Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Boris Johnson will not oppose a second independence referendum if the Scottish National party wins a majority in the election next month, Nicola Sturgeon has said, with some UK government ministers reportedly conceding it is an inevitability.
In an interview with the Guardian, Scotland’s first minister said: “If people in Scotland vote for a party saying, ‘when the time is right, there should be an independence referendum’, you cannot stand in the way of that – and I don’t think that is what will happen.”
Holyrood committee highly critical of Scottish first minister’s accounts of meeting with former mentor
Nicola Sturgeon has been accused of misleading the Scottish parliament over her dealings with Alex Salmond, but not knowingly, in a highly critical report by MSPs.
A specially convened Holyrood committee voted by a 5-4 margin to find the first minister had misled parliament over her accounts of a meeting with Salmond, her former mentor, in April 2018.
The army’s increased deployability and technological advantage will mean that greater effect can be delivered by fewer people. I’ve therefore taken the decision to reduce the size of the army from today’s current strength of 76,500 trade trained personnel to 72,500 by 2025.
The army has not been at its established strength of 82,000 since the middle of last decade.
Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, has said that Nicola Sturgeon is not “free and clear”, despite being exonerated by the independent adviser on the ministerial code, because the Scottish parliament’s committee has not yet published its report on her. In a statement he said:
The first minister has been given a pass because it has been judged her ‘failure of recollection’ was ‘not deliberate’.
I respect Mr Hamilton and his judgment but we cannot agree with that assessment. Nicola Sturgeon did not suddenly turn forgetful.
Campaigners believe Holyrood crisis may prevent women from coming forward to report harassment
The Salmond inquiry is having a significant impact on the momentum for change brought about by the #MeToo movement, according to experts and campaigners on workplace harassment.
They have told the Guardian the political crisis convulsing Holyrood has also had a “chilling” and “demoralising” effect on women in terms of their confidence in reporting unacceptable behaviour.
First minister was given legal advice about significant potential conflict of interest but case continued
Nicola Sturgeon faces calls to resign after previously secret legal advice and new witness evidence raised fresh questions over whether Scotland’s first minister misled parliament about the Alex Salmond crisis.
On Tuesday evening the Scottish government released confidential legal advice that showed its lawyers had warned Sturgeon and her most senior officials that evidence of a potentially unlawful conflict of interest inside the government was “extremely concerning” and a “very real problem indeed”.
Anas Sarwar said becoming Scottish Labour leader was the greatest honour of his life, and pledged to rebuild the party. ‘I know Labour has a lot of work to do to win back your trust,’ Sarwar said. ‘I’m sorry we haven’t been good enough.’
Sarwar, 37, faces a battle to save Labour from what polls suggest could be another humiliating Holyrood election in May. After losing every Scottish and UK election since 2007 to the SNP, including losing all its MEPs in the 2016 European elections, Labour has since gone through seven Scottish leaders. Sarwar will be its eighth
Sarwar wins snap election triggered by surprise resignation of Richard Leonard six weeks ago
Anas Sarwar has won the Scottish Labour leadership contest after a snap election triggered by the surprise resignation of Richard Leonard six weeks ago.
Sarwar, a former deputy leader of Scottish Labour backed by a majority of the party’s parliamentarians, defeated the other candidate Monica Lennon, a less experienced MSP backed on the party’s left, winning 57.6% of the vote.
Former first minister launches a stinging attack on the SNP during evidence to a Holyrood inquiry
Alex Salmond has suggested that weak and incompetent leadership of Scotland’s institutions could undermine the case for independence, in a bitter attack on his former allies and party.
The former first minister said huge deficiencies had been exposed in the running of the Scottish government and the Crown Office, as he blamed both institutions for forcing him to live through a “nightmare” during the last three years.
First minister says she will hold advisory referendum, whether Westminster consents or not
Nicola Sturgeon says she will hold an advisory referendum on independence if the Scottish National party wins a majority in May’s Holyrood elections, regardless of whether Westminster consents to the move.
Her party is setting out an 11-point roadmap for taking forward another vote, which will be presented to members of the SNP’s national assembly on Sunday.
Export firms point to post-Brexit delays around health certificates, IT systems and missing customs papers
Deliveries of Scottish seafood to the EU from smaller companies have been halted until Monday, 18 January, after post-Brexit problems with health checks, IT systems and customs documents caused a huge backlog.
Scottish fishing has been plunged into crisis, as lorry-loads of live seafood and some fish destined for shops and restaurants in France, Spain and other countries have been rejected because they are taking too long to arrive.
Nicola Sturgeon has warned MSPs she may have to introduce full lockdown measures across Scotland in the coming days to contain the faster-spreading Covid variant, which has already led to Wales bringing forward a countrywide lockdown from last Sunday and Northern Ireland announcing a six-week lockdown from Boxing Day.
Sturgeon used her weekly coronavirus statement to the Scottish parliament to tighten level 4 measures – the strictest of Scotland’s five-tier system of Covid controls and which all of mainland Scotland will enter from 26 December.
Eleven council areas in west and central Scotland, including Glasgow, will enter level 4 lockdown – the toughest level of coronavirus restrictions – from 6pm on Friday. The Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said she understood people's frustrations, but the prospect of a vaccine would mean returning to normal from spring. Non-essential shops are to close, along with pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and visitor attractions, but schools will remain open
More than 2.7 million Scots will face near-lockdown restrictions for three weeks after Nicola Sturgeon imposed the country’s highest level of Covid restrictions across the west of Scotland.
Following a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, Scotland’s first minister told MSPs that 11 local authority areas would enter level 4 – the highest of Scotland’s five-tier system of virus controls – from 6pm this Friday for a limited period.
It was less licence to kill and more dramatic licence. Donald Trump’s claim that the late Sean Connery assisted him in getting planning applications passed in Scotland fell apart quickly on Sunday when the chair of the planning committee said the James Bond star was not involved.
In a series of tweets, two days prior to the US election, Trump paid tribute to Connery, saying he was “highly regarded and respected in Scotland and beyond”. It was announced on Saturday the James Bond actor had died aged 90.
The idea of a normal Christmas this year with large family gatherings is “fiction” and people should be “digital-Christmas ready”, Nicola Sturgeon’s public health adviser has said.
Jason Leitch, the Scottish government’s national clinical director, who regularly flanks Sturgeon in her daily coronavirus briefings, told BBC Radio Scotland it was too early to say what the situation would be in late December. But Christmas would “absolutely” not be normal.
The Scottish government is facing a fierce backlash after Nicola Sturgeon announced a crackdown on indoor drinking in licensed premises, as one leading adviser said more needed to be done to ensure people were sticking to the rules in their own homes.
Scottish pub, bar and restaurant owners expressed anger and despair at “catastrophic” and “scapegoating” new regulations that are set to last for 16 days across the country, and people on online forums decried the “prohibition” that would result from harsher restrictions in central Scotland.
The public are not to blame for a resurgence of coronavirus and have been let down by the government, Keir Starmer has said in a televised address following the prime minister’s broadcast on Tuesday night.
The Labour leader’s remarks pointing the finger at government incompetence come in stark contrast to Boris Johnson’s address, where he appeared to suggest that “freedom-loving” Britons would be to blame if more draconian restrictions were applied.
Household visiting will be banned across Scotland, as Nicola Sturgeon moves to limit a key driver of coronavirus infections before the winter.
While Boris Johnson’s statement on Tuesday did not include direct limits on socialising, Scotland’s first minister said she would be extending nationwide from Friday the ban on household visiting already in place in the west of Scotland, where she said the limits were already having an impact on escalating infection rates.
Rachel Reeves, Labour’s Cabinet Office minister and an ally of Sir Keir Starmer, has rowed back on her earlier calls for Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard to “consider his position.” She made that suggestion in an interview this morning. (See 10.09am.) But in a tweet issued some hours later, Reeves reverted back to the normal protocol which prohibits Labour leaders at Westminster from commenting on Scottish Labour’s internal debates and problems.
As I said repeatedly this morning, matters about Scottish Labour are for Scottish Labour. Keir, Richard and the whole of the Labour Party are determined to rebuild trust in Scotland, and take on the SNP’s domestic record ahead of next year’s elections.
Some of the best journalism on the coronavirus crisis has come from BBC Radio 4’s More or Less, presented by Tim Harford. But Harford, like all of us, does occasionally make a mistake and, in an interesting Twitter thread starting here, he explains how he got it wrong when he said the risk of dying from Covid-19 was the same as the risk of dying from a bath.
1/ Time for an apology and a correction. Seems that every newspaper in the UK is (correctly) reporting that I said the risk of catching a fatal case of Covid-19 is about the same as the risk of having a bath. I did say that, but I was wrong. Details below.
3/ Now according to this piece – the author of which should be held blameless – the risk of taking a bath is about 1 in 3 million (0.3 micromorts). But that can’t be right. https://t.co/6DBj7rv97W
4/ The correct claim is that the risk of dying in the bath PER YEAR is 1 in 3 million – 20-30 deaths per year in a country of 67 million people. https://t.co/MSJ6eP7k6S
13/ Covid is a killer. It’s killed 65,000 people in the UK, including a dear friend of mine. Don’t let anyone tell you different. But the daily infection risk from Covid is now low. People shouldn’t be terrified to leave their own homes.