A Race for Second Place?

18th December 2015 Comment Elections, parties & leaders

This time five years ago we were wondering whether the SNP could possibly win a second Holyrood term. Three polls published in the autumn of 2010 (and there were only three) all put Labour ahead of the SNP  – by between three and ten points. Far from anticipating the possibility of a SNP overall majority, […]


Scottish Labour’s Predicament

31st October 2015 Comment Elections, parties & leaders Policy issues

Scottish Labour are gathered this weekend in Perth in the hope of kick-starting a revival. The party certainly badly needs to do so. The hole in which it finds itself now is as every bit as deep as the one into which it fell in May when it was all but wiped out in the […]







How Popular is EVEL?

4th September 2015 Comment Cross border attitudes How England should be governed

Last year’s independence referendum might have settled – for the time being at least – the question of whether Scotland should be an independent country. But it left a legacy of two further debates and controversies. The first, instigated by Gordon Brown’s ‘vow’ in the final days of the referendum campaign, was about how much […]