the committee voted by five to four against publishing a statement that Salmond claims is key to his case alleging that Sturgeon broke the ministerial code.