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Jan 18, 2025 | 
thinkscotland.org | Linda Holt |Jill Stephenson |Ian Mitchell |Ewen Stewart
TWO STRIKING – and related – news stories have hit Scottish headlines this week. A Survation poll for Holyrood Sources on the 2026 Holyrood election put the SNP on 53 seats, Labour on 25, and the Conservatives and Reform on 15 each. Meanwhile, the Conservative Group Leader on Glasgow Council, Thomas Kerr, has defected from the Scottish Conservatives to Reform. Reform overshadowed Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay’s keynote New Year speech earlier in the week.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
thinkscotland.org | Jill Stephenson |Ewen Stewart |Ian Mitchell |Christine Padgham
MANY WILL REMEMBER Michael Gove, as a cabinet minister, saying, in relation to Brexit, ‘I think the people of this country have had enough of experts’. While this was provocative and extravagant, there was some sense in it. After all, trust in experts had been eroded by prominent cases of experts getting it wrong or even doing wrong. This has included cases of damaging surgery carried out on blameless patients, and the crashing of financial institutions by their directors.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
thinkscotland.org | Ewen Stewart |Ian Mitchell |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich
IT SEEMS people like parables. Even those not familiar with the Bible can probably tell you about the parable of the Prodigal Son, or the parable of the Lost Sheep. 2000 years later it seems we still need simple stories to highlight complex ideas.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
reliefweb.int | Ian Mitchell |Sam Hughes
Attachments Download Report (PDF | 399.21 KB) By Ian Mitchell and Sam HughesIn-donor refugee costs—the cost of supporting refugees and asylum seekers within the UK—now account for almost 30 percent of the UK’s entire foreign aid budget. In the autumn budget, the new government did not provide any additional resources for this (though Rachel Reeves’ Conservative predecessor had provided £2.5 billion); and instead implemented further cuts to overseas aid to cope with this pressure.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
thinkscotland.org | Ewen Stewart |Ian Mitchell |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich
LAST SATURDAY I had the pleasure of speaking at the Reform UK conference in Perth. It was actually Reform’s fourth Scottish Conference, but the three previous ones might have fitted in the backroom of some pub. This one was rather different. 350 attendees, an overflow room, a hugely enthusiastic audience and a dozen speakers including one of two former Tory councillors that had defected to Reform UK that very day.
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Jan 11, 2024 | 
thinkscotland.org | Ian Mitchell |Christine Padgham |Jill Stephenson |Regina Erich
Ian Mitchell’s Book RecommendationsRadical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace – by James T. CostaPrinceton University Press, 552 pages, Hardback 2023, ISBN 978 0691 233796THE BEAUTY of life in the Scottish Highlands and islands becomes more evident than normal immediately after the Festive season.
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Jul 12, 2023 | 
thinkscotland.org | Jim Sillars |Dean M Thomson |Hamish Gobson |Ian Mitchell
Europe’s Leadership Famine: Portraits of defiance and decay 1950-2022 – by Tom GallagherScotview Publications, 17 June 2023, 403 pp, ISBN 9780993465444HOW WAS it possible for the dogs of war to be let loose in Europe, thirty-one years after the struggle between the West and the Soviet Union came to a conclusion, and seemed to begin a long term era of peace? Tom Gallagher’s book ‘Europe’s Leadership Famine: Portraits of defiance and decay 1950-2022’ provides a good number of the answers.
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Jul 12, 2023 | 
thinkscotland.org | Dean M Thomson |Hamish Gobson |Ian Mitchell |Jim Sillars
Hamish Gobson’s diary: the view from across the Uisge Wednesday 5 July 2023I TURNED ON Wimbledon last Thursday afternoon for the first time this year and it occurred to me that, if I were in the Scottish Parliament, I could describe the scene in much the same way that Hamba Yousaf did when he wound up the debate in Holyrood about racism a few years back. There were two players on court and both of them were – how can I put this politely? – white.
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Jul 7, 2023 | 
thinkscotland.org | Ian Mitchell |Dean M Thomson |Hamish Gobson |Gail Braccidiferro MacDonald |Gail B. Macdonald
THIRTY YEARS AGO this summer, John L. Mearsheimer, the Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, published an important paper in Foreign Affairs, entitled “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent”. He pointed out that when the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine inherited 1,600 strategic nuclear bombs on its territory, as well as a large number of tactical nuclear devices.
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Jun 30, 2023 | 
thinkscotland.org | Tom Gallagher |Dean M Thomson |Hamish Gobson |Ian Mitchell
Europe’s Leadership Famine: Portraits of defiance and decay 1950-2022IRONICALLY, after years of the pooling of national powers within the framework of the European Union, books that compare the health and standing of national democracies in Europe remain thin on the ground. Reticence clearly exists about probing too deeply into the shrivelling of Europe’s political life where it is still far easier to get into print by recycling cliches and platitudes than asking what has gone wrong and why.
