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Political stories abound this week, both north and south of the English border.
Scotland: a postscript
Following up on my May 7 post on Scotland’s new First Minister John Swinney, he has given past and future leadership rival Kate Forbes MSP a prominent role in the Holyrood government.
Yet, in reality, how prominent is that role?
The casual follower of politics would think that it was an important one.
On Wednesday, May 8, Guido Fawkes reported (purple emphases mine):
Initial terms of the Swinney-Forbes deal have been carried out. John Swinney has been sworn in as First Minister today and has just appointed Forbes to replace Shona Robison as deputy First Minister. Forbes says:
I am deeply honoured to accept John’s invitation to be his deputy first minister. This is a moment of extraordinary privilege for me. I look forward to working with John and cabinet colleagues to deliver for the people of Scotland and build a better country.
Interestingly, Guido says that Swinney is scrapping the Holyrood post of Minister for Independence.
Hmm! Independence is the SNP’s raison d’être.
Wings Over Scotland had more, with a screenshot of a Holyrood document that says:
Kate Forbes, the youngest-ever Deputy First Minister, will take on the Economy portfolio and responsibility for Gaelic
In a debate that day, the House of Lords made much of Forbes’s responsibility for preserving the Gaelic language and enhancing its use across Scotland, but, overall, the Wings Over Scotland post told us that Forbes’s appointments were not that important in the grand scheme of things:
All he’s done is give Kate Forbes the smallest possible sliver of Shona Robison’s [Finance Minister’s] job and everything else has stayed the same.
As anyone remotely familiar with the Scottish Parliament will know, the economy is almost entirely reserved to Westminster.
Holyrood was never intended to exercise any significant control over it, so shaving it away from the Finance Secretary’s brief is a token gesture …
(It will however allow Forbes to oversee the creation of the unpopular, undemocratic “Green Freeports”, which were no part of the SNP’s 2021 manifesto.)
Furthermore:
… the office of Deputy First Minister is ceremonial – it’s very much the exception rather than the rule if the DFM ever becomes the actual FM.
Therefore:
So all we learned today is that Kate Forbes was pretty cheaply bought (like the other supposed contender for the SNP leadership), and that business will continue as usual. The appointment of Forbes will do nothing other than antagonise the Scottish Greens, and while we’re all in favour of that, it can only make the job of getting anything done in the next two years harder …
As we told you last week, then, get ready for two incredibly boring years of nothing much happening, which is exactly what Swinney was manoeuvered into place for.
One of the two Alba Party MPs in Westminster, Kenny MacAskill (a former SNP MP), analysed Swinney’s appointment as SNP leader and First Minister:
It was a coronation not a challenge for John Swinney, thus avoiding what he’d previously faced when leading the SNP. But even though he won comfortably then and would have done so again, it’s indicative of a malaise surrounding him.
For whilst he commands widespread respect, he neither enthuses the wider membership, let alone activists … Moreover, whilst experienced, stepping back and being intent on stepping down, that along with recent ministerial portfolio performances have taken much of the sheen off his political persona.
He’s not the continuity candidate, more the “circling the wagons” candidate. After Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation the task was to continue it and Humza Yousaf was the one chosen to do that, albeit only just sneaking in ahead of Kate Forbes. With his fall it became obvious that Sturgeonism was over.
But her legacy had to be protected, reputations defended and even positions maintained. Kate Forbes would have been a reset of the Party. Changes at HQ as well as in Government would have followed. A new direction would have been taken. That has all been cast asunder.
The New SNP oligarchy in a panic that Forbes might win dragooned John Swinney from his retirement. Hence why senior figures were out pleading for it or at home phoning to achieve it.
His victory will see them sleep easier, even if decline will continue. But as I used to say about Labour and it now applies to the SNP, those in charge don’t really care so long as they remain in situ. They’ll even take defeat before removal from control …
Plus ça change as they say.
Labour boast of two new MPs
Wednesday, May 8, was also a notable day in the House of Commons as Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer could display a further bounty of new MPs at PMQs.
One was the newly-elected Labour MP for Blackpool South. He replaces the Conservative MP Scott Benton, who had to stand down in the constituency, thereby triggering a by-election.
The second came as a shock: Natalie Elphicke, the Conservative MP for Dover. As I watched PMQs and listened to Starmer make the announcement, I thought, ‘Surely, some mistake’, but, no.
The Telegraph shared my bemusement:
It is hardly surprising that a Conservative MP for Dover would take issue with the Government’s failure to get to grips with the cross-Channel migrant crossings, which affect the Kent port perhaps more than anywhere else. But for Natalie Elphicke to cross the floor of the Commons and join Labour is positively bizarre.
Rishi Sunak may be struggling to “stop the boats” as he has promised – indeed 1,300 asylum seekers have made the journey since April 30 – but at least he is trying to arrest the flow. Labour pays lip service to tougher border controls but only because it knows voters are concerned about what is happening. The Opposition has no realistic or workable plan to deter the influx. We know this, not least because Mrs Elphicke has said so on a number of occasions.
She wrote in one newspaper: “Not only have Labour got no plan of their own to tackle illegal immigration, they simply do not want to.” She described the party leader as Sir Keir Softie because of his approach to the problem. “In trying to sound tough, [Labour] have revealed that they are anything but,” she added.
Elphicke never struck me as a wet Conservative. Furthermore, she is not standing as a candidate in the upcoming general election, still to be announced.
The Telegraph went through the same process as I did:
If she felt compelled to leave the Conservatives, she could have sat as an independent or joined Reform. Since she is not proposing to defend the seat at the next election there is speculation (which has been denied) that she may have been offered a peerage.
Whatever the case, Starmer made Rishi Sunak look weak, as this is not the first time in recent weeks that a Conservative MP has crossed the aisle. Dan Poulter, an NHS mental health physician, was another whose presence on the Labour benches made PMQs at the end of April:
Certainly her defection was timed to cause maximum damage to her erstwhile party, when she popped up behind Sir Keir just before Prime Minister’s Questions. Has there been some grubby deal? We should be told.
Guido posted Elphicke’s full statement as to why she joined Labour: their housing policy, although there is her dislike of Rishi Sunak, too. Most of us did not know that one of her main interests is social housing. Apparently, she grew up in a council house. Rumour has it that she will become a housing adviser to Labour.
Note that most of the following is likely to be Labour boilerplate:
Today I announce that I have decided to join the Labour Party and that I will sit in Parliament as a Labour MP.
When I was elected in 2019, the Conservative Party occupied the centre ground of British politics. The party was about building the future and making the most of the opportunities that lay ahead for our country.
Since then, many things have changed. The elected Prime Minister was ousted in a coup led by the unelected Rishi Sunak. Under Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives have become a byword for incompetence and division. The centre ground has been abandoned and key pledges of the 2019 manifesto have been ditched.
On housing, Rishi Sunak’s Government is now failing to build the homes we need. Last year saw the largest fall of new housing starts in England in a single year since the credit crunch. The manifesto committed to 300,000 homes next year – but only around half that number are now set to be built. Renters and leaseholders have been betrayed as manifesto pledges to end no fault evictions and abolish ground rents have not been delivered as promised.
The last couple of years have also seen a huge rise in homelessness, in temporary accommodation and rough sleeping with record numbers of children now in temporary accommodation, without a secure roof over their head.
Meanwhile Labour plan to build the homes we need, help young people onto the housing ladder and care about the vulnerable and homeless. That’s why I’m honoured to have been asked to work with Keir and the team to help deliver the homes we need.
We need to move on from the broken promises of Rishi Sunak’s tired and chaotic Government. Britain needs a Government that will build a future of hope, optimism, opportunity and fairness. A Britain everyone can be part of, that will make the most of the opportunities that lie ahead. That’s why it’s time for change. Time for a Labour Government led by Keir Starmer. The General Election cannot come soon enough.
Guido reminded us of how she got elected as MP in 2019 (red emphases his):
Eyebrows went very high when Elphicke was spotted sat on the opposition benches. It has now been confirmed. A PMQs stunt executed well…
Elphicke was elected Tory MP for Dover in 2019 after her MP husband Charlie was charged with three counts of sexual harassment. Her statement focusses on housing and Tory failures to deliver on housing manifesto promises. Who will it be next week?
Guido also posted a laundry list of the times Elphicke criticised Labour, including Sir Keir Starmer. Excerpts follow. This is the Natalie Elphicke I remember, the one who wanted action taken on the Channel crossings:
- Said Labour’s “latest relaunch completely ignored the small boats crisis“ …
- Wrote an op-ed for the Express titled: “Don’t trust Labour on immigration they really want open borders“…
- Said that “Labour back fewer and weaker border controls when it comes to illegal arrivals on our shores.“
- Attacked Labour for planning to force taxpayers to “pay asylum seekers nearly £20,000 a year“.
Housing came up only once in the list:
- Attacked Labour for achieving 100 times fewer council homes than the Tories.
Guido concluded:
Should make for a fun first meeting with her local Labour colleagues…
He posted about that very topic on May 9 and included the audio of the soundbite:
The internal fallout over Natalie Elphicke’s defection continues, with the Labour leader of Dover District Council, Kevin Mills, saying he had reacted with “horror” when he heard she was crossing the floor. Mills said on BBC Radio 5 Live that she should have stood down as an MP instead:
Well, I had to check yesterday wasn’t April 1st when I was told by officers…. [I was in] complete shock…I have to say to some degree of horror… Extremely concerned, I would say.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement from the leader of Elphicke’s local authority …
It did not seem as if Elphicke’s new fellow MPs thought much of her defection to their side, either.
Guido told us that, in 2022, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves had expressed something off-colour to Elphicke, a two-word imperative ending in ‘off’. Meanwhile, on May 8, 2024:
Guido isn’t sure every Labour MP is the biggest fan of defector Natalie Elphicke. Florence Eshalomi and Lloyd Russell-Moyle have got busy tweeting about how great the current Labour candidate for Dover is. Just in case Natalie tried to stand for Dover at the election…
UPDATE: A Labour source gets in touch over the defection: “What’s the point?“
Like the editorial writers at The Telegraph, veteran Guardian columnists were also at pains to understand the defection.
Polly Toynbee wrote that it was ‘a one-day-wonder’:
No, no, this is an uncharacteristic mistake. Keir Starmer’s welcoming hand on Natalie Elphicke’s shoulder is a picture his enemies will relish as proof he was never really a Labour man. Where was the steadying hand of a Pat McFadden or Sue Gray to make him stop and think: just say no?
It is easy to see how, in the hectic frenzy of 24-hour Westminster, the astonishing gift of the most comically unlikely MP crossing the floor at PMQs looked irresistible. The wow factor was a great theatrical coup, a sugar-rush of triumph. God knows what’s in it for her; some revenge for an unknown slight? Or a last-minute bid to dissociate herself from her nasty party? Maybe she’s just part of the great chicken run of “gissa job” Tory MPs clambering off before the Tory ship goes under.
The notion that she’s defecting because Rishi Sunak has abandoned the centre ground, as she claimed, is laughable. She belonged to the Common Sense faction of Conservative MPs, one of the most rightwing cabals of culture warriors, chaired by Suella Braverman’s svengali, John Hayes, who would topple over if he moved any further right: fellow members include Jonathan Gullis, Edward Leigh, Andrew Rosindell, Danny Kruger and, formerly, Lee Anderson, until he scarpered to Reform. If she’d brought that whole crew over to crash his party, would Starmer have embraced them too?
Policy discipline has been the hallmark of Starmer’s phenomenal revival of the party: ejecting anyone off-message, imprinting his brand on all candidates duly paraded, word-perfect, in recent byelection victories. Neil Kinnock, who expunged Militant, knows a thing or two about defining a party: “We’ve got to be choosy,” he told The Week in Westminster on BBC Radio 4. “It’s a very broad church but churches have walls and there are limits.”
Glee over Elphicke plainly abandoned any intellectual definition of what it is to be “Labour”. Where was Elphicke’s line-by-line recantation of all her past atrocious sayings? Kate Osamor was given back the whip super-fast on the same day: she had long apologised for linking Gaza with the Holocaust …
This is a one-day-wonder: Elphicke is not standing again and will be as forgotten as Christian Wakeford (if the name escapes you, he defected to Labour in 2022). Dr Dan Poulter’s hop across the floor last month drew a loud raspberry from inside the NHS. He said he could no longer look his NHS colleagues in the eye, after years, even as a health minister, of voting through the most brutal NHS funding cuts ever. But he’s the kind of Tory penitent Labour can accept, while Elphicke is off the scale …
This is a one-day stumble for Keir Starmer. Elphicke will vanish into pub-quiz land. But, as rumours abound, other jumpers may follow: her admission to the party has set the lowest bar: if not her, can anyone be turned away?
In the flutter of excitement, Labour high command momentarily forgot they are the masters now (almost). They need no defectors: all that matters is defecting voters, and I doubt Elphicke brings many. Dignity matters, and it devalues Labour membership to accept the dregs of the defeated party opposite. Starmer may regret this precedent in tough times ahead when trying to impose policy discipline on any future Labour mavericks.
However, John Crace was less sure about this being a ‘one-day-wonder’ event but agrees that this could come back to haunt Starmer:
Defections tend to be one-day wonders. An awkward photo op with your new party leader. Thirty minutes in the limelight at prime minister’s questions. And then oblivion. Seldom to be seen or heard of again.
… Dan Poulter. He was barely seen in the Commons when he was a Tory MP. Don’t expect that to change much as he serves out his time as an opposition backbencher before stepping down at the coming election.
Labour must have been hoping that Natalie Elphicke would follow a similar trajectory. Another embarrassing day for the government. Tories wondering if the game is up if Rishi Sunak can’t even keep the rightwing headbangers in his party on side. It hasn’t quite panned out like this. The reverberations of Nat’s defection have continued into a second day. And the embarrassment is almost all Labour’s …
Normally it’s the Tories who crash and burn on these occasions. Today it was Labour’s turn.
A totally self-inflicted wound. Starmer could have told Elphicke: “Thanks, but no thanks. We appreciate your offer but don’t think you’re quite the right fit. Why don’t you sit as an independent for a while to process your feelings about the Tories properly? Maybe join Labour in six months’ time when you’re ready.” Then the party might have claimed the moral high ground and still banked the win. Instead, it got greedy.
Crace ended by pointing out how tired Conservative MPs and the Government look these days:
Meanwhile, almost nothing was happening in the Commons. It seldom does these days. The government has almost given up doing anything. Just wasting time before the election. Even Penny Mordaunt [Leader of the House] looks washed up. She used to use her weekly Thursday session at business questions as her personal leadership campaign. To remind Tory MPs what they could have had. Might have yet. But today, even she looked beaten. Flat. Her jokes died on her lips. Her heart wasn’t in it. This must be the end of days.
He is not wrong. The debate schedules have been appalling light over the past six months, as if MPs had solved every issue and could go home early.
When MPs from all parties point this out to Penny Mordaunt, she claims she is under constraints when it comes to scheduling debates. Hmm.
But I digress.
ConservativeHome‘s Henry Hill wrote an opinion piece for The Telegraph in which he says Natalie Elphicke is under a misapprehension if she thinks Labour will solve the housing crisis:
… she has previously written for ConservativeHome in support of rent freezes, and said that the only good types of occupancy are owner-occupation and social housing – not the “private renting experiment”.
Now I’m a fanatic on housing. But it’s important to note that none of these proposals address the fundamental need to actually build millions of houses. It’s all more state-assisted borrowing, which will only inflate prices further, with state tenantry as the increasingly-necessary alternative.
It has always been an open question whether Labour will actually live up to its big talk on the housing crisis. If Starmer is drafting Tory Nimby’s to work on his policy, that isn’t a good sign.
It seems that only Elphicke’s constituents did not mind that she had switched parties. She’s local and they like her. The Guardian reported:
The news spread quickly in Dover, with most people who spoke to the Guardian already aware that their MP had defected. Voters from across the political spectrum shared their surprise at the move, yet many were positive about Elphicke, whom they consider a linchpin of the community.
Mae Montenegro, 50, said she would vote for Elphicke regardless of her party affiliation as she is an active member of the community, including attending her local church, St Paul’s, where she recently organised an anniversary celebration for the priest. “It’s her decision,” she said. “I want a person who represents the community, not the party.”
Robert Hewer, 74, had voted for Elphicke previously and would vote for her again, as her hardline views on immigration reflect his perception that “immigration is eroding our culture”.
“She’s a people person, she supports the local community,” he said. “She’s anti-uncontrolled immigration, which is a big issue in Dover and the UK. I can understand her move because the Conservatives haven’t done what they promised. They’ve let her down and she’s making a point.”
A former miner, Hewer was brought up to vote Labour, but switched to the Conservatives a decade ago in support of Brexit. He would consider returning to Labour in future, though he considers Keir Starmer “too woke”.
This would not deter him for voting for Elphicke again, however. “I would vote for her, because I know her,” he said. “Know the devil you’re getting into bed with.”
Alwyn Conway, 80, agreed that Elphicke had done “good work” in the area, and shared Hewer’s apprehension about a Labour government. While he felt it was a matter of “the devil and the deep blue sea”, he added that “with the Conservatives you know where you are. It might be out of the frying pan and into the fire”.
But Conway said he may still vote for Elphicke in the general election: “If Natalie’s changed over and she’s of the opinion of stopping boats, that could swing me in her favour. I vote for the person, not the party.”
Of course, that is a moot point, because she will not be running for re-election.
Let’s end with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Elphicke’s defection clearly rattled him on Wednesday, as evidenced at the opening of PMQs.
Guido provided a video clip and a brief commentary:
Fresh off the news that Tory MP Natalie Elphicke defected to Labour, PMQs got off to a testy start. Rishi Sunak hit out at the “virtue signalling lawyer from North London“, to which Starmer fired back with an even more scathing attack: people “know there’s nothing behind the boasts, the gimmicks, the smug smile. He’s a dodgy salesman, desperate to sell them a dud”. Strong words…
Guido’s sketchwriter Simon Clark later explained that Rishi was unaware of Elphicke’s move until just moments before he went to the despatch box and pointed out that the PM’s initial terseness disappeared as PMQs went on. What’s more, the Conservatives had taken quite an electoral beating in council elections on Thursday, May 2:
Did the Tory whips know? No one knew. In the hubbub of pre-PMQs, the Leader of the House went to give the news to Rishi standing at the Speaker’s side. His most vociferous Conservative had defected in the last 90 seconds – the unkindest cut of all.
Rishi is getting seriously short of members. And quite short of Members. But what a brave face he put on it …
In defeat – in the aftermath of “the biggest by-election swing in history” as LOTO put it, the PM behaved with a dignity and a posture that was entirely admirable, and even amazing … He congratulated all former councillors, PCCs and mayors, saying, “I hope his new ones do him as proud as I am of all of mine”.
Keir’s script was less gracious but no doubt more pleasing to his supporters. “He’s lost 1,500 Tory councillors, half of his party’s mayors, and a leadership election to a lettuce.” It took a full second for his deputy to realise her leader had made joking and she almost made laughing. “How many times does the public, and his own MPs need to reject him before he takes the hint?”
Rishi replied more joshing than jousting, to remind him of Tony Blair’s advice, that “He can be as cocky as he likes about local elections, but in general elections, it’s policy that counts.”
Labour laughed and were probably right to do so. If policy counted, the Tories would be 20 points further behind the 20 they currently are.
However, Starmer managed to land a zinger when Rishi asked him a question. For those unfamiliar with the format, Starmer asks the questions, and Rishi answers:
He said, What about that Sadiq Khan? He believes there’s an equivalence between the terrorist attack by Hamas and Israel defending itself. So will LOTO take this opportunity to … (etc and so forth).
It set Keir up for a repartee we have grown to know and love: “He’s getting ahead of himself before a general election, asking me questions.”
Oh, dear. It’s not the first time that’s happened between the two and probably won’t be the last in the months that follow.
Last week, my entries concerned Scottish politics, namely the SNP’s (see here, here, here and here).
With a swift resolution within a week of Humza Yousaf’s resignation as Party leader and First Minister, John Swinney has succeeded him in both positions.
John Swinney is a household name in Scotland, for better or worse.
On Monday, May 6, The Guardian reported on his return to the helm (emphases mine):
Few people understand the internal dynamics and historical loyalties of the Scottish National Party better than John Swinney, who joined the party at 15 and quickly rose to become national secretary by his early 20s.
… at 60, Swinney is a generation older than his predecessor, Humza Yousaf …
The man who promises to unite the SNP after a year of extraordinary upheaval – including the arrest of senior figures in Police Scotland’s investigation into SNP finances, successive policy rows and the end of the governing partnership with the Greens – was born in Edinburgh in 1964, where his father owned a car repair garage.
After studying politics at the University of Edinburgh, he pursued a career in finance before entering first the Westminster parliament and then Holyrood, as one of the first intake of MSPs in 1999. His presentation is often described as bank managerial, but in person his wry humour and comradely decency is much more in evidence. He is an active member of the Church of Scotland, and Labour’s Jim Murphy – who was Scottish secretary at the time – once joked: “There’s nobody in Scotland who doesn’t like John Swinney.”
Really? Okay …
The article continues:
Though firmly on the gradualist wing of the party when it comes to Scottish independence, he remained close to the more radical Alex Salmond, taking over after Salmond unexpectedly quit as leader in 2000, until Swinney resigned in 2004 after party critics moved against him following a poor European elections result.
He went on to serve as an unstintingly loyal deputy to Salmond’s successor, Nicola Sturgeon, surviving a vote of no confidence in 2021 after a row over the government providing its legal advice to the special Holyrood committee set up to examine the handling of harassment complaints against Salmond.
Last year, after Sturgeon’s home was searched and she and her husband, Peter Murrell, were arrested as part of the police investigation into SNP finances, Swinney chaperoned her around the Holyrood parliament, standing by her side as she spoke to reporters.
Swinney stepped back a bit last year in Holyrood, but now he is once again ready for a leadership role:
When Sturgeon quit last spring, Swinney also announced his own return to the backbenches after 16 years as a cabinet secretary, expressing his desire to spend more time with his wife, Elizabeth, who has lived with multiple sclerosis for many years and with whom he has a son.
In his leadership acceptance speech on Monday, Swinney admitted he had been “physically and mentally exhausted” at that point but said that 12 months later he was “rested and ready”.
… saying he intended to lead the party into the 2026 Holyrood elections and beyond.
We shall see. I expect more of the same incompetence.
Election news dominated British headlines on Friday, May 3, 2024 and will continue to do so over the weekend.
In Scotland, news concerned an SNP leadership contest following Humza Yousaf’s resignation on Monday, April 29 (see here, here and here).
South of the border in England, the Conservatives had a local wipeout at Thursday’s council elections.
Let’s look at both.
Scotland: more of the same
There seems to be little appetite for another SNP leadership election in just over a year.
The hapless John Swinney, a past Deputy First Leader, is the fourth ‘continuity candidate’ as the MSP and former finance minister Kate Forbes has decided not to run.
On Thursday, May 2, Guido Fawkes gave us the short version of the Scottish situation (red emphases and italics his):
UPDATE: On Kate Forbes, Swinney says: “I want her to play a significant part in the team” in a“very involved, senior position”.
UPDATE II: Kate Forbes announces she won’t stand for leader, saying:
I have concluded that the best way to deliver the urgent change Scotland needs is to join with John Swinney and advocate for that reform agenda within the Scottish Government. I can therefore today announce that I will not be seeking nomination as the next SNP leader. John will therefore have my support and endorsement in any campaign to follow.
Well, that settles that.
That day, The Times told us ‘Why Kate Forbes pulled out of the SNP leadership race’ (purple emphases mine):
The sun was streaming through the window of Kate Forbes’s Edinburgh flat as she sat with her family and watched John Swinney outline his pitch to be first minister.
By that point the deal between the pair was already done and she knew she was not going to stand. She just needed to hear it from him …
That confirmation, alongside his pledge to prioritise economic growth and listen to alternative voices across the party, was what she needed to make her decision final.
Swinney laid it on thick, about Forbes …
“She is an intelligent, creative, thoughtful person who has much to contribute to our national life and if elected I will make sure that Kate is able to make that contribution,” Swinney, 60, said of Forbes.
… and himself:
“And that will be part of a united team that draws together our whole party, which given my deep, deep devotion to the SNP I think I am best placed to put together.”
Forbes said later:
… the best way to deliver the urgent change Scotland needs is to join with John Swinney and advocate for that reform agenda within the Scottish government.
She also tweeted:
Forbes did not make any media appearances because of a family emergency:
… as she was making her final decision on Wednesday evening her daughter, Naomi, had a minor accident which led to the pair having to visit Edinburgh’s Sick Kids hospital.
That institution used to be the Edinburgh Children’s Hospital. The hospital administration changed the name to ‘Sick Kids’ to make it more user-friendly. I have news for them: no one, including a child, gets admitted to a hospital if he or she is well.
The article continues, telling us about what has been going on behind the scenes this week:
Her decision was the culmination of days of backroom talks through intermediaries, the ultimate conclusions of which had already filtered through into government.
Civil servants were told on Wednesday to prepare for a new first minister being sworn in next week. This suggests there was knowledge that a contest to be SNP leader was unlikely and Swinney would be the only person on the ballot at noon on Monday when nominations close.
That doesn’t mean that getting to this point has been easy. Swinney and Forbes had a face-to-face conversation on Tuesday aimed at ensuring there was understanding and respect between the pair.
Other conversations took place between two MPs serving as links between Swinney and Forbes. Sources said that Ian Blackford, the former SNP Westminster leader, and Stewart McDonald, the former defence spokesman at Westminster, played a role as go-betweens for each camp.
Discussions between proxies for Swinney and Forbes started tentatively on Sunday — before Humza Yousaf had even announced his resignation — and intensified throughout Wednesday.
Not only was time an issue but so was money:
It is also understood that it could cost the party up to £180,000 to run an election, an additional strain that it does not need given it is currently struggling to attract cash.
Not surprising, considering no one knows what happened to the £600,000 in SNP donations, missing since at least 2021.
I question the ethics of Forbes remaining a member of the SNP, given their crooked revelations that have come to light over the past three years.
The consensus is that Forbes can run again in the next leadership contest:
… she lives to fight another day and avoids a potentially bruising general election with Labour projected to win more seats than the SNP in Scotland.
“It is in her interests to play a slightly longer game,” said a source.
More of the same.
The Spectator‘s and the Telegraph‘s Fraser Nelson said that she has brought Christianity back into political conversation, ‘Kate Forbes has still won a significant victory — for religion in public life’:
It’s not just that she was born into the Free Church of Scotland: she converted into it, leaving the more liberal Presbyterian church. She disagrees with gay marriage, sex outside of marriage and even women [religious] ministers. She’d uphold everyone’s rights, she says – but her faith is real. And far more important to her than politics.
In 2023:
Forbes went on to almost beat Humza Yousaf, winning 48 per cent of the vote. She decided not to run this time and instead cut a deal with John Swinney, who will be seen as a caretaker first minister with her as the heir apparent.
She has unabashedly defended her faith:
A Cambridge graduate, appointed Nicola Sturgeon’s finance minister at the age of 29, Forbes has long stood out. Brought up in India to missionary parents, she first followed the normal pattern of dodging questions about her faith.
Three years ago, she changed tack. “To be straight, I believe in the person of Jesus Christ,” she told an astonished Nick Robinson [BBC presenter]. “I believe that he died for me, he saved me. And that my calling is to serve and to love him and to serve and love my neighbours with all my heart and soul and mind and strength.”
Many politicians think this, but none would dream of saying so in public – not in such language. Talking about religion can only alienate and damage your prospects, it’s argued: faith needs to be kept as a dirty secret. Not just in politics but the workplace or any public space. You’ll be accused of bigotry and it’s best just to keep quiet.
This is the quiet-Christian consensus that Forbes wanted to challenge with her campaign, even if it cost her the race. But in the end, she ended up drawing more admiration than condemnation …
Forbes may well never end up as first minister and, if she does, the SNP may still be doomed. But she has proven an important point: it’s OK, now, to do God.
There’s a hymn sung in her church about the need to “dare to be a Daniel / dare to stand alone. Dare to have a purpose / dare to make it known.”
Adding the word “don’t” in front of each of these lines would have seemed useful advice to any politician in recent years but it seems Forbes has written a new rule book. She won’t be the last to use it.
Well, we’ll see. As of now, Forbes is still an outlier, albeit a welcome one.
The Conservatives’ historic losses
Moving on to England, the trend in the emerging election results from Thursday — as I write in the afternoon, final counts are not in — shows that Rishi Sunak and his Conservatives are in deep, deep trouble with losses of 122 councillors thus far:
Guido Fawkes told us that Conservatives were downplaying what could happen, e.g. in the London mayoral race:
The main Conservative talking point of the past 24 hours has been that London is looking closer than thought …
Really? There was no campaign. The Conservatives did not support their candidate, Susan Hall, at all!
Guido adds:
… it seems very unlikely Susan Hall will ultimately beat Sadiq Khan clinching a third term.
Too right.
Here’s another Conservative delusion that Guido reported:
The Tories are pushing hard that these are ‘mid term’ results so are irrelevant for a general election – an odd choice of defence given it’s the end of the parliamentary term and a general election year. Whether Sunak is safe is unresolved…
The ‘mid term’ local election was in 2021!
Guido explained Thursday’s elections:
Voters head to the polls for local elections today to elect eleven mayors, 2,600 councillors, 37 police and crime commissioners, as well as a new Blackpool South MP. The results will be significant, setting the mood music for the upcoming general election – and how internal Tory politics plays out over the summer …
Labour is streaking ahead by a solid and consistent 20 points in the national polls. On that basis, it is fair to say the Tories are going to struggle almost everywhere …
The government is spinning hard that winning just one of the Tees Valley or West Midlands mayoralties would be an incredible success. Both are in doubt in the final polling. Labour is managing down expectations on both – a sign that they are attempting to increase the damage should the Tories lose them. A mayoral wipeout would trigger major incoming flak for Team Sunak – but holding Tees Valley alone (Ben Houchen is the least Sunakite of the candidates) may not help them much either …
Notably, all the Tory mayoral candidates have distanced themselves from Rishi in their campaigns. The media has lost track of what is happening in Blackpool South, where Reform could well beat the Tories into second place. The results will drip out over the next few days. Watch out for some neck breaking spin …
On Friday morning, Guido told us:
… things are (as expected) bleak for the Tories …
The remainder of the picture is basically a total clean up for Labour – gaining Hartlepool, Thurrock, Redditch and even deeply formerly Tory Rushmoor. The Tories are pointing to Oldham, where Labour lost overall control of the council – but that is due to local factors over Gaza. A loss of control over the London narrative – with Tory briefings widely quoted overnight as saying Susan Hall would win – now seems unlikely. Plenty of big results still to come in though…
… Whether Sunak is safe is unresolved…
Then there is Richard Tice’s Reform Party. So far, its potential star candidate, Nigel Farage, has shied away from saying whether he will stand as a candidate in the next general election which must be held by January 2025 at the latest.
As of Thursday morning, Reform’s popularity is rising, according to a YouGov poll. Guido reported:
Though it’s no surprise the Tories are sinking in the polls, perhaps the bigger news is that Reform are on 15%, just 3 percentage points away from the Tories. Though they’re only fielding 300 candidates in the locals, they could pip the Tories to second place in the Greater Manchester mayoral race and in Blackpool South …
Imagine the polls if Nigel stood…
The Blackpool South by-election results are final. Scott Benton, the Conservative MP who won overwhelmingly in 2019, had to stand down a few weeks ago. Everyone predicted a return of the constituency to Labour, and so it proved.
Note Labour’s historic majority albeit with a turnout of only 33% and how close the Reform candidate came to the second place Conservative one:
Guido told us:
… Blackpool South has been convincingly retaken by Labour after Scott Benton’s implosion, with a massive swing of 26.3 points. That’s the third biggest swing from Conservatives to Labour in post war election history. Reform were within a whisker (117 votes) of putting the Tories into third place. Reform has performed strongly elsewhere so far where they are standing…
Is it that everyone suddenly loves Labour or the Liberal Democrats? No. It seems that people who have voted Conservative in the past stayed at home. One commenter on a Guido post has probably nailed it with this analysis:
The swing was from Conservative to Stay at home.
The Labour vote dropped by 12 % over their 2019 vote.
The Conservative vote dropped by 80%.
The Reform vote increased by 56.5% over the Brexit party vote.
Did Not Vote increased by 57.5% over 2019.
A swing from Conservative to Stay at Home lets Labour in.
The challenge for Reform is to persuade the 25% of the electorate who stayed at home this year, but didn’t in 2019 that there is an option they can vote for. Then there’s the 45% that didn’t bother in either, and had no faith in the system at all.
The challenge for the psephologists is to start acknowledging the underswell of disgust in the whole system that is swirling around the country.
A lot of those who voted Conservative in 2019 did so because a) Boris Johnson was such an effective campaigner as the face of Brexit and b) they trusted that their voices would be heard once more as happened in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Since then — admittedly, the pandemic (not a Boris speciality) did not help — the status quo returned, beginning in 2021, and those voters have once again lost faith in the Conservatives.
Does Rishi Sunak care?
Probably not. He can leave the UK for California — or his father-in-law’s country, India. Either way, everything will come up roses for him. The rest of us will have to bear up under Labour’s rose.
Yesterday’s post examined the outgoing Scottish First Minister’s — Humza Yousaf’s — time in Holyrood.
The one before that discussed his resignation as First Minister.
Today’s will look at questions surrounding his personal life.
However, before we get to that, let’s look at the motions by Scottish Conservatives and Labour for a vote of no confidence as well as Kate Forbes’s chances of becoming the next First Minister. She ran against Yousaf in the 2023 leadership election and lost by a Brexit margin: 48% to 52%.
No confidence motions unsuccessful
Neither motion for a vote of no confidence on Tuesday, May 1, 2024 succeeded.
The Scottish Conservatives put forward one of no confidence in Humza Yousaf as First Minister.
Scottish Labour’s concerned the SNP government as a whole.
The Times told us that, with Labour’s motion, the Greens saved the SNP’s day (purple emphases mine):
Scottish Labour’s attempt to unseat the Scottish government has failed after the Greens voted against a confidence motion.
The Green co-leader Patrick Harvie said that the motion was “chaos for the sake of chaos” as his party voted against it. The motion was defeated by 70 votes to 58 …
If the motion had passed, the entire Scottish government would have been forced to resign, with Holyrood given 28 days to elect a new first minister before an election was called.
Yousaf has admitted in a BBC interview that he “paid the price” for the way he ended the SNP’s power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens. Speaking for the first time since announcing his resignation, the outgoing first minister said that ending the agreement was the right decision.
“But I have to acknowledge the manner in which I did it caused great upset and that’s on me,” he said.
Yousaf said it was clear to him that the SNP’s power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens was “coming to an end anyway” but said he regretted the manner in which he ended it.
At the confidence vote at Holyrood, the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, said Scotland that was “crying out for change” as he urged MSPs to back his motion …
Yousaf said he was proud of the SNP’s record in government, telling MSPs he had not “heard a single positive idea” from Labour in his 13 months in the top job …
But it was Harvie who put the final nail in the coffin of the motion, when he said: “This proposal portrays the true motives of others: chaos for the sake of chaos.”
He added: “Let’s just consider what would happen if it passed; a month to seek another government, then an election around the time that voters around the country were heading off on their summer holidays, a new government formed perhaps by August, leaving just a little more than a year and a half until the legally required dissolution for the 2026 election” …
Opposition members also used the opportunity to take aim at the potential next occupant of Bute House. Sarwar pointed to reports suggesting that Kate Forbes could struggle to appoint ministers and described John Swinney as “the finance secretary that broke the public finances and the worst education secretary in the history of the Scottish parliament”.
One has to hope that John Swinney is not the next First Minister.
Kate Forbes’s chances of succession
Most ordinary Scots and most Britons who know about Scottish politics think that Kate Forbes would bring common sense and stability to the SNP government.
During the 2023 campaign, her detractors complained that she, a thirty-something married mother, was a Wee Free, a member of a conservative Presbyterian breakaway denomination popular in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The same issues are coming up again.
One of my readers, dearieme, sent me a link to an April 30 editorial by Kenny Farquharson in The Times, excerpted below:
Kate Forbes is unfit to be first minister of a 21st-century Scotland. A 1920s Scotland, maybe. A 1950s Scotland, perhaps. But not Scotland in 2024.
Amid the machinations over who replaces Humza Yousaf as leader of the SNP, we need to keep this thought uppermost in our minds. It can’t be Kate …
What message would a Kate Forbes first ministership send? That single mothers are sinners? That sex outside marriage is wrong? That ghouls should be allowed to stand in the street outside abortion clinics muttering incantations? That most of us in secular Scotland are going to hell?
What comfort could be drawn from a Forbes first ministership by gay couples, given that this fundamentalist Christian politician has said she would not have voted for equal marriage? How secure would gay people feel about their hard-won civil rights?
On the day of Yousaf’s resignation Allan Kennedy, a lecturer in early modern Scottish history at Dundee University, said on Twitter/X: “Kate Forbes as first minister would be some impressive playing of the long game on the part of the Covenanters” …
I want a secular Scotland. I want this century to be the very first in Scotland’s story where religious belief and ecclesiastical power did not routinely dictate the way people were governed or lived their day-to-day lives. I want a Scotland that need not fear any US-style curbs on a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
Modernity is a concept worth defending. I did not think it would need defending in 2024, but apparently it does. During the last SNP leadership campaign I called Forbes “the MSP for the 19th century”. I stand by that. I would prefer a politician whose values chimed with the nation he or she sought to lead …
Forbes represents an authentic strain of rural Scottish presbyterianism. But she cannot successfully reconcile the moral strictures of the Free Church with the values of contemporary urban Scotland in all its diversity and dynamism.
Which is why I say again: in the third decade of the 21st century, Kate Forbes is unfit to be first minister of Scotland.
On May 2, Dr James Eglinton, the Meldrum senior lecturer in Reformed theology at the University of Edinburgh, responded in The Times:
Could Kate Forbes serve effectively as first minister of Scotland? In The Times this week, Kenny Farquharson argued she could not … In his argument, Scotland should “defend modernity” by setting a clear glass ceiling above Forbes and those like her.
Before we can defend modernity, though, we must define it — and herein lies the problem. The kind of modernity cherished by Farquharson was a product of the 18th century and died out in the mid-19th century. It does not capture how modernity functions in Scotland today, and says nothing about whether Forbes could serve well as first minister.
In Farquharson’s argument, modernity is monolithic, a package deal of views that all enlightened, right-thinking people will hold precisely because they are enlightened and right thinking. In that way, while modernity likes to talk about authenticity and individuality, it prizes and expects sameness of thought from those individuals.
When the 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant advanced that view, his ideas were novel and captivating to many. By the mid-19th century, though, Europe grew tired of that rigid expression of freedom, and came to see it as attainable only through coercion, silencing and self-censorship. Whereas the 18th century idealised the uniformity of acceptable beliefs, the 19th century valued the unity of people whose freedom to think took them to radically different conclusions. In the process, it gave us liberal democracy and our freedoms of belief and expression.
From then on, modernity has been a very different thing. It depends on individuals negotiating life on their own terms and recognising that each other person does the same. In that way, it is a constant negotiation, a shared effort to extend the freedom to others that we demand for ourselves. Nowadays, academics talk of multiple modernities — as numerous as modern people themselves — rather than a single modernity.
Is Forbes rooted in the 19th century? Certainly, in that she represents liberal democracy. Good for her. Is she a 21st-century person? As a working mum from a theologically conservative church in frontline secular politics, she is as modern as any of us …
We shall see what happens in the weeks ahead. We don’t even know if Kate Forbes will run again.
Now on to remaining aspects of Humza Yousaf’s life.
Two SNP-related marriages
Interestingly, both of Yousaf’s wives, past and present, have links to the SNP.
In 2010, Yousaf married Gail Lythgoe, originally from Essex, who, somehow, caught the Scottish independence bug.
The couple divorced in 2016.
CaltonJock has more from his February 22, 2023 post:
Lythgoe, a graduate teaching assistant at Glasgow University’s law school, was convener of the SNP’s student wing from 2010 to 2012 and sat on the SNP’s ruling national executive.
She was also a parliamentary assistant to SNP MSP Joan McAlpine, and worked at the Yes Scotland campaign in the 2014 referendum.
The split was not made public and only only emerged after Yousaf blamed it when he was fined £300 and had six penalty points added to his driving licence, after being caught by police driving a friend’s car without insurance.
Pleading guilty to the offence he said the incident was the result of stress brought about by his personal circumstances during his separation”.
Yousaf said the final split with his wife was amicable but since then she has left the SNP and actively urged people to vote for the Scottish Greens in the local election instead of the SNP. She wrote: “Glasgow needs diversity not cult-like voting habits, vote green.”
Yousaf’s current wife is Nadia El-Nakla, a divorcée with one child when the couple married in 2019. El-Nakla is an SNP councillor — the equalities spokesperson — in Dundee.
The couple have a daughter together and, in March 2024, the Yousafs announced that they were expecting another child.
Born in Dundee, El-Nakla has a Palestinian father and a Scottish mother.
She is a qualified psychotherapist counsellor with an MSc in Counselling from Abertay University in Dundee.
Perhaps this is why Yousaf said last autumn that he had plans to resume counselling in order to build his resilience. He already had counselling when his first marriage broke down.
On October 15, 2023, The Sunday Times reported:
Humza Yousaf has said he plans to resume counselling for his mental health while first minister, saying “people shouldn’t wait until a crisis moment” to seek help.
In an interview ahead of the SNP’s conference in Aberdeen, Yousaf said previous help he had sought for his mental health had built “resilience” and would be something he would return to in the future.
The first minister told a show at the Edinburgh Fringe that he sought counselling in 2016 during his time as transport minister, when he was also facing the breakdown of his first marriage.
Speaking to Holyrood Magazine, he said he was not sure if he could have continued to be a minister if he had not sought help.
“I definitely think counselling has given me resilience. I was just talking to my wife, actually, last week about making sure I continue counselling as first minister,” he said …
Yousaf also said his therapist recommended he use an app to practice mindfulness, a type of meditation that attempts to focus the individual on being in the moment.
He also spoke of how he dealt with the personal impact of the job, in particular leaning on his family.
“On a personal level, my family is so, so important, and I make time to set some appropriate boundaries,” he said.
The first minister said during his campaign for the SNP leadership that he would try to keep Monday evenings free to spend with his family …
Speaking as someone who watches First Minister’s Questions regularly on BBC Parliament, I rather doubt that Yousaf is practising mindfulness or getting counselling for resilience. He is no different to Nicola Sturgeon in his aggressive responses to Conservative and Labour Party leaders, which, on occasion, are rather offensive. In the private sector, such a bulldog style would be called ‘unprofessional’ or ‘unacceptable’.
In-laws’ visit to Palestine
Incredibly, at least to many Britons who had read or heard about it in the media, Yousaf’s parents went to Palestine on holiday to visit family after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
Yousaf then pulled rank as First Minister to make arrangements to have them evacuated and then went on to hold a meeting with Turkey’s President Erdoğan while his wife and Mrs Erdoğan met privately for tea.
Effie Deans of Lily of St Leonards reminds us that Yousaf is Scotland’s First Minister, not the UK’s Foreign Secretary.
She gave us the story on January 14, 2024:
Humza Yousaf’s wife Nadia El-Nakla is Scottish. She was born and brought up in Dundee. But unlike most Scots she has family living in Gaza. Her parents chose to ignore Foreign Office advice about visiting Gaza and ended up in a warzone after the 7th October Hamas attack on Israel. That was unfortunate and naturally Humza Yousaf and his wife were concerned about their safety. But it is important that we distinguish between a politician’s political role and his personal life. Humza Yousaf is First Minister of Scotland. His wife is a Dundee SNP councillor. The Scottish Government has no role in foreign affairs …
When El-Nakla’s family were trapped in Gaza Humza Yousaf contacted the British government and Foreign Office to expedite their rescue from Gaza, but he didn’t do so as a private citizen like the rest of us would have done if our family were trapped in Gaza, he did so as First Minister of Scotland. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with that role. Humza Yousaf’s wife’s family deserved no more extra special help than any other British citizens trapped in Gaza just because SNP members had elected him leader of their party.
In time El-Nakla’s parents were able to leave Gaza with the help of the British government. I don’t recall any thanks from either Humza Yousaf or Nadia El-Nakla nor indeed from her parents.
Next, we discover that Nadia El-Nakla went to Turkey in November to attend an international summit calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
It seemed rather odd that at the time that she should do so. It cannot be often that a Dundee councillor meets the First Lady of Turkey and other important figures. Indeed, it is rather surprising that they knew of her existence.
She is said to have attended in a personal capacity. One assumes therefore that she paid for the trip out of her own money and didn’t claim expenses for her iPad. But the truth is that El-Nakla would have been nowhere near this meeting if she had not been married to Humza Yousaf.
Next, we discover that Humza Yousaf has a meeting with Recep Erdoğan the president of Turkey at the COP28 meeting in December. Yousaf did so without permission from the British government and without Foreign Office staff being present as is required.
The reason for this is that the First Minister has no role in foreign affairs, which is reserved to the British government. The UK cannot have two foreign policies one directed from London and the other from Edinburgh. Yousaf is not the leader of a nation state and therefore Scotland has no international role at all. El-Nakla is no more the wife of an international politician than the leader’s wife of a province in Turkey, who doubtless does not get to meet Erdoğan’s wife.
There is more:
Scotland gives £750,000 in aid to Gaza and shortly afterwards El-Nakla’s parents get to leave Gaza. Then we discover perhaps why El-Nakla went to Turkey to meet Erdoğan’s wife and why later Humza Yousaf was so desperate that no one would be present at his meeting with Erdoğan.
El-Nakla has just admitted that the Turkish government helped her family in Gaza to move to Turkey. It’s an amazing coincidence. Such generosity on the part of President Erdoğan. What did he get in return?
… he went to a lot of trouble to make sure that Foreign Office officials were not present, but I do know this, it is not the role of the First Minister of Scotland let alone a Dundee councillor to have international meetings so that non-UK citizens can move from Gaza to Turkey.
However, that does not seem to be enough of a solution:
El-Nakla now wants her Gazan family to come to the UK. She points out that Ukrainian refugees are living near her, why can’t her Gazan family not also come here as refugees?
Well, if El-Nakla wants Gazans in general rather than her family in particular to escape Gaza why doesn’t she ask Egypt to open the border? Perhaps she could fly to Egypt to have a meeting with the wife of President el-Sisi. Humza Yousaf could then attend an environment meeting somewhere where he happens to meet el-Sisi and the border between Gaza and Egypt could be opened.
But there is a problem here. Egypt does not want to open its border to Gaza and nowhere else in the Arab world wants to take refugees from Gaza and indeed when Israeli officials suggest resettling Gazans elsewhere, they are condemned by the whole world including I imagine El-Nakla and Humza Yousaf.
Utterly extraordinary, to say the least. Who would have that much nerve?
Yousaf’s family makes the news
In March 2024, Yousaf’s family made the news.
On Sunday, March 17, Scotland’s Herald reported that Yousaf did not declare his family’s rental properties in his register of ministerial interests:
Humza Yousaf is facing questions about why he hasn’t publicly declared his family’s £1.3million rental property empire in his register of ministerial interests.
The First Minister lists a single rental property in Dundee owned by his wife, Nadia El-Nakla.
However he has not included the eight rental properties in Glasgow owned by his parents and their accountancy firm, Yousaf & Co. Limited.
He has also spoken about private landlords, rent caps and eviction procedures in parliament without orally declaring any interest.
The Scottish Government said Mr Yousaf had only declared his wife’s rental flat as he could be seen as a “direct beneficiary” of it.
However the Scottish Tories said the First Minister needed to be “fully transparent”.
There is no suggeston of any wrongdoing by Mr Yousaf’s parents.
MSPs must declare their own financial holdings, such as rental properties, in a Holyrood register.
But ministers are held to a higher standard and also complete a second, more detailed register overseen by the Scottish Government’s top official, the Permanent Secretary …
Declarations should “cover interests of the Minister’s spouse or partner, and close family which might be thought to give rise to a conflict.”
Immediate family includes “parents, siblings or children” where an interest “might be thought to give rise to an actual or perceived conflict” …
The property folio could potentially give rise to a perceived conflict of interest for Mr Yousaf.
In May 2020, he voted on and agreed to Coronavirus legislation that changed the rules on tenancies and evictions while one of the family’s tenants was heading for eviction as they had been in arrears for more than three months.
Records from Scotland’s Housing and Property Chamber show that a property agent acting for Mr Yousaf’s father applied to the tribunal for a payment order and an eviction order for the flat on Albert Road in Glasgow owned by Yousaf & Co Ltd.
The documentation said that the tenant was due to pay £450 a month in rent, but had run up arrears of £4,950 to August 2020.
In February 2021, the tribunal agreed to make both the payment order and eviction order.
A Scottish Government spokesperson disagreed with the call for the family’s properties to be included in Yousaf’s register of interests:
The First Minister includes his wife’s rental property in his listed interests in line with his commitment to be transparent about interests to which he could be perceived to be a direct beneficiary.
This is not the case with the rental properties owned by the First Minister’s parents, therefore they are not required to be declared.
Hmm.
Two days later, on March 19, The Times reported, ‘Yousaf family firm removes “antisemitic” Palestinian posters’:
Humza Yousaf’s parents have removed pro-Palestinian posters from their family shop after they were criticised by a Jewish group.
The Yousaf & Co accountancy firm, established by the first minister’s father, Muzaffar, after he emigrated from Pakistan in the 1960s, had a large pro-Palestinian window display at its prominent Glasgow headquarters.
It included images in which the Palestinian flag is imposed over the entirety of a map of the Israeli state, surrounded by two hands snapping a chain encircling the country, alongside the slogan Free Palestine …
When Hamas invaded Israel, Yousaf’s parents-in-law, Elizabeth and Maged El-Nakla, became trapped in Gaza after a family visit coincided with the outbreak of war. They were eventually allowed to leave after spending almost a month trapped in the territory.
Yousaf’s wife, Nadia, has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza …
Yousaf & Co has been asked for comment.
Brother-in-law’s arrest
On January 16, 2024, The Sun, among other media outlets, reported that Yousaf’s brother-in-law had been arrested for a second time. The second arrest was in relation to a horrific murder in Dundee:
… Ramsay El-Nakla, younger brother of the First Minister’s wife Nadia, had secured bail after being accused of dealing heroin.
But officers stepped in as he got ready to leave the dock and nicked him in connection with another alleged incident.
He was among three arrested after a man reportedly fell from the window of a flat in Dundee last week.
A 36-year-old was seriously injured after he plunged from a tenement block on the city’s Morgan Street.
Emergency services rushed to the scene last Wednesday morning.
Cops taped off the street and locals reported a large police presence in the area.
Residents said they spotted a binman and a street sweeper going to help the injured man before paramedics arrived. He was then taken to Ninewells Hospital.
El-Nakla, 36, was first arrested last Thursday in connection with a different alleged incident …
On April 9, he was due to appear in Dundee Sheriff Court.
The Spectator‘s Steerpike told us:
Police Scotland has today confirmed that they have arrested Yousaf’s brother-in-law and charged him with abduction and extortion. It follows the death of a man who fell from a block of flats in Dundee in January.
Ramsay El-Nakla, 36, is the brother of Yousaf’s wife, Nadia El-Nakla and is due to appear in court later today. In a statement, Police Scotland said that:
A 36-year-old man has been arrested and charged with abduction and extortion following an incident where a man fell from a block of flats on Morgan Street, Dundee on Wednesday, 10 January. He died a week later in hospital. Three others were previously arrested and charged following the same incident. The 36-year-old man is due to appear in Dundee Sheriff Court today, Tuesday, 9 April, 2024. A report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.
It comes three months after El-Nakla first appeared in court on charges of supplying heroin and being in possession of cocaine and cannabis. Back then Yousaf said ‘It would be inappropriate for me to comment at this stage’ adding ‘I’m very keen not be seen to interfere with any court case, let alone one involving my brother-in-law.’
What will his line be now…?
Who knows?
In any event, the wheels have come off Humza Yousaf’s wagon in much the same way he came off his scooter in Holyrood when he had injured his leg a couple of years ago:
A man so sure of himself at the time … perhaps less so now — despite all his bluster at First Minister’s Questions.
Yesterday’s post discussed the resignation of Scotland’s First Minister, Humza Yousaf, on Monday, April 29, 2024.
Today’s entry looks back at his career in the Scottish Parliament.
Before that, let us look briefly at the February 22, 2023 post from CaltonJock which tells us more about Yousaf’s youth (purple emphases mine):
Humza Yousaf was born on 7 April 1985 in Glasgow, Scotland. He enjoyed a trouble free lifestyle being privately educated at Hutchesons’ Grammar School, a fee paying independent school in Glasgow then going on to study Politics at the University of Glasgow, graduating with an MA in 2007.
He left university to work as a parliamentary assistant for a number of MSPs and has been financed from the public purse ever since. He has no experience of work outside the public sector.
Ministerial appointments
Yousaf was fortunate to have held rather important ministerial appointments in the Scottish parliament, beginning in 2012. He was Minister for External Affairs and International Development under then-First Minister Alex Salmond. When Nicola Sturgeon succeeded Salmond, Yousaf retained the position but under a different title, that of Minister for Europe and International Development.
In 2016, Sturgeon made him Minister for Transport and the Islands.
In 2018, Sturgeon promoted him to Cabinet Secretary for Justice, a post which he held until 2021. The level of police recorded crimes rose from 244,504 to 246,511 in 2020-2021. During that time, he came up with the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill, further amended only recently, on April 1, 2024, by which time he had been serving as First Minister for a little over a year.
After the May 2021 elections, with Jeane Freeman MSP’s standing down, Sturgeon made Yousaf her replacement as Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, a position he held until he won the SNP leadership contest after Sturgeon resigned in February 2023.
In July that year, the WHO declared that Scotland had six out of ten coronavirus hotspots in Europe.
In September 2021, news emerged that Scottish waiting times for an ambulance reached six hours. Yousaf urged the public to ‘think twice’ before ringing for one. Audit Scotland found that 500 elderly people in Scotland died that year because of delayed access to emergency treatment.
Let’s take a closer look at Yousaf’s actions during his time as an MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament).
Transport Minister failings
While Yousaf was the Cabinet Minister for Transport, he was caught driving without car insurance.
On December 8, 2016, Scotland’s Herald reported:
TRANSPORT Minister Humza Yousaf has blamed the break up of his marriage after being caught by police while driving without insurance.
Mr Yousaf, who is already under pressure over poor service on Scotland’s railways, said he had made an “honest mistake” and would not contest the charge.
However, Yousaf had greater failings in the area of transport, as the aforementioned CaltonJock reminds us:
On 18 May 2016, he was promoted Minister for Transport and the Islands and was at the centre of controversy and public criticism over the poor performance of ScotRail, with its trains facing severe delays, cancellations and overcrowding.
Sturgeon was called upon to sack him over his shambolic handling of transport after the prolific Twitter-using Transport Minister admitted he knew nothing about his brief as he tried to defend his failings.
He was quizzed by MSP’s at Holyrood over his administration’s handling of the beleaguered network amid stalled projects and declining services after it emerged the bill for rail upgrades had rocketed by £379 million.
The intervention became necessary when a report from quango Transport Scotland revealed the cost of five schemes had risen to £1.5 billion from £1.1 billion.
The transport workers union Aslef called for Mr Yousaf to be sacked amid a growing crisis on the railway network.
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “The Scottish government response to the rail crisis has been pathetic. Transport Minister Humza Yousaf has stood by while Abellio Scotrail takes Scotland’s passengers and taxpayers for a ride”.
Hate speech
As if coping with coronavirus were not enough, on October 29, 2020, Yousaf wanted to ban freedom of speech in one’s own home, something he finally realised on April 1, 2024.
The Scottish chronicler, Effie Deans, posted on her site, Lily of St Leonard’s, ‘Why does Humza Yousaf want to police what I say in private?’
She says:
Humza Yousaf has explained that he wants to punish Scots for having insulting conversations at home. While we would retain the right to be offensive anyone stirring up hatred against various protected groups will be prosecuted. What this means is that we would no longer be allowed to speak freely in our own homes.
Yousaf had cited some hypothetical examples of private speech that should be criminalised. Yet, Effie Deans pointed out that such instances of criminality are:
already covered by other laws.
True!
Interestingly, Yousaf himself made a speech at Holyrood which many Scots — and other Britons — found objectionable. He complained with escalating anger that white people occupy most of the prominent positions in Scotland. That should come as no surprise since between 94% and 96% of Scots are Caucasian:
Around a year later, on April 15, 2024, the Revd Stu Campbell, author of Wings Over Scotland, noticed that not all of Yousaf’s text for that speech reached the official Scottish parliament transcript. Last month, he wrote to Holyrood to find out why and told the story in ‘The mutability of history’.
Campbell says that the transcript, which he linked to, reads as follows:
That is not the case only in justice. The chief medical officer is white, the chief nursing officer is white, the chief veterinary officer is white, the chief social work adviser is white.
However, in reality, as can be seen on the video, Yousaf went through a whole list of examples, which I won’t quote here but which you can read on Campbell’s post.
Campbell also remarked on the disagreeable tone of the speech:
He issued a string of sharp, accusatory and exclamatory sentences, each clearly separated by pauses, in an angry manner. What the Report presents reads very differently, like a calm list with no particular inflection.
Tone is of course to SOME degree a matter of personal interpretation (although I doubt any reasonable observer watching the speech either live or on video would doubt or dispute the Cabinet Secretary’s anger), but no amount of personal interpretation justifies material ALTERATION, such as the addition of words to the speech or the combining of multiple sentences into one, in order to better fit that interpretation.
Yousaf displayed biases during his time as Justice Minister, too, according to CaltonJock:
His social media shenanigans on Twitter got him into several scrapes when he was Justice Secretary.
He rushed to slam Rangers football players on Twitter for being filmed supposedly making sectarian chants – a video which was subsequently shown to be a fake, for which Yousaf refused to apologise.
The rush to judgement which was all the more troubling in light of his responsibility for the Scottish prosecution service.
The malicious prosecution of Rangers Football Club Directors was the illegal prosecution of innocent men in Scotland by the Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal Service, with taxpayers being hit with a £51million and rising compensation bill with every penny being taken from front-line services.
A senior police officer who abused his power resigned, and a sheriff who abused his power is also resigning. Sturgeon and Yousaf the Cabinet Secretary for Justice remain silent on a scandal that contaminates Scottish justice.
Identity politics
During the 2023 SNP leadership contest, Guido Fawkes did some digging around in Yousaf’s past votes in Holyrood which betray what he was saying on the campaign trail.
On February 22 that year, Guido told us about Yousaf’s absence from a 2014 vote on gay marriage (red emphases his):
Humza Yousaf has become the frontrunner in the SNP leadership race. The Scottish Health Secretary has been quick to present himself as a champion of the LGBT community – in contrast to his nearest rival – and the SNP has lapped it up. In the past, Humza’s support hasn’t always been so forthcoming.
In 2014 Yousaf didn’t turn up for the pivotal vote to legalise gay marriage. He claims this was due to an unavoidable meeting with Pakistan General Consul about a Scot on death row – a meeting he booked 19 days prior, just two days after he was told the date he would need to attend the historic gay marriage vote. Surely unrelated to the fact Glasgow imams, an influential voice within his constituency, opposed the reform.
Guido concluded:
Humza has also previously voiced his support for Imran Khan – the populist former Prime Minister of Pakistan who banned gay dating app grindr. It seems his unequivocal LGBT support only extends as far as it’s politically expedient…
On February 25, Guido posted the reason why Yousaf missed the 2014 vote, which came from Alex Neil, an MSP who remembers, via Times Radio:
We were having a free vote at stage three.. and any minister who wasn’t going to vote for the bill, or we wanted to skip the vote, had to get the permission of the first minister to do so. There was a request from Humza, because, in his words, of pressure he was under from the mosque for him to be absent from the vote. And Alex Salmond, the first minister, gave him permission to do that. And a ministerial meeting was arranged to take place at exactly the same time as the vote in Glasgow to give Humza cover for not being there. Now, I’m not saying Humza was against the bill or anything like that because he wasn’t, he had voted at stage one, but because he had voted in stage one, in his words, he was put under pressure by his words, put under pressure by the leaders of the mosque in Glasgow about the possibility he might vote for it at stage three, and he requested to skip and he was skipped and the meeting was arranged deliberately to give him cover for the timing of the vote. That’s all I’m saying. But the key point is, Kate, on the one hand has been brutally honest to her own cost, brutally honest about what her honest opinion is. Humza I don’t think has been so upfront. And I think he should just be honest, that he skipped a vote and the reasons why he skipped the vote, because I think what people want in this campaign is openness and transparency and honesty. And when I was asked the question, is it true that he skipped the vote, I’ve given the correct answer the true answer, he did skip the vote.
Afterwards, CaltonJock says that Yousaf posted a spurious explanation on Twitter:
“Meeting Pakistan Consul discussing Scot on death row accused under Blasphemy Law not one could/want avoid.” But Mr Ashgar was sentenced to death for blasphemy eight days after the meeting meaning his “death row” status was not known at the time the meeting was set up.
Yousaf’s pandemic as Health Minister
CaltonJock tells us about Yousaf’s time managing the pandemic as Health and Social Care Minister:
He disappointed the public with his response to the Covid pandemic with a botched attempt to grab a headline when he announced that ten children up to the age of nine had been admitted to Scottish hospitals in the previous week “because of Covid”.
Professor Steve Turner, Scotland officer for the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, contradicted him and said that children’s wards were “not seeing a rise in cases with Covid” and added that the children in question had been hospitalised for other reasons.
Yousaf apologised for causing “any undue alarm”.
When the WHO declared Scotland the site of six out of ten European coronavirus hotspots:
The Scottish Government was accused of being ‘missing in action’ after it emerged that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister John Swinney and Yousaf himself were all away on holiday at the time.
Yousaf said he had promised to take his stepdaughter to Harry Potter World, tweeting that: “Most important job I have is being a good father, step-father & husband to my wife and kids”.
Half a million facemasks had to be withdrawn under his tenure because they were past their expiry date:
This represented, conservatively, a possible waste of public funds to the tune of £4.5Million, money that might have been spent on employing 130 nurses for a year.
And there is no hard evidence that a single life has been saved by the use of these masks; in fact, the very lack of PR by politicians or health executives since their unveiling suggests strongly that there have been no patient – or staff – benefits whatsoever.
However, perhaps not all blame can be laid at Yousaf’s feet. Professor Jason Leitch, Scotland’s National Clinical Director, gave some strange advice about mask wearing.
Considering that Scotland had some of the strictest pandemic rules in the UK, Leitch told Yousaf that masks were not needed as long as one was carrying a drink.
On January 23, 2024, The Telegraph reported on what emerged at Britain’s coronavirus inquiry that day:
Mr Yousaf said he knew that he did not have to wear a mask when seated but did not know the rules around whether he needed one when “standing talking to folk”, despite being the health secretary.
Prof Leitch replied: “Officially yes. But literally no one does. Have a drink in your hands at ALL times. Then you’re exempt. So if someone comes over and you stand, lift your drink.”
Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, challenged Prof Leitch that he was advising Mr Yousaf how to avoid the SNP government’s own rules using a “workaround”.
He asked: “If the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care didn’t understand the rules, what chance did anybody else have?”
Prof Leitch said it was a “tricky area” and argued that the advice “follows the rules” as people were allowed to stand and talk without a mask if they were drinking.
However, Mr Dawson said: “You told him to have a drink in his hands at all times whether he was drinking it or not.”
Then there were all the deleted WhatsApp messages from the pandemic months:
Prof Leitch also claimed he did not delete his messages every night as he had told colleagues in a WhatsApp group.
He was shown a message where he said that “WhatsApp deletion is a pre-bed ritual” but told the hearing it was a “slightly flippant” comment …
The inquiry was later shown another message where he urged colleagues to delete messages.
On Sept 30 2020, he told members of a WhatsApp group: “Thanks all…and my usual gentle reminder to delete your chat…particularly after we reach a conclusion. Thanks all…”
He said it was not his intention to avoid messages being obtained under Freedom of Information laws but admitted using the auto-delete function in one group chat.
The Ukranian women
On March 16, 2023, during the SNP leadership campaign, Yousaf met with a group of Ukranian women, refugees in Scotland.
Amazingly, he asked them where the men were. They politely explained that their men were back home fighting the Russians:
The Mail had more on the story:
Ukrainian men who are of military age are largely forbidden to leave the country as the war with Russia continues. This means that the majority of the displaced Ukrainians arriving elsewhere in Europe are women, children or the elderly.
Mr Yousaf told the BBC a number of Ukrainian men were elsewhere in the building when he made the remark. He said in an interview later: ‘They of course were rightly saying to me that for many of them their families are not able to make it, not all of their families are able to make it. I don’t think any of the women were at all offended or upset.‘
But opposition parties tore into the gaffe this afternoon, with Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Baillie saying: ‘This is further evidence that Humza Yousaf is out of his depth. This is embarrassing.’
The Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton added: ‘From the man who would lead Scotland, this is clumsy and insensitive.
‘Many of these women could have male relatives fighting and dying on the Eastern front, defending not just Ukraine but the free democracies of our world. A worrying lack of awareness on display here.’
Yousaf as SNP leader and First Minister
On Monday, March 27, 2023, Humza Yousaf became SNP leader and Scotland’s First Minister.
Guido gave us the vote tally — a Brexit result of 52% to 48%. Amazing:
Humza Yousaf 52.1%
Kate Forbes 47.9%
Yousaf wins, 52% to 48%. The golden ratio…
Indeed.
That night, Dan Wootton, who was still on GB News, called Yousaf ‘woke’ and ‘useless’ in his editorial (full show available):
Two days later, Yousaf appointed his first cabinet. Guido noted:
Humza has added “NHS Recovery” to the Health Secretary title, presumably to reflect the urgent care it needs after his own tenure leading that department…
SNP issues
The SNP have had an unresolved financial scandal which first came to light a few weeks before the May 2021 election.
Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, the Party’s executive, was arrested in connection with it on April 5, 2023.
That day, Guido told us that Yousaf had heaped praise on Murrell in the past:
With the news of Peter Murrell’s arrest breaking this morning, spare a thought for Humza Yousaf. Murrell wasn’t just a “proven election winner” for Humza’s party, he was also a “close acquaintance” of the First Minister. Just weeks ago, Yousaf was mulling over plans to keep him in post as the SNP’s exec, saying “anyone that doesn’t want a proven winner on their side, particularly in politics, I think that would be a little bit daft”. Yousaf’s praise for Murrell didn’t end there, he said the arrested SNP chief executive had done “more for our party and our movement than just about anybody else”. Clearly a great loss to the independence cause.
A few days later, Scottish police seized an SNP-owned motorhome vehicle which had been parked at Murrell’s mother’s house for well over a year. The Party had never used it for official purposes.
On April 11, it emerged that the SNP had been without auditors for six months.
Guido told us:
The SNP’s new era of “transparency” and “respect” is off to a roaring start under Humza Yousaf, who today claimed he had no prior knowledge that the party he now leads hasn’t had an auditor for the past six months. The same Humza Yousaf who sat practically an elbow’s length away from Nicola Sturgeon at the cabinet table while this was going on.
Following this morning’s news that Johnston Carmichael mysteriously quit as the SNP’s auditors “round about October“, Yousaf said:
“They resigned last year. I think it was in and and about October last year. But the fact that we don’t have auditors in place is one of the major priorities. You can imagine when I found that out, being the party leader, the party is quickly looking to secure another auditor […] When I learned about the fact that we don’t have an auditor in place, of course I’ve instructed the party to get on with finding another auditor, so we are working very hard to do that […] It’s certainly problematic. I won’t deny that at all.”
He added the situation was “extraordinary“, which is hard to disagree with. Extraordinary as it may be, Peter Murrell is nonetheless still a party member. Despite spending almost 12 hours in police custody last week…
On April 13, Guido posted a quote from Yousaf on the auditor situation; he claimed not to have known about it. Hmm:
Frankly, it would have been helpful to know beforehand…
Then the Party’s treasurer Colin Beattie was arrested in connection with the unresolved financial scandal.
On April 18, Guido reported the following, accompanied by a third-party video:
First Minister Humza Yousaf has spoken publicly for the first time since his party’s Treasurer Colin Beattie was arrested in connection with the SNP finance investigation. Yousaf is about to give a speech outlining his “priorities” for the Scottish government going forward, which he admits have been, erm, undermined somewhat by yet another arrest…
Yousaf said:
It’s clearly a very serious matter indeed, I’ve said already people are innocent until proven guilty… Of course I’m surprised that one of my colleagues has been arrested, but it’s a very serious matter indeed… it’s certainly is not helpful, of course… I’m not going to take away from the fact that the timing of this is far from ideal.
Guido concluded:
Yousaf stressed he does not believe the SNP is a “criminal operation“. This is where we are now. Colin Beattie, like Peter Murrell, still hasn’t been suspended from the party…
And, finally, on matters political, Margaret Ferrier, an SNP MP, had to stand down for violating coronavirus rules at the height of the pandemic. This was a parliamentary decision that was three years overdue; the process is the punishment.
As a result, a by-election took place in her constituency of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, which had a long tradition of voting Labour.
On the day of the by-election, October 5, Yousaf took his frustration out on Douglas Ross, an MP, an MSP and the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. The Presiding Officer demanded an apology from Yousaf.
Guido has the story and the video:
Humza Yousaf is obviously feeling the pressure from today’s Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. This afternoon the First Minister went on an manic rant at Douglas Ross, accusing the Scottish Conservatives leader of “post-truth […] lies“, and repeatedly refusing to apologise despite the demands of Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone. You can tell that by-election is on a knife-edge…
I know Douglas Ross, despite having three or four or five jobs – I’ve lost count, Presiding Officer – was down at the Conservative Party Conference this week. Or as others have rightly dubbed it, the conspiracy party conference […] His post-truth, his lies about the police service, it simply will not wash here in Scotland.
After three demands for an apology, Yousaf finally relented, claiming he was “happy to apologise to the chamber for any offence“. Which is not quite the personal apology Johnstone demanded…
Yousaf was worried about the SNP holding the seat, and he was right so to be. Labour’s Michael Shanks won.
There’s still a little bit more to the Humza Yousaf story. More on that tomorrow.
On Thursday, April 25, 2024, the coalition government between Scotland’s Scottish National Party (SNP) and Scottish Greens dissolved.
Guido Fawkes reported (red emphases his):
Humza Yousaf has called an emergency cabinet meeting this morning to scrap his governing deal with the Scottish Greens. The SNP agreed to run the government with the Greens, who have seven seats, in 2021 under the Bute House [the First Minister’s stately residence, Edinburgh] agreement. They will now run a minority government with 63 MSPs…
The SNP scrapped its own target to cut emissions by 75% by 2030 to widespread ridicule as the Greens promised a vote to its members on whether to keep the Bute House deal going. Humza Yousaf said this week that SNP members weren’t to be given a say because they “already had a vote” on it years before. Hilarious…
Scottish Green members would have voted overwhelmingly to ditch the SNP while their politicians were still pretty keen to stay in power. Leaving Yousaf with one option…
That day, Scottish Conservatives brought forward a vote of no confidence in Yousaf’s leadership to be debated this week. Scottish Labour raised a similar vote, one in the SNP government.
Guido added:
UPDATE II: The Scottish Greens have signalled they will support the Tories’ motion of no confidence. The end is in sight…
Ultimately, because the coalition was dissolved, the two top Greens, Lorna Slater (a Canadian) and Patrick Harvie, lost their Scottish government roles.
An STV article published that day explained the reason for the collapse of the coalition (bold in the original, purple emphases mine):
The Scottish Greens have attacked Humza Yousaf as “weak and thoroughly hopeless” after he ended the Bute House Agreement in a surprise move on Thursday morning.
Co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater met with the First Minister at Bute House in Edinburgh where they both lost their jobs as government ministers.
In a furious statement, the Greens said the SNP “can’t be trusted” and accused the party of “betrayal”.
Speaking to journalists in Holyrood, Harvie, who served as minister for decarbonising buildings, tenants’ rights and active travel, suggested the SNP would no longer be in government by Christmas.
Let us remind ourselves via this Daily Mail article of Lorna Slater’s lack of interest in the environment. She preferred being driven around by a chauffeur:
After the 2021 Scottish election, the SNP, then under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership, did not win enough votes for a majority government, hence the coalition with the Greens:
The Bute House Agreement was signed by Nicola Sturgeon and the Green leaders in 2021 and was continued into Yousaf’s premiership.
It saw the two parties agree on a raft of policies, from climate change to housing and gender reforms.
But the scrapping of the 2030 climate targets and the Scottish Government’s reaction to the Cass Report – which prompted the NHS to pause puberty blockers – put the two parties at odds.
The Greens were due to vote on ending the Bute House Agreement in the next month.
The party accused the SNP of selling out future generations by walking away from the deal.
“This is an act of political cowardice by the SNP, who are selling out future generations to appease the most reactionary forces in the country,” co-leader Lorna Slater said.
“Voters deserve better, Scotland deserves better. Scottish Green voters certainly deserve better.
“They have broken the bonds of trust with members of both parties who have twice chosen the cooperation agreement and climate action over chaos, culture wars and division. They have betrayed the electorate.
“And by ending the agreement in such a weak and thoroughly hopeless way, Humza Yousaf has signalled that when it comes to political cooperation, he can no longer be trusted.”
Harvie accused Yousaf of caving in to:
“backwards forces” in his party.
Scottish Labour are no fans of the SNP government, either:
In response to the end of the powersharing deal, Scottish Labour deputy leader Dame Jackie Baillie said: “This chaotic and incompetent Government is falling apart before our eyes.
“Humza Yousaf is too weak to hold his own Government together and he is too weak to deliver for Scotland.”
Everything is going down the pan: schools, NHS waiting lists and drug deaths, to name but a few pressing socio-economic issues.
Here is a full list of SNP failures that someone posted online:
Ahh, everything started out so promisingly on Yousaf’s first night in Bute House, March 28, 2023, when he won the leadership contest:
Six months later, Time put him on the cover as one of their ten ‘trailblazers shaping the future’. You can say that again:
It all depends on what way one considers ‘shaping the future’. For better or for worse?
Certainly, Time has made mistakes before, such as with its 1938 cover boy from Weimar Germany. Josef Stalin also adorned the magazine’s cover twice not so many years afterwards.
Returning to Edinburgh, however, the wheels started coming off Yousaf’s government in the way that he came off his scooter during the pandemic at one point. (Nicola Sturgeon was still First Minister at the time.) He took his scooter to navigate the halls of Holyrood because of a leg injury. The Sun covered what happened one day on his way to a debate:
Over the past weekend, nearly everyone thought that he would resign on Monday, April 29, rather than face a vote of no confidence.
That morning, the BBC reported:
He has arrived at Bute House in Edinburgh, the first minister’s official residence, for a press conference at 12:00.
The SNP leader has been under pressure since he ended a power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens last week.
Opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament had tabled two confidence votes – one in the first minister and another in the SNP government …
He had written to Scotland’s opposition parties asking them to find “common ground” ahead of the confidence votes.
The first minister’s decision to end the Bute House Agreement – the power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens – followed a backlash over the SNP scrapping 2030 climate targets and gender policies.
The article explained the politics behind Yousaf’s attempt to survive as First Minister:
The SNP has 63 MSPs in the 129 seat parliament. If the seven Green MSPs vote against him, he is reliant on support from sole Alba party MSP [formerly an SNP MSP], Ash Regan, to continue in his role.
Ash Regan had run against Yousaf in the 2023 leadership contest.
It sounded as if talks with Alba, led by former Westminster MP and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, took place at the weekend:
Mr Yousaf, the MSP for Glasgow Pollok, has reportedly ruled out cutting a deal with Alba, a pro-independence party formed by former First Minister Alex Salmond after he broke from the SNP.
Alba’s support would lead to a 64:64 tied vote in which case the presiding officer would be expected to vote to maintain the status quo.
The article went on to say:
The motion of no confidence in him personally is not binding, but if he lost he would come under intense pressure to step down.
If he lost the government vote, MSPs would have 28 days to vote for a new first minister or automatically trigger a Scottish Parliament election.
Scottish Labour has said the motion of no-confidence in the Scottish government would remain tabled even if Mr Yousaf resigns.
Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said Mr Yousaf had “jumped before being pushed” by the no confidence vote which they had tabled …
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton declined an offer of talks with Mr Yousaf over the weekend and called for him to resign.
And, lo, at noon, Humza Yousaf announced his resignation:
Guido has a video clip of Yousaf’s resignation speech:
However, he is not going anywhere until a leadership contest has taken place.
Guido says:
After a whopping 397 days as First Minister Humza Yousaf is resigning. At least he managed to last over a year, just…
Humza said he “underestimated the level of hurt” he would cause by ending the Bute House agreement in the way he did. What exactly did he expect?
Humza spent the weekend realising he couldn’t do a deal with Salmond and someone else had to try to keep the ship going. Salmond says he was still trying at 7:30 a.m. today. He will remain FM rather than passing to his deputy Shona Robinson until a leadership election is completed. Sturgeon’s deputy John Swinney is keeping tight-lipped…
Another BBC report told us more about the proposed votes of no confidence which, as I understand it, must be debated before MSPs vote on them:
Mr Yousaf had been facing two motions of no confidence this week, one tabled by the Scottish Conservatives in his own leadership as first minister and another from Scottish Labour on the government as a whole.
The timing of the votes has not yet been confirmed by parliament and it was unclear whether Mr Yousaf’s announcement will lead to either being pulled.
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross told BBC News that Mr Yousaf should have quit with immediate effect and that his party’s motion of no confidence could still go ahead.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said he would wait to see how the week “plays out” but that the “principle” of his party’s no confidence motion in the government “still stands”.
If it passed, government ministers would be obliged to stand down. Only a simple majority would be required, meaning the number of members voting for would have to be greater than those opposed.
The parliament would then have 28 days to choose a nominee for first minister. If it was unable to do so, the parliament would be dissolved for an election.
The SNP currently have 63 MSPs, meaning they could be defeated if all MSPs from other parties voted against them.
However, the Greens are unlikely to vote against Yousaf or the SNP. They consider that his resignation suffices:
… BBC News understands that the Greens, who have seven seats, will not support either of the no-confidence motions following Mr Yousaf’s statement.
In any event, Humza Yousaf will soon be waving goodbye to the opulent Bute House and returning to Dundee, where he and his wife, a local councillor, live with their children.
It will be interesting to see how the leadership contest unfolds, given that there are no candidates worthy of leadership in the Scottish ‘parliament’, or more accurately, a national assembly. Devolved government of the nations outside of England is yet another Tony Blair initiative gone wrong, no matter what way one cuts it.
Someone online posted the link to a 2016 article from Scotland’s Daily Record, ‘Photographer reveals the gritty pictures of poverty stricken Glasgow too shocking to publish in 1980’.
The article has a selection of photographs from a Frenchman, Raymond Depardon, who was accustomed to visiting war zones. In 1977, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his photographs of Chad.
The thing that struck me was how feminine the girls, the lady with a baby carriage and the older woman looked. By 1980 in the United States, most girls and women were firmly ensconced in trousers. Seeing skirts and dresses shows that, for an American, time did not march on back then as much as it did in the US. Now that much of Western Europe has caught every American trend going, time moves much more quickly on this side of the Atlantic, unfortunately.
Even Glaswegian graffiti in 1980 was pretty basic. Here, again, American taggers had already moved on to elaborate, gang-identified designs, some of which were illegible to the uninitiated.
That year, The Sunday Times commissioned Depardon to chronicle Glasgow in pictures. The paper’s editors refused to publish the photographs. They were too realistic. I’m not sure what they expected to see. After all, it was Glasgow. When I went to Scotland in the Spring of 1978, even then people warned my classmate and me to go to Edinburgh instead, which we did. Every Briton who is 60+ now knew that Glasgow was rough back then.
In 2016, the Barbican Gallery in London put on a retrospective of Raymond Depardon’s photographs, which were also included in his book published that year, Glasgow.
Raymond, who was 73 in 2016, spoke to the Daily Record. Excerpts from the article follow, emphases mine:
The images include three drunks boozing beside a fire, children playing in the street and a poignant shot of a boy crying outside a shop.
… he will never forget the time he spent in a city that shocked and delighted him in equal measure.
He said: “I came to Glasgow twice, once in the autumn of 1980 and once in the spring. I was shocked by the poverty. I wasn’t expecting to find a population in the north of Europe that was so deprived.
“There was also a civil war going on but, unlike in Beirut, there were no other photographers. I was alone on the streets and had no one to talk to about what I had seen. I felt very much like a fish out of water.
“I had spent the last decade covering civil wars and oriental rebellions. On my arrival, I was surprised by the people, the architecture and above all the light. Everything seemed very exotic.
“I worked in Glasgow like I did on the streets of Beirut, without prejudice and despite being shocked by the destitution, I loved every minute. No matter where I went, the people were welcoming and never seemed sad with their lot.”
The photojournalist, who took the official portrait of French president Francois Hollande in 2012, said he would not have got such superb shots without the help of some friendly Glasgow kids.
Although the language barrier was there, Depardon said that the children took him to their play areas — the streets of the city:
“They didn’t understand me but would take me by the hand and trail me around their landmarks. It’s thanks to them that I was able to capture the incredible images.
“Maybe at 38, I was like them, still a child. They didn’t pay me any attention. I was just part of their game.
“My favourite photo is of a little boy who is crying in front of a shutter. It made me think of a Dickens novel.”
He said: “I was sad that my Glasgow photos were never published back in the 80s. I am really proud to be exhibited at the Barbican and I had great pleasure in telling my friends there to choose whichever photos they liked.
“I hope the photos which I happily took 36 years ago will still bring pleasure to those who see them today.”
The acclaimed British author William Boyd, who studied in Glasgow in the 1970s, wrote the foreward to Depardon’s book on the city:
He writes: “When you left the centre of town or the area where the university was, it was very easy to find yourself in a neighbourhood of abject urban poverty and squalor.
“It wasn’t just the manifest decrepitude of the housing or the diminished quality of the goods in the shops – you saw deprivation and desperation etched in the faces of the young and the old.
“As it happens I had been looking at Depardon’s photographs before I returned to Glasgow two weeks ago. The city is largely transformed today from the one that Depardon photographed in the early 1980s.
“The abandoned wharves, shipyards and warehouses of the riverside – Glasgow’s imperial industrial heartland and the source of its wealth – are now landscaped parks and yet, you can turn a corner and this new 21st century city disappears and in its place are the wide rainwashed streets of an older Glasgow.”
I wonder what Boyd would make of Glasgow in 2024, with so many of the big stores in Sauciehall Street and surrounds boarded up. The same, sadly, is true of Edinburgh — and, even sadder, London’s Oxford Street.
I realise that a number of department store chains have gone out of business over the past several years but wonder what that says about us as a society that our high streets are so deserted. Depardon’s photographs from 44 years ago look innocent by comparison.
Monks have returned to Iona, the little island in the Hebrides where St Columba founded a religious community around 1,500 years ago.
On January 14, 2024, The Sunday Times reported (emphases mine):
In 563AD, a warrior priest landed on a tiny Hebridean isle in a wicker boat covered with animal hide. In smoky huts of wattle and daub, St Columba founded an abbey on Iona, a beacon of Celtic Christianity that shone throughout the Dark Ages.
For more than a thousand years, monastic life thrived on this holiest of Scotland’s isles, until the 16th-century Reformation caused the monks and nuns to disperse and flee — until now.
Amazingly, St Columba reached Iona in a coracle, but today’s mode of transport is more contemporary:
The monks are back, landing on the emerald beaches not in a coracle but a Cal-Mac [Caledonian MacBrayne] ferry, driven by the religious zeal of an Oxford University-educated monk, Father Seraphim Aldea.
Interestingly, these are Orthodox monks coming back to reclaim and renew St Columba’s monastery, although it is a far different structure today:
The monastery is a pretty whitewashed cottage between a Spar [convenience store] and a visitor’s centre, with a horseshoe by the blue front door. It used to be a bed and breakfast — guests still knock on the door to inquire if they have any spare rooms.
The stone abbey still stands, a photo of which is in the article. Incidentally, St Aidan (AD 590-651) served on Iona before moving to Lindisfarne in Northumbria, where he founded the monastery there and became the island’s first bishop.
The five newly-arrived monks come from near and far — England, the Netherlands, Romania and North America — and are spending their first winter on the island.
The aforementioned Fr Seraphim Aldea is from Romania, and the community of monks is part of the Romanian Patriarchate:
“It is something you can’t really describe in words,” said Aldea, the monastery’s founder, who became a monk in 2005 and lived in a monastery in the Moldavian region of northern Romania before moving to the UK to study …
Aldea, 44, who studied theology at Warwick University, then Durham and Oxford, had hardly heard of the Hebrides when he was invited to Kilninian on the northwest coast of the Isle of Mull in 2010.
Struck by the dramatic landscape and learning of the lives of Celtic saints, he believes he was moved by God to stay in the area.
He said local people were happy that the house was being occupied throughout the winter, and that the monks were contributing to the community.
“There are real beautiful people here. It’s not a tourist island. In the summer it looks like a fair, but when the summer clears up it’s a fully functional island,” he said.
However, his reception on Mull was slightly different:
Not everywhere has been as welcoming. When he first moved into a cottage near Kilninian church, on Mull, which the Romanian Orthodox church bought in 2010, he was told to “get off my island”.
It would seem a local mistook him for someone else, based on his appearance from the neck upwards.
Nevertheless, an Orthodox convent, the Monastery of All Celtic Saints — also part of the Romanian Patriarchate — has existed on Mull for some years. The nuns and the monks convened on Iona for an unforgettable Christmas Mass in 2023. The article has a photo of them in the ancient Oran chapel on Christmas Day. Aldea says:
It was like that cave where the Virgin gave birth to Christ, where the only heating would have been from their bodies and the bodies of the animals. It was simple and unpretentious — and very, very joyous.
Fr Seraphim has been busy broadcasting Iona’s religious history and stunning landscapes on YouTube:
His videos sharing spiritual observations with stunning Hebridean backdrops has won him about 50,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Some locals have questioned how the B&B was purchased:
The Orthodox Monastery of All Celtic Saints, a charity registered in Scotland, bought the former holiday let from its previous owners for £1.2 million in 2022 …
Some have questioned how the money was raised to buy the B&B, but Aldea insists it was crowdfunded mainly in North America in Orthodox churches, online or from the pilgrims they host in the summer.
However, there is no doubt that every day is a religious experience — and one of prophecy:
Thomas Clancy, a professor of Celtic at Glasgow University said: “For monks of today, the draw to Iona is the same as it would have been for Columba. From a monastic point of view, the Hebrides are described by some of the early monks as a desert in the ocean cut off from the world and protected by the sea.
“Perhaps it’s just the cumulative history of the place that makes it such a spiritual place to visit, but I think there’s something else going on as well.”
On Iona, Aldea, who grew up near Bucharest, says he feels connected to Columba, with whom he identifies not just because of his asceticism but as an immigrant. To him, monastic life in the cottage, even the mundane moments — mopping the floors, drinking tea — is the stuff of prophecy.
“[Columba] prophesied the collapse of [the nunnery and the monastery] and then he says before the end of the world, Iona will be what it once was. It’s a beautiful thing,” he said, referencing a traditional verse attributed to Columba.
“It goes: ‘Iona, Iona of my heart, where monks’ voices once were the sound of cattle, but before the end of the world Iona shall be what it once was.’ ”
I wish Fr Seraphim and his fellow monks them every blessing on Iona.
Yesterday’s post on Genesis 3:16 was about God’s curse on Eve and all women following her transgression in the Garden of Eden: eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (of Good and Evil).
God’s dual curse involved womankind’s difficulty with childbearing and with husbands (men in general), their two primary relationship groups.
Throughout history, women have suffered with both. There is no real relief in sight, although the effects may be partially mitigated through faith and godly living.
Below are examples of how the curse of Eve has played out in recent times.
Childbirth
On October 19, 2023, the House of Commons held a debate on Baby Awareness Week concerning the alarming levels of infant mortality in NHS trusts.
MPs discussed the findings of Donna Ockenden’s eponymous report on this topic and personal experiences. I hadn’t intended to watch it, but I happened to be preparing dinner at the time. It was shocking.
Most moving was the testimony from Patricia Gibson, the SNP MP for North Ayrshire and Arran, excerpted below (emphases mine):
… I always want to participate in this debate every year because I think it is an important moment—a very difficult moment, but an important one—in the parliamentary calendar. It is significant that the theme this year is the implementation of the findings of the Ockenden report in Britain, because that report was very important. We all remember concerns raised in the past about neonatal services in East Kent and Morecambe Bay, and the focus today on the work undertaken by Donna Ockenden in her maternity review into the care provided by Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust really matters.
Donna Ockenden is currently conducting an investigation into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. That comes in the wake of the fact that in the past, concerns have been raised about a further 21 NHS trusts in England with a mortality rate that is over 10% more than the average for that type of organisation, with higher than expected rates of stillbirth and neonatal death.
To be clear, I do not for one minute suggest that this is not a UK-wide problem, as I know to my personal cost. As the Minister will know, concerns remain that, despite a reduction in stillbirths across the UK, their number is still too high compared with many similar European countries, and there remain significant variations across the UK. Those variations are a concern. We know that they could be, and probably are, exacerbated by the socioeconomic wellbeing of communities. We know that inequality is linked to higher stillbirth rates and poorer outcomes for babies. Of course, the quality of local services is also a huge factor, and this must continue to command our attention.
When the Ockenden report was published earlier this year, it catalogued mistakes and failings compounded by cover-ups. At that time, I remember listening to parents on the news and hearing about what they had been through—the stillbirths they had borne, the destruction it had caused to their lives, the debilitating grief, the lack of answers and the dismissive attitude of those they had trusted to deliver their baby safely after the event. I do not want to again rehearse the nightmare experience I had of stillbirth, but when that report hit the media, every single word that those parents said brought it back to me. I had exactly the same experience when my son, baby Kenneth, was stillborn on 15 October 2009—ironically, Baby Loss Awareness Day.
That stillbirth happened for the same reasons that the parents described in the wake of the Ockenden report. Why are we still repeating the same mistakes again and again? I have a theory about that, which I will move on to in a moment. It was entirely down to poor care and failings and the dismissive attitude I experienced when I presented in clear distress and pain at my due date, suffering from a very extreme form of pre-eclampsia called HELLP syndrome. I remember all of it—particularly when I hear other parents speaking of very similar stories—as though it were yesterday, even though it is now 14 years later. I heard parents describing the same things that happened to me, and I am in despair that this continues to be the case. I hope it is not the case, but I fear that I will hear this again from other parents, because it is not improving. I alluded to that in my intervention on the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham [Tim Loughton, Conservative], and I will come back to it.
While I am on the issue of maternal health, expectant mothers are not being told that when they develop pre-eclampsia, which is often linked to stillbirths, that means they are automatically at greater risk of heart attacks and strokes. Nobody is telling them that they are exposed to this risk. I did not find out until about five years after I came out of hospital. Where is the support? Where is the long-term monitoring of these women? This is another issue I have started raising every year in the baby loss awareness debate. We are talking about maternal care. We should be talking about long-term maternal care and monitoring the health of women who develop pre-eclampsia …
… We are seeing too many maternity failings, and now deep concerns are being raised about Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. I understand that the trust faces a criminal investigation into its maternity failings, so I will not say any more about it. The problem is that when failures happen—and this, for me, is the nub of the matter—as they did in my case at the Southern General in Glasgow, now renamed the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, lessons continue to be not just unlearned but actively shunned. I feel confident that I am speaking on behalf of so many parents who have gone through similar things when I say that there is active hostility towards questions raised about why the baby died. In my case, I was dismissed, then upon discharge attempts were made to ignore me. Then I was blamed; it was my fault, apparently, because I had missed the viewing of a video about a baby being born—so, obviously, it was my fault that my baby died.
It was then suggested that I had gone mad and what I said could not be relied upon because my memory was not clear. To be absolutely clear, I had not gone mad. I could not afford that luxury, because I was forced to recover and find out what happened to my son. I have witnessed so many other parents being put in that position. It is true that the mother is not always conscious after a stillbirth. Certainly in my case, there was a whole range of medical staff at all levels gathered around me, scratching their heads while my liver ruptured and I almost died alongside my baby. Indeed, my husband was told to say his goodbyes to me, because I was not expected to live. This level of denial, this evasion, this complete inability to admit and recognise that serious mistakes had been made that directly led to the death of my son and almost cost my own life—I know that is the case, because I had to commission two independent reports when nobody in the NHS would help me—is not unusual. That is the problem. That kind of evasion and tactics are straight out of the NHS playbook wherever it happens in the UK, and it is truly awful.
I understand that health boards and health trusts want to cover their backs when things go wrong, but if that is the primary focus—sadly, it appears to be—where is the learning? Perhaps that is why the stillbirth of so many babies could be prevented. If mistakes cannot be admitted when they are made, how can anyone learn from them? I have heard people say in this Chamber today that we do not want to play a blame game. Nobody wants to play a blame game, but everybody is entitled to accountability, and that is what is lacking. We should not need independent reviews. Health boards should be able to look at their practices and procedures, and themselves admit what went wrong. It should not require a third party. Mothers deserve better, fathers deserve better, and our babies certainly deserve better.
Every time I hear of a maternity provision scandal that has led to stillbirths—sadly, I hear it too often—my heart breaks all over again. I know exactly what those parents are facing, continue to face, and must live with for the rest of their lives—a baby stillborn, a much-longed-for child lost, whose stillbirth was entirely preventable.
… Some people talk about workforce pressure, and it has been mentioned today. However, to go back to the point made by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory [Conservative]), for me and, I think, many of the parents who have gone through this, the fundamental problem is the wilful refusal to admit when mistakes have happened and to identify what lessons can be learned in order to prevent something similar happening again. To seek to evade responsibility, to make parents feel that the stillbirth of their child is somehow their own fault or, even worse, that everyone should just move on and get on with their lives after the event because these things happen—that is how I was treated, and I know from the testimony I have heard from other parents that that is how parents are often treated—compounds grief that already threatens to overwhelm those affected by such a tragedy. I do not want to hear of another health board or NHS trust that has been found following an independent investigation to have failed parents and babies promising to learn lessons. Those are just words.
When expectant mums present at hospitals, they should be listened to, not made to feel that they are in the way or do not matter. How hospitals engage with parents during pregnancy and after tragedy really matters. I have been banging on about this since I secured my first debate about stillbirth in 2016, and I will not stop banging on about it. I am fearful that things will never truly change in the way that they need to, and that simply piles agony on top of tragedy. I thank Donna Ockenden for her important work, and I know she will continue to be assiduous in these matters in relation to other work that she is currently undertaking, but the health boards and health trusts need to be much more transparent and open with parents when mistakes happen. For all the recommendations of the Ockenden report—there are many, and they are all important—we will continue to see preventable stillbirths unless the culture of cover-ups is ended. When the tragedy of stillbirth strikes, parents need to know why it happened and how it can be prevented from happening again. That is all; a baby cannot be brought back to life, but parents can be given those kinds of reassurances and answers. That is really important to moving on and looking to some kind of future.
It upsets me to say this, but I have absolutely no confidence that lessons were learned in my case, and I know that many parents feel exactly the same. However, I am very pleased to participate again in this annual debate, because these things need to be said, and they need to keep being said until health boards and NHS trusts stop covering up mistakes and have honest conversations when tragedies happen, as sometimes they will. Parents who are bereaved do not want to litigate; they want answers. It is time that NHS trusts and health boards were big enough, smart enough and sensitive enough to understand that. Until mistakes stop being covered up, babies will continue to die, because failures that lead to tragedies will not be remedied or addressed. That is the true scandal of stillbirth, and it is one of the many reasons why Baby Loss Awareness Week is so very important, to shine a light on these awful, preventable deaths for which no one seems to want to be held accountable.
I will just add a postscript here about a cousin of mine who gave birth five times in the 1990s in the United States with the best of private health care.
John MacArthur and Matthew Henry both suggest that godly living will prevent bad experiences in pregnancy and childbirth, but one of my cousins is a devout Catholic and was at the time when she was pregnant. She is middle class and her husband is financially self-sufficient, better off than most men in his social cohort.
Nevertheless, my cousin had horrific third trimesters with each pregnancy resulting in pre-eclampsia. Therefore, I object to men, especially ordained men, intimating that a woman’s godly living will alleviate suffering when she is carrying a child. All I can say about my cousin and other godly women living through those life-threatening situations is that their plight might be a form of sanctification: imposed suffering from on high for greater spiritual refinement. I don’t have an answer.
Fortunately, my cousin recovered and has five healthy adult sons who bring her much happiness.
Men
What more needs to be said about the role of men in women’s lives that hasn’t already been said?
Below are a few recent news items exploring the ongoing war between the sexes.
Divorce
In the Philippines, which is still predominantly Roman Catholic, women want the law changed to allow for divorce. On December 28, 2023, The Telegraph carried the story, ‘Divorce in the Philippines: “My husband beat me over and over — I still can’t legally divorce him”‘:
Ana takes out her phone and scrolls through the grim set of photos. In them, her face is purple and swollen, her lip cut – it wasn’t the first time her husband struck her, but the 48-year-old hopes it will be the last.
“He followed me with a wooden stick and hit me over and over,” says Ana, whose name has been changed. “I remember thinking, this time he’s going to kill me … I shouted for help but I don’t think anyone heard. So I ran.”
As she sat in hospital later that night in August, Ana came to a stark realisation: after 19 years, two daughters, and plenty of violence, she wanted a divorce.
There’s only one problem: in the Philippines, it’s illegal.
“I don’t want him in my life anymore,” Ana says. “Separation isn’t enough, I cannot say that is freedom. It would be like a bird in a cage – you cannot fly wherever you go, because you are married so you are linked … But in the Philippines, the law doesn’t stand with me.”
The southeast Asian country is the only place outside the Vatican which prohibits divorce, trapping thousands of people in marriages that are loveless at best, abusive and exploitative at worst.
But now, as new legislation creeps through Congress, there are mounting hopes that change may finally be on the horizon in this conservative, Catholic country …
“I’m a Catholic, I go to church, but I also believe it’s my human right to become divorced. I want to try to convince others of that too,” says Ana, between bites of a homemade custard tart.
“In the meantime, I’m not giving up on love. Where there’s life, there’s love.”
There was a time when divorce was allowed for everyone in the Philippines, but that all changed with independence:
Though banned during the Spanish colonial era, divorce on the grounds of adultery or concubinage was legalised in 1917 under American occupation, and further expanded by the Japanese when they took control during World War Two.
But in 1950, when the newly independent country’s Civil Code came into effect, these changes were repealed.
Today, only Muslims can obtain a divorce in the Philippines:
Today, most couples – bar Muslims, who are covered by Sharia laws which allow for divorce – have two options: legal separation, which doesn’t end a marriage but allows people to split their assets; or annulment, which voids the nuptials and enables individuals to remarry, as the union never existed in the eyes of the law.
Every other couple has to jump through highly challenging legal and financial hoops to obtain some sort of separation:
… the grounds are narrow, the process bureaucratic, the courts stretched and the costs extortionate.
Gaining an annulment, for instance, involves proving someone was forced into a marriage or mentally unsound on their wedding day. Brookman, a solicitors firm specialising in divorce, warns a “large amount of evidence” is required – and the costs often spiral to “roughly the average salary” in the Philippines.
“Some say it’s an anti-poor, pro-rich process because it takes quite a bit of effort, resources and money to gain an annulment,” says Carlos Conde, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “People who have access to lawyers can go through the process, but for the majority of poor Filipinos that’s just not an option. And so they stay in toxic relationships.”
Even where people do have the funds, the outcome is far from guaranteed. Take Stella Sibonga. The 46-year-old filed for an annulment in 2013, keen to give marriage a second chance with her long-term boyfriend. Five years prior, she left a decade-long union she described as “traumatic and miserable”.
Yet, 300,000 pesos (roughly £4,300) and 10 years later, Ms Sibonga remains married to the “wrong man”.
“I have no idea when I’ll get a final verdict,” she says. “In the meantime, people say I’m living in sin with my boyfriend, they judge me for it… Really, it’s a nightmare.”
Catholic clergy are firmly opposed to a divorce law in the Philippines, and legislators tread carefully:
“We remain steadfast in our position that divorce will never be pro-family, pro-children, and pro-marriage,” Father Jerome Secillano, the executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said in September. He has previously criticised “legislators who rather focus on breaking marriages and the family rather than fixing them”.
The church has huge influence in the Philippines, where nearly 80 per cent of the population is Catholic.
“The main difficulty is the opposition to the divorce bill by this powerful block led by the Catholic church and religious fundamental groups,” says Mr Conde. “Many legislators are not keen to butt heads with or offend the church … it is tough to do battle against them.”
I understand the clergy’s point, but some things just cannot be fixed.
The country’s 2012 reproductive health bill still hadn’t been implemented in 2022. The Church had blocked it with religious threats against legislators:
The fight to ensure access to contraception was a case in point. After more than a decade of gruelling debate, negotiations and lobbying, the Reproductive Health (RH) law finally passed in 2012 – only for full implementation to be blocked for years amid legal challenges from the church.
In 2022, government figures suggested 42 per cent of women still had an unmet need for family planning, meaning they wanted to use contraception but were not able to access it. Over half of pregnancies in the Philippines are “unintended”.
“The Catholic hierarchy in the country was vociferously against the RH bill, so much so that it threatened the authors of the measure with excommunication and defeat at the polls,” says Mr Lagman [Edcel Lagman, congressman and author of the divorce bill in the House of Representatives]. But he thinks the fight for divorce could be easier.
“Although representatives of the church have stated that as an institution, it is strongly against the measure, I think that this time around it is not as vehement in its opposition,” he adds. “All Catholic countries worldwide, except for the Philippines, have already legalised absolute divorce. This is a recognition that divorce does not violate Catholic dogma.”
This is the state of play with the proposed divorce bill:
“Now, for the first time, both the House and the Senate have approved their respective measures at the committee level,” Edcel Lagman, congressman and author of the divorce bill in the House of Representatives, told the Telegraph.
“I am still very optimistic that the present Congress will pass the divorce bill and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who has said before that he is pro-divorce, will sign the measure into law… The Philippines needs a divorce law, and we need it now – it is not some dangerous spectre that we must fight against.”
More and more people here agree. In 2005, a survey by the polling company Social Weather Stations found 43 per cent of Filipinos supported legalising divorce “for irreconcilably separated couples,” while 45 per cent disagreed. This had shifted to 53 per cent in favour and 32 per cent against in the same survey in 2017.
We shall see what happens in 2024.
Virtual reality
However, a woman does not need to have to come into actual physical contact with a man in order to feel abused. Over the Christmas period, allegations of rape came to light from a girl experiencing virtual reality in the gaming world.
The story was all over media outlets. On January 2, 2024, The Times reported, ‘Police investigate “virtual rape” of girl in metaverse game’:
The police are investigating an alleged rape in the metaverse for the first time after a child was “attacked” while playing a virtual reality video game, it emerged last night.
The girl, who is under the age of 16, was not injured as there was no physical assault but is said to have suffered significant psychological and emotional trauma. She had been wearing an immersive headset while in a virtual “room” when she was attacked by several adult men, according to the Daily Mail …
Details of the virtual reality case are said to have been kept secret to protect the child involved, amid fears that a prosecution would not be possible. A senior officer familiar with the case said: “This child experienced psychological trauma similar to that of someone who has been physically raped. There is an emotional and psychological impact on the victim that is longer term than any physical injuries. It poses a number of challenges for law enforcement, given [that] current legislation is not set up for this.”
Donna Jones, the chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, told the newspaper that women and children deserved greater protection. She said: “We need to update our laws because they have not kept pace with the risks of harm that are developing from artificial intelligence and offending on platforms like the metaverse. The government needs to look at changing the law to protect women and children from harm in these virtual environments.”
The police believe that developments in gaming have opened up new avenues for cybercrime, including virtual robbery, ransomware, fraud and identity theft, but existing legislation is unlikely to cover rape in the metaverse. This is because sexual assault is defined in the Sexual Offences Act as the physical touching of another person sexually without their consent.
The nature of the metaverse also blurs geographical boundaries, making it difficult to determine which law enforcement agency has jurisdiction over an incident when users and perpetrators are in different countries.
This, in my opinion, was entirely preventable. A parent or two should have been guiding this girl from the get-go.
I am no gamer, but even I can see that the metaverse presents potential dangers, as The Times‘s Helen Rumbelow reported on January 3, ‘Young, female and vulnerable: a “rape” in the virtual world’:
I was exploring Horizon Worlds, using the Oculus headset, both brands owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. This is where a British schoolgirl under the age of 16 was allegedly “gang-raped” by a group of online strangers.
The police are investigating whether, under the legislation, there is any crime here to prosecute. I used inverted commas around “gang-rape”, since the crime of rape is narrowly defined as someone being penetrated against their consent. That didn’t happen here: the child was alone with her VR headset, possibly thousands of miles from her antagonists, and was physically unharmed.
Instead, in a virtual space inside Horizon Worlds, her avatar was surrounded by male avatars. In 2022 Horizon Worlds introduced a “personal boundary” default setting that prevents other avatars coming within four feet of you, but if that was disabled then touch from other users can activate a buzz through your own Oculus controllers that you hold in each hand.
You can also see fairly crude — in every way — gestures of other avatars interacting with yours, and hear the voices of the people online who are conducting the attack, and maybe describing it. I heard legal experts talking about this case drift away from the vocabulary of sexual assault. Instead, they preferred “a distressing incident” that caused the girl psychological harm …
Many women have reported that they feel unsafe from attacks in these spaces. In 2018 an American mother provided screen evidence of how her seven-year-old daughter was being “gang-raped” by two boys in a playground in Roblox, the child-focused online game.
Sorry, but the mother never should have allowed that to happen. A seven-year-old should only be gaming even on children’s games with adult supervision.
Rumbelow went on to describe her 1990s time at Stanford University in Silicon Valley when virtual reality was being developed. Even then, online assaults were taking place, every bit as shocking. The perpetrator from the game then being tested was a student thousands of miles away at New York University.
Thirty years later, this was Rumbelow’s experience on Horizon Worlds:
When I go on Horizon Worlds the first danger I encounter is my family. Being blinded by a massive headset as you flail around the living room not only looks absurd but makes your rump vulnerable to smacking — once our human bodies are all suspended in their own vats, à la The Matrix, while our minds go virtual, this problem will be designed out.
I first give myself a female avatar called Nicky, with blonde hair and a red dress, and play a few different games in groups of virtual strangers. The vibe is quite “cruisey”: I can follow and message anyone I am hanging out with and I keep having to interrupt play to dismiss requests to privately connect. It’s like trying to play tennis with a bunch of men rushing on court to get my number …
I have the same height and power as males, and at one point in a haunted house game called Bonnie’s Revenge I am briefly surrounded by a bunch of unknown guys in a dark corridor. In real life this would be a heart-rate moment; instead I blast straight past them. I am repeatedly reminded that I have the mute button to turn off any characters that offend me …
When I re-enter Horizon Worlds with the avatar of a man called Nick, I play a game called Super Rumble (attracted by the name) that I had played before as a woman. As Nicky, I was ignored; as Nick I am called to “pack” with a team of boys against the only female avatar called “Rad Rachel”. “Let’s team on her,” says one British male teenager to our group (I have to remain silent or betray myself) …
At the end of the game we all troop down to the results area to see our scores. Rad Rachel did well but is still getting barracked, with guys up close sticking their guns to her head …
The Times‘s Sean Russell, an experienced gamer, also shared his virtual experiences, ‘I enjoyed playing in the metaverse, then I went in as a woman’:
I was in Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse and was standing outside a virtual comedy club for 30 seconds before a man said: “Want to see my balls?” That’s funny, I thought, no one had said that when my avatar was a man. In fact, when I was a man no one said a thing to me at all.
… In the 19 years I’ve been playing games online little has changed — women are treated the same as they always have been. The news that police are investigating the “virtual rape” of a young woman in a metaverse game is totally unsurprising.
Russell asks the question many of us might have posed to the 16-year-old about her virtual rape: Why not turn off the game?
Russell says there could be a deeper question to answer:
I would say it is a matter of requiring a new vocabulary to talk about these things. If a young woman cannot sit down in what is probably the safest place she has, her home, to play a game she enjoys, perhaps it’s not as easy as turning the game off. Perhaps the invasive psychological damage is done before any “act” has taken place.
Many minors are playing in the virtual universe:
The NSPCC estimates that 15 per cent of children aged five to ten have used a virtual reality headset and 6 per cent use one daily. Meanwhile, a game such as Fortnite (age rating 13+) has 23 million players a day, many of whom are children.
This is not the route a child, especially a girl, should be following. Play in the real world: sports, board games, bridge.
Bad girls
Returning to the real world, two stories caught my eye recently.
One is about the trend for kept women. They are not mistresses as no wife or marriage is involved, ergo they are concubines. However, they bill themselves as ‘stay-at-home girlfriends’, ‘trad wives’ or ‘hot housewives’, as a November 2023 article in UnHerd reveals. This is immorality posing as morality:
On a summer’s day, TikTok influencer Gwen The Milkmaid can be found frying up all-American comfort food dressed in a floral prairie dress. “I don’t want to be a boss babe. I want to be a frolicking mama. I want to spend my days baking bread, cuddling chickens, and drinking raw milk straight from the udder,” she writes in her TikTok caption. In another video, she smiles beatifically at her nearly 50,000 followers, giving the camera a view of her ample breasts as she bakes a fresh sourdough loaf.
Gwen is a self-proclaimed “trad-wife”, one of a number of women across TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit forums extolling a return to ultra-traditional gender roles and financial dependence on a male partner. Like the swinging dicks of WallStreetBets and crypto bros, the online trad-wife is an expression of 21st-century financial nihilism. Disillusioned by the girl-boss feminist fantasy, these young women are turning to men to pay off their loans and fund their lifestyles. And, why not? The good life isn’t coming any other way …
… the girlfriend’s main project is to keep herself: thin, young, and desirable. She is her main project and her job is, as Jia Tolentino has written, to “always be optimising” …
When having it all means doing it all, there’s an allure to doing almost nothing. “People used to ask me what’s your dream job,” Kay writes in one video caption. “I don’t dream of labour. I dream of living a soft, feminine life as a hot housewife. It’s as simple as that” …
As much as these women preach an easier, calmer life away from the grind, the #Tradwife or #SAHG is just the latest niche in the long trail of “girl online” content. This work is its own hustle and produces its own income. Gwen the Milkmaid, for example, has recently cast off an online presence as an adult content creator on Only Fans. And surely few people could be fooled by Kendel Kay’s half-hearted TikTok screed against girl-bossing as she shills for a green juice brand? It’s as if the response to financial nihilism is yet more nihilism.
The comments section to the article is one of UnHerd‘s most populated: 204 comments, most of them thought-provoking in opposing this trend.
And, finally, there is the case of the young middle-class woman who ran over her boyfriend in England.
On January 3, The Telegraph gave us the background and photos in ‘Alice Wood: From promising postgraduate to life in prison’:
With her own home, a loving fiancé and the chance to study for a postgraduate degree at Cambridge University, Alice Wood had a glittering future in store.
But following a moment of madness borne out of drunken jealousy last May, the 23-year-old now faces the prospect of spending the rest of her life in prison.
After accusing her boyfriend, Ryan Watson of flirting with another woman at a party, Wood lost her temper and used her Ford Fiesta as a weapon to mow him down and kill him.
Following a three week trial at Chester Crown Court, Wood showed no emotion when she was found guilty of murder.
She will be sentenced on Jan 29, but the judge told her that she may never be released from prison.
Wood grew up in Cheadle, Staffordshire with her two brothers. Her parents were divorced and she would live alternatively with her mother, a doctor’s receptionist and father, a furniture maker.
Bright and academically able, she excelled at school and dreamed of becoming a vet.
Following her A-levels she took a different path, winning a place at Manchester University to study for a degree in philosophy, ethics and theology …
She was preparing for her finals on the fateful night when she killed her boyfriend.
Despite being unable to take her exams, Wood has since been awarded her degree based on the work she had already completed.
She had also been offered a scholarship to study part time for a master’s degree at Cambridge University – an offer she will now be unable to take up.
Wood and Mr Watson met at the beginning of lockdown in March 2020 and despite the restrictions on social mixing were soon in a serious relationship.
Within six months they were engaged and the following year, with the help of Mr Watson’s parents, had bought their first home together in the village of Rode Heath in Cheshire.
Mr Watson, had started a job as a support worker at the brain injury charity Headway, where he was proving to be a popular member of the team.
Last May, he and some of his colleagues were invited to a birthday party for a member of staff in the Victoria Lounge Bar in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent.
During the party, guests noticed how Mr Watson was circulating with ease, chatting with other attendees.
They also noted that Wood was less comfortable and appeared unhappy with the fact her fiance was paying other women any attention.
The trial heard how Mr Watson had “clicked” with fellow guest Tiffany Ferriday, leaving Wood feeling as if she was being snubbed by her boyfriend …
The couple then rowed on the nine-mile drive home, with prosecutors claiming Wood lost her temper.
Despite being three times over the drink drive limit, she got out of her boyfriend’s car and got into her own Ford Fiesta.
CCTV footage shown in court captured the moment Wood swerved onto the pavement and careered into Mr Watson, sending him flying over the bonnet.
He was able to get to his feet, but Wood then smashed into him again this time trapping underneath the vehicle.
Wood then drove for more than 500 feet with him trapped under the car causing fatal injuries.
Following the collision, she knocked on the door of a neighbour, telling them: “Please telephone an ambulance, I think I have run over my boyfriend.”
The Times has more detail of Mr Watson’s final moments of life, beginning with an overview of the party:
During the trial at Chester crown court, Andrew Ford KC for the prosecution said: “Ryan Watson was caught on camera having a good time, being a gregarious and outgoing party guest, having fun and dancing” …
Ford said Wood got into the Fiesta and reversed towards Watson, almost hitting him, before driving it backwards and forwards in what one witness compared to a “game of chicken”.
Watson walked away and stood in front of parked cars but Wood drove into him, turning off the road to hit him, the court was told. He was knocked on to the bonnet of her car but was able to stand afterwards.
Ford said: “She drove straight into Ryan Watson for the second time, head on. This time he did not go over the bonnet — she knocked him clean over, under the vehicle’s front end.”
She told her trial that she did not realise he was trapped beneath her car when she drove 158 metres before stopping. The court was told that Wood had 61 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 35.
Wood showed no emotion as the jury returned its unanimous verdict after less than eight hours of deliberation. The judge, Michael Leeming, further remanded her in custody and told her she “may never be released”.
Dear, oh dear.
Conclusion
I hadn’t expected that Eve’s curse would have got me started on reading about sin more closely, but it has and here we have it.
I better understand why God detests sin so much and why Original Sin caused Him to pass the ultimate penalty on all of us: certain death with much unhappiness thrown into the mix for those who do not obey His commandments.
There is something to be said for living a godly life where those miseries are mitigated.
January 2 is a public holiday in Scotland, part of the Hogmanay celebration.
It seems ironic that, centuries ago, the Church of Scotland — Presbyterian — forbade the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25 yet allowed two days of drunken revelry at the New Year.
What does Hogmanay mean?
Historians differ on the origin of the word Hogmanay.
Some say it is corrupted French. Others say it is Old Norse.
The Scotsman says (emphases mine):
Curiously, there is no definitive answer as to the etymological origin of the word but it is thought that it could be of Norman French descent, a language that historically accounts for many differences we see between English and the Scots language.
‘Hogmanay’ is similar to the French phrases ‘Homme est né’ which translates to “Man is born”, ‘Au gui mener’ which means “lead to mistletoe” and ‘à gueux mener’ for “bring to the beggars”. It’s also similar to the French word ‘hoginane’ which refers to a “gala day”.
Others believe that Hogmanay celebrations were introduced to Scotland by way of the Vikings who were invading in the 8th and 9th centuries. They connect the word to ‘Hoggo-nott’ which is an Old Norse word for ‘Yuletide’ – an archaic word for the Christmas season.
The BBC’s article says that the word could even be — gasp — Anglo-Saxon in origin:
Dr Donna Heddle, an expert from the University of the Highlands and Islands, explained: “The name could also come from the Anglo-Saxon ‘haleg monath’ meaning ‘holy month’.”
But Dr Heddle won’t push that hypothesis too far. We all know how much the Scots loathe anything Anglo-Saxon:
Dr Heddle says: “The most likely source seems to be French. In Normandy, presents given at Hogmanay were ‘hoguignetes’.”
Yes, when in doubt, better to go with the Auld Alliance of France and Scotland.
That said, The Herald asserts the word could have been used first in Yorkshire, albeit with French origins:
It’s thought to come from the French word ‘hoginane’, linked to the medieval word ‘aguillaneuf’ – meaning ‘gift at New Year’.
… the first recorded instance of the word emerges in Yorkshire, in the household ledger from the estate of Sir Robert Waterton in 1443.
There, family documents describe payments for large and small “hogmanayse”, believed to be gifts of food and drink given to children over the New Year period.
Sorry, Scotland, there’s no escaping the English!
Agricultural origins
Not surprisingly, Hogmanay comes from the pagan agricultural festival held around Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year, and lasted approximately two weeks.
These agricultural and pagan traditions were widespread across Europe, however, as Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Starkey said in the GB News show exploring the history of the British Christmas:
As Britain was largely agricultural at the time and fields would have been to cold or muddy to cultivate, Christmas celebrations lasted for 12 days, from the 25th through January 6. Workers and their employers would have celebrated in their own ways, revelry included. The twelfth day ended with a play. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was no accident, Starkey said.
The Church turned these festivals into Christian celebrations.
The BBC’s article tells us:
The big Hogmanay celebrations date back to pagan times many hundreds of years ago, when people used to mark the end of the harvest and the end of the year with a festival called Samhain.
Later, this became a midwinter yule festival, which continued when Catholicism became the nation’s main religion. The period of celebrations became known as the ‘daft days’ with people eating and drinking lots, enjoying parties and bonfires, and visiting and hosting neighbours.
Hogmanay traditions
The Scotsman says that old Norse traditions remain part of Hogmanay. The Vikings invaded Scotland in the Dark Ages:
In reference to the ceremony’s Norse roots, firework displays and torchlit parades are still common over Hogmanay throughout Scotland, with the Stonehaven Fireball Ceremony one of the most famous in Scotland. Here, large fireballs are swung on metal chains down the town’s main street, signifying the Winter Solstice and the rejuvenating power of the sun.
One of the enduring characteristics of the celebration is to “first foot” the house of a neighbour, friend or family member. To bring good luck to the home, the first person to visit the home after the stroke of midnight should be a dark male with whisky, coal, shortbread or even a black bun [no doubt to resemble coal]. This tradition is believed to refer to Viking times, when the sight of a blonde stranger at your door was likely that of a Viking invading enemy instead of a well-wisher.
To first-foot an empty household is a grave mistake in Scottish culture, as it’s believed to bring bad luck to the home for the new year.
The Herald has much more. Although the aforementioned Yorkshire household first used the word in 1443:
It takes a further 150 years or so for it to appear in writing in Scotland, in the records of the Kirk Session in Elgin in 1604, which describe how William Pattoun had been charged for “singing and hagmonayis”.
No doubt Mr Pattoun was charged with begging door to door, because this became rather commonplace:
By the end of the 17th century, it pops up in the Scottish Presbyterian Eloquence, which noted how it is “ordinary among some Plebians in the South of Scotland to go about from door to door upon New Year’s Eve, crying Hagmane”.
The annual begging often involved a performance of some sort, although not always:
… in Shetland, ‘Skeklers’ dressed entirely in distinctive costumes made of straw would perform songs and dance in return for food and drink.
In south of Scotland communities, it was traditional to watch ‘Galoshins’, a play similar to the English Mummers’ in which good would overcome evil often in the form of a heroic ‘knight’ slaying an evil beast.
Hogmanay could also be a time for people living in dire conditions to approach the better off and receive gifts of food and drink without fear of judgment or refusal, Bob [Pegg, Strathpeffer-based storyteller, musician and Hogmanay expert] adds.
“You are looking at people without a lot of money, who are given licence once a year to ‘beg’.
“Some might perform the Galoshins play in return for food, drink and some money. Guisers would go around the houses, sing or perform a rhyme and be offered hospitality in return.”
The Guisers dressed in disguise.
The British Christmas, whether in Scotland or England, closed with benevolence from one’s employers. Both countries had this tradition at the end of the season, with the English calling it Plough Monday and St Distaff’s Day:
Handsel Monday – the first Monday after New Year – became a time to exchange gifts and for workers to be treated by their masters to the day off, with cake, drink or a gift of money.
Strong drink was always part of the celebrations:
Customs and traditions varied from region to region. With Christmas a faded memory, focus was on throwing effort into ushering out the old year, and welcoming the new, usually with alcohol involved.
In Edinburgh, 17th century poet Robert Fergusson dubbed the period the “daft days”, writing of how “December’s dowie face, Glowrs owr the rigs wi’ sour grimace” is ushered away with celebration, whisky and drunkenness that could fall foul of the city’s guard …
A drink akin to egg nog was popular in Edinburgh:
One favourite tipple was ‘het pint’ – a bowl of hot ale and eggs spiced with nutmeg and laced with whisky.
It was potent stuff, according to one newspaper report from 1874’s Edinburgh celebrations.
There were also superstitions involving light:
In Gaelic areas, meanwhile, Hogmanay was a time of superstition and ritual. It became the Night of the Candle: with fears it was bad luck if the household fire went out, a flame had to be kept alive throughout the night.
Other traditions involved lightly beating a human dressed as an animal, to get rid of the evil from the previous 12 months and bring in good luck for the New Year:
… Night of Blows, referred to the custom which saw a man wearing a cow hide or sheepskin accompanied by a group called the Hogmanay Lads, and a piper.
“They would gain entrance to the house, there might have been some rhymes or songs, and then the person in the animal skin would run round the central hearth three times while everyone in the house beat him with whatever they could get their hands on,” adds Bob.
A form of ‘first footing’, once the good-natured beating was done, the group would be offered refreshments and sent to the next household.
The aforementioned Galoshins play was performed in the south of Scotland along the same theme.
The Scotsman explains that these traditions are a way of creating a clean slate for the next 12 months. Renewing friendships is important at this time:
Those who make it inside to the Hogmanay party will typically receive well-humoured greetings and conversation, as Hogmanay is traditionally seen as a time to move on from the problems and troubles of the previous year and start again with a clean slate.
In addition, Robert Burns’s world-famous “Auld Lang Syne” may be sung after the New Year bells have tolled. This is historically done with singers holding hands in a circle, before crossing their arms over their chest towards their immediate neighbours and rushing towards the middle to finish the song.
The Reformation: banning Christmas in favour of Hogmanay
The Scotsman gives us an overview of how Christmas disappeared for centuries north of the border:
… Christmas in Scotland was a very muted affair for over 300 years, as it was seen as a Catholic festival by Scottish Protestant kirks and duly banned after the Reformation.
Dr Alan MacDonald, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Dundee, explains. He said: “The principal reason why Hogmanay is bigger in Scotland than in the rest of the UK is that our Reformation was more radical than in other places in Europe. A lot of Medieval European traditions were dropped, including Christmas, so a lot of Scots took the view that the only day worth celebrating for religion was Sunday.
“The reason for everyone celebrating new year was that people needed something to make them happy and they weren’t allowed to celebrate Christmas!”
As well as banning the celebration of Christmas, Scotland was one of the earliest nations to change its New Year’s day from 25 March [as it was in England at the time] to 1 January; marking a clear moment in winter where one year ended and one began. Crucially, though, it gave the nation another event to celebrate that was culturally distinct from Christmas and its Catholic connotations, with presents exchanged and family and friends reuniting during Hogmanay.
The Herald has more on the Kirk — the Church of Scotland — banning Christmas in 1560:
Stretching from before Christmas to the end of January, Bob says it was a sustained period of merriment, mischief, music, bonfires and quite a bit of cross-dressing.
Good as it sounds, not all were on board.
Unhappy with all this fun, with the Reformation in full swing and to reinforce their anti-Papist stance, the Kirk pulled the plug on any celebration of Christmas in 1560.
Now denied the opportunity to lark around during much of December, Scots turned their attentions to New Year.
“You have a clamp down on people having fun,” says Bob. “Because New Year is not a religious feast, you can’t get hammered for doing it.
“So, everything gets concentrated on New Year.
“All the stuff that happened over a protracted period of four or five weeks just before Christmas and to the end of January, gets concentrated around New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day and the following Monday.”
Even then, the Kirk meted out punishments:
… the Kirk tried to impose its will: Kirk Session records from Elgin, showed on 30th December, 1598, one George Kay and his friend Archie Hay were summoned and accused of dancing and guising.
George, it stated, confessed to dressing up in his sister’s coat and joining others with blackened faces, playing ‘drums’ using animal bones and ringing bells.
“Drink had been taken as well,” Bob adds …
“They were ordered to ‘make repentance’ at the kirk and stand before the congregation bare foot and with bare legs for punishment.”
The following year the Kirk Session at Chanonry recorded efforts to stop “footballing, snowballing, singing of carols and other profane songs, guising, piping, violining and dancing”, he adds.
Christmas was restored as a Scottish holiday only in 1958!
The Herald continues:
By the time the ban on marking Christmas was withdrawn in the late 17th century – it would take until the 1950s to become a public holiday in Scotland – the nation had already embraced the New Year period.
And “the daft days” of high celebration, feasting, guising, dressing up and excess were set in stone for generations to come …
It took until 1958 for Christmas to become a bank holiday in Scotland, but Hogmanay was already sealed as the Scottish winter festival.
Street parties
The Herald has splendid photos, old and new, of Hogmanay celebrations over the past century, at home and in public.
The highlight was Glasgow’s 1938 celebration in George Square, a pre-eminent New Year’s street party:
… across the country, new traditions had been forged: crowds in towns and cities gathered at town clocks and mercat crosses [market crosses] for ‘the bells’ and to party together.
These days, much focus is on Edinburgh. But on Hogmanay 1938, all eyes were on George Square in Glasgow for the city’s first council- organised Hogmanay street party, and the largest celebration in Britain at the time.
More than 50,000 revellers – some suggested twice that number – gathered on a cold, misty evening, singing loudly as the year drifted away.
The Glasgow Herald of January 2, 1939, reported how the celebration, previously focused around Glasgow Cross, created a “novel, carnival atmosphere”.
“The setting was gay and colourful, the trees throughout the square were festooned with multi-coloured lights, while fairy lights were eloped between the columns.
“Close to the Cenotaph, gas flares pierced the darkness.”
Searchlights from Maryhill Barracks and transport depots at Possilpark and Larkfield scanned the sky even though the mist meant a midnight fly past had to be scrapped.
Nevertheless, the crowd sang, brass and pipe bands played, and a street vendor did a roaring trade in paper hats.
However, there was a sense of solemnity as the Second World War began:
Lights dimmed and then beamed brightly again – a signal to the crowd to pay respects to the passing of the old year.
With the new one approaching – a dreadful one, as war engulfed Europe – the crowd fell silent to listen to gentle renditions of Lead, Kindly Light and Abide With Me.
Inside the City Chambers, having just wished the crowd happy new year, the Lord Provost of the time was greeted by a 14-year-old Jewish refugee who had arrived from Vienna.
Handing over a silver horseshoe for luck, he said: “I thank your city on behalf of the refugee children for its great kindness to us and I hope you will have peace and prosperity.”
On a happier note, in 2023, Scots, along with tourists from around the world, rang in 2024 with another huge street party in their capital city, Edinburgh.
The BBC reports that thousands watched the fireworks at midnight:
After several days of weather warnings, it was a clear cold night for most.
Visitors from more than 80 countries gathered in Edinburgh where Britpop band Pulp [English!] headlined a concert in Princes Street Gardens.
The city’s programme of events started on Friday with the return of the torchlight procession after an absence of four years.
Funding difficulties meant it was missing in 2022 and the Covid pandemic saw it cancelled in 2020 and 2021.
About 20,000 people watched the “river of fire” make its way from the Meadows park throughout the Old Town to beneath Edinburgh Castle.
Al Thomson from Unique Assembly, which organised the events, told BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme on Hogmanay morning that the 2023 party would be closer to the big events the city held before the pandemic.
Finally, a return to normality for Hogmanay.
Churchmouse Campanologist 