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Yesterday I listened to bits of the Supreme Court hearing and some of the post match analysis. Something I have never understood in this whole business is that in 2015, the House agreed by a vote of 6:1 in favour that a referendum be held in the UK to determine the mandate …

There is a stuffy consensus in Scotland. There always has been. Perhaps it has to do with the Presbyterian idea of the elect. We are exceptional. We are different. Wha’s like us. It makes our newspapers exceptionally dull, because almost no-one questions the assumptions which are shared even by political …

https://youtu.be/Rn3vuKEgTbs Let’s all take a moment to savour the defeat of former Conservative MP for Richmond Park, Zac Goldsmith, in the by-election which he foolishly triggered after following through on his word to flounce out of the Conservative Party if the government finally took its boot of the neck of …

The above graph is taken from the Facts4EU website, a great reference if you want the truth, instead of the Bremoan propaganda of the BBC, the Financial Times and the Economist (link to their site here). The graph is based on proper, statistically valid, opinion polling by the highly respected …

Without this principle of democratic consent, Parliament is empowered to make fundamental changes to how Britain governs itself. Parliament overturned the practice of the past fifty years; it crossed a constitutional Rubicon. Unless this is checked, the real winner of the Referendum was Westminster itself. The surprisingly large vote for …

The mainstream media looks to Facebook and technology to solve the problem of “fake news”, while utterly ignoring their own starring role in driving readers into the arms of more disreputable news outlets Jeff Chiu has an interesting rumination in Newsweek on the way that Facebook tacitly encouraged the monster of …

The left lost the economic battle when the Berlin wall came down. No-one after that could take socialism seriously as a way of running an economy. Given the chance people living in a socialist society will vote with their feet. Of course there are those who are either too young …

Rising income and wealth inequality, consolidation of capital and influence into a handful of oligarchs, looming environmental catastrophe, dark storm clouds gathering over a newly nationalistic Europe. Sound familiar? From the way we talk about the issues of inequality, “breaking up the big banks,” and Syrian refugees, you’d think we …

1. The flag Many argued that the result of the independence referendum was irrelevant to the continuation of the name and flag for the current United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. If Scotland became independent, it had promised to retain a “Social Union” with the rest of the …

The vote for Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidential election victory seems to have wrongly convinced an entire army of snarling, leftist authoritarians that they are actually the virtuous defenders of liberalism Is anybody else getting mighty sick of the constant parade of left-wing, Big Government-supporting authoritarians suddenly rushing to cloak …

Many Scottish nationalists are impatient and permanently angry.  The hundreds of thousands who joined the SNP after losing the referendum in 2014 are both a blessing and a curse. Of course, they are better than the alternative. Remember when there was the idea that the SNP would somehow fade away …

The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost. Liberals and liberalism are on the retreat. The western world that has politically changed little in three decades has been sent a tremendous …

Consent for The Vow? Of course none of this would have happened had the UK political establishment remotely expecte Scotland to vote for independence or come anywhere close to it. Great Britain paid a heavy price for this naivety. Not for the first time, the desire to do what is …

So it is to be President Trump. Like many others, I didn’t foresee this, except that looking at the attendance at his rallies and those at Hillary Clinton’s, as well as the views expressed on my Twitter timeline, it was clear to me that he was always going to do …

Identity politics cultists created Donald Trump, President-Elect Edition, and from much of their subsequent complaining they haven’t learned a single thing from their mistake Blogger and polemicist Phil Hendren is in unsparing mood as he takes the identity politics Left to task for their role in provoking the alleged “whitelash” …

There is an odd concept in Scottish politics that things that are paid for by someone else are free. The SNP in particular has based much of its populism on providing these “freebies” to their supporters. We now have “free” prescriptions, “free” eye tests, “free” passage over the sea to …

Gender pay gap: It was never time to peddle the gender pay gap narrative – and it still isn’t. Its causes are too complex to be trivialised and temporal flexibility should be celebrated. Everyone has stumbled across the frequent headlines regarding the gender pay gap. Attacking its supposed persistence seems …

Consultation A legal process was followed for the referendum. Legislation by the UK Parliament was necessary as the devolution legislation specifically denied the Scottish Parliament the power to decide on independence, amongst other things. These were the “reserved matters” (section 29 of the Scotland Act 1998). There was consultation. A …

Throughout the course of history, class and status have been predominant factors in deciding many things – how well you are educated; how well you live; do you live in poverty, comfort or downright salubrium; what kind of job do you have or career prospects. In the United States, for …

The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov passed through the English Channel a couple of weeks ago, sparking questions about Putin flexing his muscles and the possibility of a new Cold War. It almost seems conventional to claim that there is going to be another period like we saw between 1945 …