john-mclellan / English

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The festival has become a prisoner of a narrow way of thinking after ending Baillie Gifford sponsorship

The challenge facing Rishi Sunak is effectively insurmountable – and the SNP faces a similar struggle after 17 years of failure

With the SNP in a weak position, the Conservatives have a chance of doing well in Scotland

After Brexit led to the rise of Boris Johnson and reinvigorated the independence campaign, political rhetoric reached new heights in bitterness. Now there is a chance to drain the poison, but ‘fixing our NHS’ is easy to put on a political…

John Swinney's deputy Kate Forbes may have a battle on her hands if she prioritises economic growth over bureaucracy, yet more public spending and taxpayer-funded sinecures

Rishi Sunak may be on the point of acknowledging that economic progress is too slow to provide any kind of pre-election feelgood bounce for the Tories and stopping the boats is the impossibility it always was

Time and again, Humza Yousaf seemed unable to recognise the havoc the Greens were causing until it was too late

People who want the Scottish Greens out of government can take inspiration from the Trotskyite and Tory entryists who joined Labour in 2015 to vote for Jeremy Corbyn

​An intriguing item on last week’s Edinburgh Council agenda was an SNP amendment bemoaning a gap in finding a replacement for departing chief executive Andrew Kerr, suggesting a disaster akin to the ravens leaving the Tower of London.

​I’m not a church goer, so I shouldn’t complain that the Church of Scotland is set to close around a third of its kirks as congregations dwindle to nothingness.

The Prime Minister must move to protect the party, and not his own time in power, when it comes to the timing of the next election, writes John McLellan.

Householders face a hefty bill if they are required to insulate their homes and switch from gas to an eco-friendly heating system

The Court of Session ruling in favour of Glasgow’s low emission zone means Edinburgh’ Council will proceed with its plans for a similar city centre exclusion next June with greater certainty.

​A motion to today’s Edinburgh Council meeting calls for the authority to declare a housing emergency, which is intriguing because one reason for the acute shortage is the lack of land in the council’s own development blueprint.

​Politicians leaving their parties is nothing new, but with the defection of Edinburgh Eastern MSP Ash Regan to Alex Salmond’s renegade nationalist party Alba, the local SNP seems to have more departures than Waverley.

​Whether you want to live beneath a busy flightpath or not, thousands of future Edinburgh householders will have the airport for a neighbour.

​I have no idea if SNP MSPs have been “working with” the Scottish Conservatives in Holyrood, as Holyrood leader Douglas Ross claimed this week, but it depends on how the phrase is interpreted.

​Perhaps it’s so obvious that council officials should not mislead councillors when providing crucial information involving millions of pounds that it doesn’t need to be spelt out.

As the SNP and Labour struggle to connect with voters in parts of Scotland, the Conservatives could come through the middle