Unpublished letter to The Herald 28th December 2021. Dear Sir,There have been 21 general elections since 1945. I have voted in 18 of them since 1955, and assisted campaigns in every one of them. I've and/or campaigned and voted Labour in every one - a total of 21 in all. I campaigned for ILP and Labour (leafletting) as a boy in 1945, 1950 and 1951 elections, voted Labour in 13 elections...

This article was written by me for Bella Caledonia and first appeared on Mike Small's site.PREAMBLE This analysis is predicated on two assumptions -1. That an SNP-led independence-supporting government is elected on May 6th  2. That that government calls a referendum – UK-sanctioned or not – at some point during its term of office a referendum that delivers a simple majority of...

I've kept this as brief as possible - shorter than a blog but longer than a single tweet permits. I offer it in responses to the many questions I receive on Twitter and by email asking what I propose in the light of my criticisms of SNP strategy and my analysis in blogs and tweets, questions directed at me couched in typically, "What would you do?" or "What do you think Plan B should be?" forms.To...

The politics of the last last decade - politics of constitutional upheaval - have highlighted the problems a democratic electorate and indeed the entire population, young and old - franchised, unfranchised and disenfranchised - face in evaluating the messages delivered by politicians, experts and would-be influencers of all kinds, including  political spinners, commercial advertisers,...

Having heard Ian Blackford's magnificent speech and powerful arguments today in Parliament, I am now convinced that the decision by Nicola Sturgeon and SNP to oppose the deal was right, and that either abstention or voting for the deal would have been wrong. I don't regret devil's advocating the alternatives in yesterdays blog.

This follows my earlier vote context blog of this morning. My arguments are essentially those of  my tweets of yesterday. I have little to zero hope that SNP will - or indeed can - change their highly-publicised position on tomorrow's vote, and I am by no means certain that I am right and they are wrong. But I cannot let such a pivotal moment for Brexit and for independence pass without...

THE CONTEXT IN WHICH THE VOTE WILL BE TAKENQ. Why does the SNP, a Scottish Independence Party that campaigns only for Scottish constituencies and has no seats or presence in rUK countries maintain a presence in Westminster, the Parliament of the Union that their raison d'etre and prime goal demands they secure an exit from by independence? Why does it not adopt the Sinn Fein posture of...

What might now become known as Boris Day - the day a British Prime Minister with a wafer-thin majority made a grave political miscalculation, embarrassed the Queen and put both British democracy and the Union in jeopardy, has intensified the pressures on Nicola Sturgeon to take action on Scotland's independence. Her strategy to date has been to prioritise action to stop No Deal or even stop...

Click link - Letters: Do not let SNP hijack the Yes questionLETTER If I wanted to adopt the tone of Alan Fitzpatrick, I would say "Do not let the Unionist parties hijack the YES question." But I don't, because it's not a Yes question, it's a binary choice between Yes and No, and I want the Scottish people to make a clear-eyed, objective choice on a question that isn't pre-loaded to one...

I began a series of blog shortly after the EU Referendum 23rd June 2016, and the subject has dominated my blogging since. My growing disquiet with Nicola Sturgeon's response to Brexit is evident as the months and years progress. My current view is that the approach was misconceived, dangerous and has lost us two and a half crucial years in a doomed attempt to influence Westminster and a UK PM to...

The Lady in Yellow was worth more than the entire panel put together in her incisive comment sense, elegantly expressed ...

As the comedian on the panel said, being on recent Question Times (and watching them) is like being trapped in Groundhog Day - with sterile, circuitous, acrimonious and utterly unproductive...