Linda Holt

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.

Jan 2, 2025 | thinkscotland.org | Linda Holt |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich |Jill Stephenson

CHANGE, the title of its manifesto, was the stand-out slogan of Labour’s campaign earlier this year against a lost fourteen years of Conservative rule. But when didn’t a political party or candidate promise change? Voters’ thirst for political change seems to have accelerated in the last year as, in democratic elections across the world, incumbency has ceased to confer an automatic advantage. So what of the change promised by Keir Starmer?

Jul 12, 2024 | thinkscotland.org | Linda Holt |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich |Jill Stephenson

WHEN I wrote for ThinkScotland after Sturgeon’s resignation and Yousaf’s accession, I argued the SNP was a basket case with no prospect of a second independence referendum. Fourteen months have passed since then and we have observed a never-ending slow-motion train crash as the SNP has carried on regardless, blaming Westminster whenever criticised and trotting out the same old tired mantras about independence. All the while, public services have continued their inexorable decline.