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10 hours ago
  • 1 min, 8 secs
  • #politics
  • #theguardian.com
  • Summary

Two-fifths of SNP members on first preferences were convinced by a candidate who was highly critical of Nicola Sturgeon’s record, challenging the outgoing first minister’s model of progressive taxation and the speed of transition away from oil and gas exploration.

The resignation of the SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell – Sturgeon’s husband – in a damaging transparency row over membership figures brought other concerns into the open about imposition of HQ-approved candidates, poor handling of harassment complaints and member consultation.

There is now a clamour for reform, which Yousaf must heed alongside an overflowing in-tray in government – including huge pressure on the first minister’s £60bn annual budget, record NHS waiting lists and looming emissions targets.

8 hours ago
  • 1 min, 1 sec
  • #politics
  • #theguardian.com
  • Summary

Rishi Sunak’s proposed bill – which hopes to fulfil his promise to “stop the boats” – is part of a significant gamble which aims to pull off an unexpected Conservative win at the next general election.

Even if the plan fails, Sunak’s allies say, voters in crucial “red wall” seats and beyond will remember that the Conservatives were willing to take a hard line on immigration in the face of Labour opposition.

It faced criticism from both wings of Sunak’s own party in the hours before being debated on Monday, with MPs from the right receiving reassurances that the European courts will not be able to intervene to stop flights to Rwanda in future.

8 hours ago
  • 1 min, 12 secs
  • #politics
  • #theguardian.com
  • Summary

The first act of Humza Yousaf’s leadership of the SNP was to fire off a letter to Rishi Sunak demanding a section 30 order which, if granted, would trigger the mechanism to allow a second Scottish independence referendum to go ahead.

He has warned that the independence movement should not become stuck in a “quagmire” of process, but instead the party has to talk about policy, effectively restarting the yes campaign, pounding the pavements to try to win more undecided or novoters over.

Allies suggest that Yousaf, the first Scottish Asian and Muslim to become first minister, understands that to win over new voters, when most already hold fairly entrenched positions, he first has to convince them of the economic case.

15 hours ago
  • 1 min, 16 secs
  • #politics
  • #theguardian.com
  • Summary

The party’s embrace of hyper-globalisation, a hangover from Thatcherism, mass immigration and the hollowing out of national democracy as power drifted away to distant institutions has chimed with the graduate minority but alienated a larger majority of non-graduates, workers and pensioners.

By prioritising the new graduate elite, as Jeremy Corbyn learned in 2019, Labour was left heavily dependent on voters who are simply too narrowly concentrated in the cities and university towns to win large majorities in a first-past-the-post system.

As recent events in Scotland underline, pushing aggressively for policies such as the gender recognition reform bill (which, by December, only one in five voters supported and thought the Westminster government was wrong to block) can seriously backfire and have far-reaching consequences.

9 hours ago
  • 1 min, 3 secs
  • #politics
  • #theguardian.com
  • Summary

Steered by a person of colour, the SNP can make the case that it champions a pro-immigrant civic nationalism more eloquently than the Tories, who, despite being led by Rishi Sunak, stir ethnic nativism when it electorally suits them.

But Mr Yousaf wisely reached out to Ms Forbes in his victory speech, displaying in public an understanding that the SNP’s success rests on being a broad church that can straddle Scotland’s divides.

It is sobering to note that the pollster Sir John Curtice thinks that the SNP will eventually get a referendum: “If you want to save the union, you have to change public opinion, but making the case means explaining why Brexit is to Scotland’s advantage.” Good luck with that.

17 hours ago
  • 1 min, 20 secs
  • #politics
  • #theguardian.com
  • Summary

In a statement, the UNHCR said: “The legislation, if passed, would amount to an asylum ban – extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in the United Kingdom for those who arrive irregularly, no matter how genuine and compelling their claim may be, and with no consideration of their individual circumstances.”

During a two-day visit to the country’s capital, Kigali, Suella Braverman told a selected group of government-friendly papers that she was “encouraged” by the government’s “constructive” talks with Strasbourg to overhaul court injunctions.

But legal experts have questioned whether the Strasbourg court would weaken a mechanism intended to protect people facing an “imminent risk of irreparable harm”, with one saying an apparent plan to ignore ECHR injunctions would be a “significant and dark turning point in [the UK’s] history”.

#Politics

Scottish National party in no mood to party as contest finally ends | John Crace
9 hours ago

Scottish National party in no mood to party as contest finally ends | John Crace

50 secs

Summary

Sturgeon has been named in a damning report by a cross-party committee of the Scottish parliament for costing the government hundreds of thousands of pounds by declaring a preferential bidder for a ferry contract.

In his acceptance speech, he talked movingly of his pride in becoming the first Muslim leader of the SNP – or any UK political party, for that matter – but he was short on detail about what came next.

He assured Forbes and Regan there was a place for them within his government, though quite how they might feel serving a man whose competence they trashed was left hanging.

The SNP was already clouded by failure – under Humza Yousaf it could lose power altogether | Dani Garavelli
10 hours ago

The SNP was already clouded by failure – under Humza Yousaf it could lose power altogether | Dani Garavelli

1 min, 15 secs

Summary

Yousaf inherits a party where most of the big figures of the Sturgeon era – John Swinney, Jeane Freeman and chief executive, Peter Murrell – have departed, and one which faces a barrage of internal and external questions over its integrity and transparency.

The clamour for answers has become louder in recent weeks, thanks to the Holyrood public audit committee’s damning report into the CalMac ferries scandal – which revealed the waste of taxpayers’ money running into the millions – and the revelation that the party had misled the media over a 30,000 drop in membership figures.

Meanwhile, his predisposition to fight the UK government on its section 35 obstruction of the SNP’s gender recognition reform bill may be exactly what the progressives who voted for him want; but it will also rekindle the divisions that helped force his predecessor’s exit.

The Tories are still allergic to experts – just look at their laughing gas ban | Owen Jones
11 hours ago

The Tories are still allergic to experts – just look at their laughing gas ban | Owen Jones

1 min, 4 secs

Summary

A minority of users will be arbitrarily criminalised – in the words of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, which represents former police officers, for “possessing substances which have a lower harm rate than ‘legal’ highs such as alcohol”.

The most notorious example, of course, was the US prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s, which led to a quadrupling of deaths from “poisoned liquor”, while handing criminal gangs a monopoly over supply of a hugely profitable industry: robbery, theft and homicide soared as a consequence.

Yet what hope when the two biggest parties stick their fingers up at the experts: the last Labour government fired Prof David Nutt, its chief drug adviser, when he correctly argued that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

#Politics

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