Chris Deerin

United Kingdom

Writer and Editor at Freelance

never leave me alone with poets

Articles

The populist right are infiltrating Scotland

1 week ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

Hamilton may – just possibly, just perhaps – shock Scotland again next Thursday, when yet another by-election takes place there. This time it is for the Holyrood Parliament, which didn’t exist back in 1967, and the constituency is formally Hamilton, Stonehouse and Larkhall. This time the SNP is the incumbent. And it is not Labour that could snatch the seat away, but Reform. A year ago, the very idea would have been unthinkable, the proposition instantly dismissed.
Scotland has not turned against immigration

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

Britain, according to Keir Starmer this week, is in danger of becoming an “island of strangers”. This was the justification offered by the Prime Minister for his crackdown on immigration as he vowed to “take back control of our borders”. The choice of phrasing has played well with some. Nigel Farage, in that impressively demotic way he has, said that his Reform party “very much enjoyed your speech… you seem to be learning a great deal from us”.
How Scotland learned to love Nigel Farage

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

What on earth is happening with Reform in Scotland? Without much effort on its part, it keeps breaking new ground. It is the best story in town. A marmalade-dropper of a poll this week put the party on course to become the official opposition after next May’s Holyrood election. With something similar predicted at the Welsh Assembly, Reform may be on the cusp of achieving an extraordinary and unprecedented breakthrough at all political levels across the UK.
The SNP has reinvented itself yet again

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

Next week is a big one for John Swinney. The First Minister will both mark his first year in office and publish his Programme for Government, Holyrood’s equivalent of the King’s Speech. Swinney is entitled to look back over the past 12 months with a degree of satisfaction, and to look forward to the next 12 with some optimism. Few, probably including the man himself, would have predicted such an outcome when he took the top job on 8 May last year.
The SNP’s pious anti-Reform summit had no answers

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

They were all there – the First Minister, the leaders of Holyrood’s opposition parties (the Tories aside), religious leaders, the great and good of civic Scotland. The summit called in Glasgow this week by John Swinney was, he said, to show “strength of unity” against the rise of the far right in Scotland. What he meant, of course, was Reform UK, which has surged in the opinion polls and looks likely to have a haul of MSPs numbering in the teens after next year’s Holyrood election.
Reform's appeal is obvious when voters are sick of political failure - I can't blame them

1 month ago | thescottishsun.co.uk | Chris Deerin

I WAS speaking to a businessman in Edinburgh last week, a successful guy who employs many. He’s a nice man who clearly has a nice life. I asked him how was he planning to vote in next year’s Holyrood election. “If it was tomorrow, I’d vote for Reform,” he said. He’s not the first person to tell me that. Nor is he the first well-to-do type to be considering backing Nigel Farage’s party.
Why the Scottish trans movement lost

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

It was impossible to miss the explosion of joy and relief from campaigners that greeted the UK Supreme Court’s verdict that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas,” tweeted For Women Scotland, the group that had challenged the Scottish government on the issue. There were tears, hugs and champagne.
Scotland’s public spending timebomb

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

The names of Graeme Roy and Stephen Boyle won’t ring many, if any, bells with the average Scottish voter. They are, however, two of the most significant and consequential figures in public life. Roy and Boyle are the people’s brain and voice when it comes to keeping watch over the devolved state’s performance, the former as head of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, the latter as Auditor General.
The Scottish Greens are lost in the new world

2 months ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

It’s a long time since the Scottish left found its home amid the clangs, sparks and shouts of the nation’s ship and steelyards. In today’s economy of professions and services, of university graduates and the technological juggernaut, leftism has become a middle-class pursuit. It is, largely, a hobby of the urban sophisticate, more likely to inhabit a spacious Glasgow tenement than a modest council house, whose hands remain wholly uncalloused. Eye strain is the greatest risk posed by their day job.
Scotland must sell itself to the world

2 months ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

Should Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf course host the Open in the next few years? The US President is golf-daft, and yet the top-level Scottish course hasn’t been home to a major since he bought it in 2014. The politics of such a decision manage to be both simple and complex. First Minister John Swinney has, sensibly, said he wants to work with the Trump administration to enhance Scotland’s interests.