Tag Archives: United Kingdom

It is time for a Believe in Britain campaign. Purpose In recent decades we have seen the growth of regional and national identities. There is the obvious growth of SNP and demands for Scottish independence, but also in Wales – Plaid Cymru now take part in UK-wide general election TV …

There is a reason I’ve been writing so much since the EU referendum and with perhaps a higher intensity than before. I returned from holiday in early July only to find one of my friends and colleagues in absolute bits. I remember that whole period of uncertainty leading up to …

Overall, this year’s Conservative Party Conference was a success. It was so wonderful to see the Conservative Party finally be united in support of Brexit. Guido Fawkes said it right when he said Theresa May’s Brexit speech was the speech many of us have hoped for decades to hear a Prime …

What is the name of your country? A simple question. To those citizens of the islands north of France there are now many answers – the United Kingdom, Scotland, the Republic of Ireland, Wales, Northern Ireland, England, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, Cornwall? There are in fact two …

The Brexit vote was about returning power to the British people. Remoaners can spin and cry and complain but polls confirm the British people understood what they were voting for: restoring sovereignty. It was a great victory for all of us who campaigned for Brexit and we here at the …

There are an awful lot of British citizens at the moment who are at best indifferent to the fate of our country or at worst hostile. The most vocal of these are Scottish nationalists, but they are not alone. There are Welsh nationalists too who somehow think that Welsh independence …

The UK is a country with people from many places. We have no choice but to try to get on with each other. Brexit may enable the UK Government to have greater control over immigration, but lots of people are going to continue to come to Britain from Europe and …

There is a pattern to conversations with Scottish nationalists online. At some point the same old arguments are repeated. It is these arguments above all that mean that there is very little common ground between Pro UK people in Scotland and those who would prefer that Scotland became a sovereign …

The SNP are planning another so called “National Conversation” on whether Scotland should leave the UK. It was supposed to happen this summer, but has been put off for a while because of the UK’s decision to leave the EU. It’s crucial therefore to realise that even if the UK …

This may be my last bit of writing for a while. I deliberately organised things such that I’d be away during the referendum. I shall not be paying much attention to the news. My guess is that most of the people in the part of Spain I like to go …

“For several decades now it has been fashionable to say that those so-called great men and women are just ephiphenomena, meretricious bubbles on the vast tides of social history. Well, I think the story of Winston Churchill is a pretty withering retort to all that malarkey. He and he alone …

Why are the SNP so popular? Some pro UK people think it’s because people in Scotland have taken leave of their senses. Opponents of the SNP sometimes describe their supporters as deluded fools. But as SNP support keeps going up, it becomes harder to maintain that over half the population …

There is an establishment in British politics. What I mean by this is that there is a political consensus, for I don’t want to personify the word ‘establishment’ in a way that is not true. It may be that at one time there was a group of powerful people sitting …

I began writing about Scottish politics as soon as it became clear that there was going to be a referendum on independence. This issue mattered to me in a way no other issue in politics ever had. I began writing even when the referendum was a long way off and …

There’s a moment in Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet that sums up where we are in Scottish politics at present. The novel describes the fictitious Jacobite Rebellion of 1765. The not so Young Pretender and not quite so Bonnie Prince Charlie has returned to Scotland for one last go. But there are …

Too many British citizens at the moment are focusing on what divides us rather than what unites us.