Chris Deerin

United Kingdom

Writer and Editor at Freelance

yeah yeah yeah

Articles

Dishonesty now rules Scottish politics

1 day ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

Hope is, famously, one of the most powerful words in politics. Every party lays claim to offering it. It helped get Barack Obama elected. It’s rarely far from the lips of any politician with something to sell you. So it proved on Wednesday evening, when John Swinney and Anas Sarwar took part in a live event for the Holyrood Sources podcast. The First Minister said he would put independence at the heart of his devolved election campaign, as this was where “hope” could be found for Scotland.
Inside the SNP civil war

2 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

It’s a statement of the obvious that politics requires resilience. You have ups and downs. You win some, you lose some. If you’re really good, or just lucky, the former might outweigh the latter. When you’re down, it’s essential, in Scottish parlance, to keep the heid. When I spoke to Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, this week he was understandably still cock-a-hoop at his party’s surprise victory in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election.
The Hamilton by-election and the crack-up of Scottish politics

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Chris Deerin

Labour’s win in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election caught almost everyone out. The Holyrood seat was one that the party needed to take from the SNP if it is to stand a chance of winning next year’s devolved election. But few expected Labour to do so. It was running third favourite, behind the SNP and Reform. The Nats were confident they’d retain the seat, while it seemed possible that Reform could just about pull off a coup.
The populist right are infiltrating Scotland

4 weeks 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

1 month 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

2 months 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

2 months 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

2 months 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.