Christian Allard, upon entering the Scottish Parliament after another MSP resigned in 2013, was sworn in to the Parliament in both English and French. Joanna, Polish in Scotland -"I feel like a patient on the operating table…and Scotland is holding my hand saying everything's gonna be OK" pic.twitter.com/NQUqtFd4iO — Leo […]
Tag: Scotland
Where does the Brexit vote leave the cause of an independent Scotland in the EU?
tldr; “…it is easier for an independent Scotland to join the EU, than for the UK to leave it…” – thanks @odtorium on Twitter. But if you do want the detail, read on! Back in 2012, prior to the Scottish Independence Referendum, I wrote a blog post entitled Answering how […]
David Cameron EU Referendum Speech 2017 (find-replace from Aberdeen 2014)
Fast forward to 2017, and somehow David Cameron is still Prime Minister, and the UK (or rUK?) is facing its referendum on remaining in the EU. The polls show a clear lead for keeping the UK in the EU (the NO side), led by Cameron, until Nigel Farage calls upon […]
Scotland: Why independence after 300 years?
NOTE: this is a piece commissioned by the Norwegian online magazine Vox Publica, and was translated into Norwegian for that purpose. The Norwegian version can be found here: Skottland: Hvorfor uavhengighet etter 300 år? The English original is here with permission from Vox Pubica, but – unlike other posts on […]
Why I’m in favour of an independent Scotland
At the end of the televised Salmond-Darling debate I tweeted the following: The basic #indyref Q is this: will Scotland be better governed from Edinburgh or London? IMHO: Edinburgh. So #VoteYes. #ScotDecides — Jon Worth (@jonworth) August 5, 2014 With 77 retweets so far, it seems to have struck a chord […]
Time, and Scotland and the EU
Oh here we go again. It seems the question of how an independent Scotland could work in the EU will never go away. Rather than focusing on the EU’s Nobel Prize, BBC’s Hard Talk asked Barroso about Scotland and the EU in an interview today and, as before, Barroso reiterated […]
Answering how an independent Scotland would work in the EU is much more mundane than anyone seems to want to admit
Whether (and indeed how) Scotland would remain in the EU if it became an independent state has been an issue that has risen up the political agenda over the past few months. Theresa May has weighed into the debate today, stating that border controls would have to be imposed between […]
There’s probably an accountability problem in UK policing. But Policing and Crime Commissioners are not the answer.
For the last couple of days I’ve been trying to get my head around the proposal from the government to elect Policing and Crime Commissioners. This Guardian piece got me interested in the issue but offered more questions than answers, while a good discussion at Toby Harris’s blog spurred me on. The […]
Britain’s 6 election regions
This is not a post about election systems. It is a post about the pattern of election results in the UK general election on 6th May 2010. The thinking here is still rather vague, but I think there’s something to it. The best that UK political commentators ever seem to […]