Archive for Scotland
Campaign spending in Scotland: ouch, ouch and thrice ouch
Campaign spending by the parties for the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections: SNP: £1,141,662 Labour: £816,889 Conservatives: £273,462 Liberal Democrat: £176,300 The usual caveats about declared figures from the Electoral Commission apply: they only cover items that need to be legally declared and so do not capture the full range of activities. In addition, the campaign [...]
Boundary Commission for Scotland publishes its initial proposals
As ever remember that (a) these proposals are draft and (b) many a person has made a fool of themselves with crude projected vote figure calculations.
Andrew Reeves passes away
Many Liberal Democrats are in mourning this morning after the sudden death of a long-time colleague and friend, Andrew Reeves. He died of a heart attack last night. Andrew had a long career in the party, including working for Vince Cable in Twickenham and Lynne Featherstone in Hornsey & Wood Green and stewarding at party [...]
Tories run into a treble spot of Scottish bother
The Herald reports, THE Scottish Conservatives were plunged into a fresh crisis last night after a sacked election candidate said he had been denied natural justice by the party’s “dysfunctional” leadership. Malcolm Macaskill, who was dumped as the leading candidate in Glasgow last week, said his treatment would cost the party £1 million, because his [...]
Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate quits to stand as an independent
The Press Association reports: A top Liberal Democrat candidate for Holyrood has resigned from the party. Hugh O’Donnell was Liberal Democrat MSP for Central Scotland before the start of campaigning earlier this month for the Scottish Parliament elections. It is understood he was unhappy with the direction of the party in Scotland and the coalition [...]
Why hasn’t David Cameron sacked Bill Aitken?
At the start of the week Caron Lindsay blogged about the case of Conservative MSP Bill Aitken: The Tories are usually very supportive of victims of crime … Unfortunately, their sympathy for victims doesn’t seem to extend to the crime of rape. Shadow Tory minister for Community Safety in the Scottish Parliament Bill Aitken has [...]
Scotland goes to the polls
Scotland’s The Journal has a piece previewing the Scottish Parliament elections, along with a brief contribution from myself at the end. You can read the piece here.
Labour and the SNP’s judgement in Megrahi case completely wrong – Campbell
Lib Dem MP and member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee Ming Campbell has been commenting on the revelations about the Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi case: The Labour government completely failed to take into account the horrific nature of the crime, the consequences and the sentence imposed when it took the view that it could assist [...]
Government presses ahead with devolving more powers to Scotland
The coalition agreement’s commitment to devolve more powers from Westminster to Scotland was one aspect that helped it win strong support from Scottish Liberal Democrats as further devolution has been a long-running Lib Dem demand. Now the Scotland Bill is moving through Parliament to turn those commitments into action. The BBC reports: Scottish Secretary Michael [...]
Calls to end alphabetic ordering of candidates on Scottish local election ballot papers
At the last Scottish local elections there were 247 cases where candidates who appeared higher on the ballot paper got more votes than a candidate from the same party further down the list, and only 53 cases where the lower-placed candidate got more votes. This has prompted calls for changes in the way names are listed on ballot papers.
