Grant Thoms

Forty years after the initial Claim of Right for Scotland was signed and triggered the Scottish Constitutional Convention which in turn led to the re-establishment of a Scottish Parliament with devolved powers, 50 cultural heavyweights have united to publish a “manifesto for independence” –a prospectus of “guiding principles” on independence for Scotland.  The manifesto concludes: “It is our belief that the best option now open to the Scottish people is for Scotland to become an independent country. The alternative is to accept that Scotland’s fate would remain in the hands of others and that the Scottish people would relinquish their right to decide their own destiny.”   Read More →

Article 155.3 of the 1985 Act of Accession of Spain and Portugal was the Treaty law sub article that was supposed to guarantee that MEPs from the sub states of Scotland and Northern Ireland would never have to start doing too much defensive work for the fish that actually swam and insufficient work for our peoples in the political mainstream. It was the Treaty law that recognised the simple fact that our sub states didn’t have, and could never get, enough MEPs to do the two jobs of representing our peoples and defending our fishing interests in a Parliiament full of MEPs from landlocked places,Read More →

Well the dust is settling on the European elections and after effect for all parties is rippling through them. The new no-members, no-policies Brexit Party has failed to take a parliamentary by-election in a seat they romped home at European level, which suggests voters are clear that Farage is great for a protest vote but no one wants him or his party in Westminster. Labour’s humbling in Scotland to an all-time low in share of the vote has at least forced out arch-Brexiteer/Unionist Neil Findlay, and made his boss do a U-turn to support a second EU referendum and to Remain. A long realisation thatRead More →

It’s not long ago that a Leader column in the Scots Independent talked about Theresa May as akin to Harry Houdini. No matter how much she got tied in knots and chains, she somehow wriggles out. The last few weeks are a case in point. Just as commentators and opponents (both within the Conservatives and outwith) were predicting she would be out the door of Number 10 by Christmas, so the departure point was postponed to the first vote on her Deal. Well that has come and gone. Despite the biggest Commons defeat on any topic by a post-War government, Mrs May has arisen toRead More →

His Excellency Lubomir Rehak, the Amabassador of Slovakia to the Court of St James (aka Betty’s Club), gave a talk at the University of Stirling this week with the Provost and past Provost of Stirling in attendance with the civic regalia on show. The occasion of this talk was to mark the centenary of independence for Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of World War 1. He traced its modern history as an independent country with Czech Republic from 1919-39, skipped past the 1939-45 when Slovakia was a separate but crypto-Nazi state until the Iron Curtain fell in the aftermath of the second World War. Touching onRead More →

Fears of losing a pro-independence majority in the next Scottish Parliament elections can be put to rest in a new exclusive Scots Independent analysis published for the SNP’s Annual Conference and available online As delegates assemble, the SI has set out how a new two-vote strategy for the next Scottish Parliament elections in 2021 could return 96 pro-independence MSPs and a mould-breaking parliamentary majority of 31 based on the same share of votes from 2016. Both Labour and the Conservatives would face their parliamentary groups being cut in half with only the Liberal Democrats holding on to the bulk of their small group. The analysisRead More →

REVIEW: First Snow / Première neige It takes a little while to figure out why this drama is so titled. But then the main character, Isabelle, explains that the day after Quebec’s second referendum, which Federalists narrowly won, the ‘first snow’ of Winter landed on the deserted streets of Montreal. Fallout from the nuclear shock of a second defeat in fifteen years? Or a telling aide-memoire that you only get two chances in life. Make a mistake once but make it again and you’re a goner. So this is a dramatic piece co-written by Davey Anderson (yes, of City Limits fame), Phillippe Ducros and LindaRead More →

It was intended to make Britain Great again but the Brexit victory for Davis, Fox and BoJo is increasingly looking like being on a Pyrrhic scale unseen in modern electoral politics. Firstly, according to the official Leave campaign’s former Chief Executive, they have been found guilty by the Electoral Commission on four counts: made an inaccurate return of campaign expenditure is missing invoices and receipts failed to comply with a statutory notice exceeded its spending limit In a rare move, the Vote Leave campaign has gone public based on receiving a draft report from the Electoral Commission. Quite why Vote Leave it felt it hadRead More →

While the Indy movement rips into itself over whether to march or not, yet unites around the media bias (have to say BBC Scotland online news did report organiser’s and Police estimates of the number of marchers and it was top story for the afternoon), a lot of England went to the polls last Thursday. At first glance, the outcome of mayoral and council elections tells us very little. Tories wiped out the UKIP vote south of Birmingham to largely increase their overall representation in local government. Theresa May can breathe a sigh of relief that there wasn’t too much in the results to giveRead More →