Scotland has rejected the opportunity to become an independent nation by leaving the United Kingdom. Defeat was conceded by the Yes side as votes were still being counted. So, an astonishing campaign is…
In the last three weeks of the Scottish referendum campaign, Gordon Brown had already emerged as the galvanising force on the No side. This reached new heights on Wednesday in Glasgow when he made what…
The figure of Alex Salmond dominated the Scottish independence referendum, much as he has dominated the country’s political landscape for the past seven years. So his resignation following the defeat of…
I moved to Scotland from the US 10 years ago. Little did I know that I would be helping to decide whether Scotland would secede from the rest of the United Kingdom and become an independent country. I…
In my younger years, I would’ve jumped at the chance to vote Yes for Scotland’s independence, and even wrote a poem to that effect: Tree of being Roots of been Branches of to be Scotland now As Scotland…
You can hardly miss all the Scottish writers who are engaged in the business of considering the state of an independent Scotland – writers such as Val McDermid on The Andrew Marr Show, or the poet John…
While the Scottish independence referendum debate has revived democracy north of the border, it has also led to increased stirrings in the north of England. One recent proposal has even launched a petition…
I really thought we might make it. We’d got past the publication of YouGov’s potentially constitution-changing poll showing a minuscule lead for the Yes campaign without anyone grabbing for an easy headline…
The upcoming referendum in Scotland is premised on a simple “yes” or “no” vote: should Scotland be an independent country? Except it’s not so simple. It’s a deeply personal question for the nation and…
Here at the University of Edinburgh, freshers’ week has just seen a new cohort of students moving into the city. As older students jostled through freebie-stuffed stalls scrabbling for the newcomers’ attention…
The polls in the Scottish independence referendum indicate that the Yes and No votes have narrowed to such an extent that it is now impossible to predict with any certainty what the outcome will be. Indeed…
Just a few short weeks ago, it looked as though it was clear who was going to win the Scottish independence referendum. Although the polls persistently disagreed with each other as to how far it was behind…
Parents could soon face fines for parking too near to a school, according to a new Manifesto Club report on new Public Spaces Protection Orders. This comes after a record number of 63,837 fines were imposed…
As Scotland teeters on the brink of independence these next few days, the question of Trident is one issue in particular that is bound to cause a few sleepless nights in Edinburgh, London and Washington…
On Catalonia’s national day, which they call “Diada”, hundreds of thousands of Catalans formed a huge “V” in the streets of Barcelona to demand a referendum on independence. On Thursday, no doubt emboldened…
The difficult-to-predict nature of what a Yes vote in the Scottish referendum would mean is, in part, what makes the possibility so fascinating, so exciting and so scary. It seems, to a large degree, a…
With all eyes fixed on the independence referendum, some important questions remain in the shade. Chief among these: where do Scotland’s ethnic and racial minorities, sometimes dubbed the “new Scots…
An Orange Order march in Edinburgh on Saturday in support of the Union has been widely viewed as likely to be counter-productive and to provide a further boost to a currently buoyant Yes campaign. Commentators…
As Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling went head-to-head for the last time on Monday August 25, both sides were already pre-empting the following day’s media coverage of post-match analyses, and talk of…
We have heard a lot about the implications of independence for Scottish business. According to the latest government statistics Scotland has 340,840 micro, small and medium-sized businesses, representing…