NEVER has a political leader clocked up so many enthusiastic standing ovations during a conference speech for saying so little of any substance. By the halfway mark of the First Minister’s keynote address, there had been eight of them, with her ministers, resembling the old Soviet Politburo, faithfully clapping every…

HOW are historians likely to remember Sturgeonomics, assuming they do remember it, or indeed its creator? We’ve heard a lot about Trussonomics, after all, and the First Minister’s denunciation of the super-rich ‘laughing all the way to the bank’. In Scotland, the super-rich tend to be the quangocrats — who…

GLIDING serenely through the streets of the capital city, a government limousine is ferrying the First Minister to her latest Festival gig. Nicola Sturgeon has never had to worry about navigating pothole-ridden roads, as she can’t drive, so leaves that task to her chauffeurs. Nor does she bother with trains…

BY Nicola Sturgeon’s reckoning, Scotland is little more than a year away from another chance to break free from the shackles of the Union. So why do the First Minister and many of her cohorts, on the cusp of this breakthrough, look and sound as though they’ve already accepted defeat? …

THE complexity of the ScotRail compensation website for customers is somewhere between bewildering and utterly Byzantine. Just about everything short of your mother’s maiden name is demanded — and it’s not as if you’re guaranteed a pay-out to cover the full ticket price anyway. I tried to claim for a…

THE Tory leadership psychodrama has been an exhausting business, but at least Rishi Sunak offers some hope of steadying the ship. His first priority will be keeping the party together and pulling the government back from the brink after a period of extraordinary turmoil. And there’s no doubt his overriding…

THE Tory tax U-turn is the very definition of an open goal for the SNP, so it’s no surprise that it spent much of yesterday capitalising on it. Yet while it makes hay with the Kwasi climbdown, the Scottish economy remains in the doldrums after a series of punitive Nationalist…

YOU know we’re living in tumultuous times when John Swinney hails Scotland’s ‘central position within the UK’. But that is exactly what the Deputy First Minister said on Sunday — indeed he declared that our position was not just central, but ‘absolutely central’. It doesn’t get more unequivocal than that…

ON a historic day for British politics, Nicola Sturgeon had some unsolicited advice for the new Prime Minister — to learn from the SNP. ‘Make no mistake,’ Miss Sturgeon said, ‘we will continue to act, where others have not, to help people and businesses — and the UK Government needs…