If I was half as good at Italian as I am playing Football Manager...

An excellent way to waste five minutes mspgame2026betatest.netlify.app

Kenny Gibson is the new Presiding Officer He's got some strong reform ideas and hopefully will be given the chance to improve the Parliament in the way he has set out to MSPs

This thinking is fundamentally what has slowly killed off Scottish Labour

Beyond a historic result for the Greens in Edinburgh

Green surge the story of the Holyrood election in 2026 Reform UK may well yet finish ahead of them on the regional list, but the breakthroughs in two constituencies - winning both from the SNP - shows shifting sands among younger voters in big cities. Watch this space

Brutal analysis from ex-Scottish Labour spin doctor Paul Sinclair... Says Scot Lab did not do the intellectual "heavy lifting" during the campaign and went for personality politics instead with Anas "flirting with the country hoping that we’d fall in love with him"

*The* reason Reform UK are "soft" on the Union and really don't care how much the Tories talk about it

Really good explanation of just how narrow the margins are in this election between it being a very good night for the SNP and an average to poor one...

Petition to ban election special episodes of Question Time

Sounds like he's cheating, then

Few SLab folk earlier this year were saying this election would have more in common with 2011 for Labour to win it (i.e. coming back from a distance like Salmond did). We are at the highlighted point in the 2011 campaign, by which time the SNP had reversed their polling deficit.

That's the sound of hundreds of Scottish Labour activists facepalming you can hear in the distance, by the way

Another day in Scottish Politics and another, er, *questionable* MRP poll

COLUMN: The SNP's culture of secrecy & cover-up must end. They have perfected their approach - of deny, delay, distract - into an art form of pointing at shiny things away from the glare of the party's failure to reckon with misconduct among their own www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/1614660...

A squarely batshit poll that appears to live somewhere between total fantasy and outright delusion.

EXCLUSIVE: MORE than a dozen Reform UK Holyrood candidates are part of campaign group where members spread racist conspiracy theories and branded Muslims a “cancer” and “invaders”. www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/1607076...

Make no mistake that any weakening of FOI is an attack on all of our civil liberties, and would be a clear example of democratic backsliding. It is clear that the government is now seriously considering an attack on your right to know. www.ft.com/content/2c34...

Back at work today after six weeks of sick leave Any stories, tips, or the usual generalised abuse, drop me a DM, an email, or get in touch on WhatsApp

In nerdy Holyrood election news, looks like Russell Findaly will stand just on the list "to free him up to campaign across Scotland" - understand most likely West of Scotland region Douglas Ross did the same in 2021 and it worked - but will ruffle a few feathers internally

EXCLUSIVE: Cops were called to Holyrood after a mug used by Michael Matheson went missing - sparking fury with it labelled a waste of police time Comes after no police action over Mr Matheson's £11,000 iPad roaming bill for footie he charged to taxpayers... www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/1579300...

Happy New Year everyone! Remember, if you haven't bombed a strategically important nation and seized its authoritarian head of state and effectively it's government and industrial economy by January 5, you'll have bad luck all year

Ex-Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has Lunch with the FT and in one of those instances so rare that you know he didn't sign an NDA, says exactly why as.ft.com/r/e503690d-8...

People think I'm joking when I say I think Scottish Labour will try to run a minority government if they finish second. I'm really not, and I think they'll try it even if there is a razor-thin pro-union majority. It'll be chaos, but who doesn't love a bit of that?

Extremely fed up of politicians refusing to admit fault over obviously false statements. It leads directly to how a minister stays on despite blatant misrepresention as the bar is so high for quitting. Total self-destruction of standards in public life over the last decade

"But the overall impression continues to be of a system loaded against younger workers, paying more to fund older citizens with assets" A fundamental truth here about our politics as demographics favour short-termist policy designed to win/keep older voters and shaft the younger working population

EXCLUSIVE: John Swinney should face a probe into whether his own budget “lies” have breached the ministerial code, critics have said The FM has refused to admit the SNP has breached its election promise to freeze income tax, despite hiking the levies twice www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/1564145...

At no point in the process did the OBR have the government missing its fiscal rules by a large margin. Leaves me baffled by the months of speculation and briefing. Was the plan to lead everyone to expect a big income tax rise, then surprise them on the day by not doing it..?

There was no state. Who does she think crucified him, an anarchist collective?

The closest bit of polling I've seen which explains why voters are a) pissed off at existing/historic political parties (failure to deal with cost-of-living) and b) moving to Reform (who are owning a high-salient issue on immigration w/explicit link to cost-of-living, i.e. people being "worse off")

The long and short of this YouGov polling is you are going to struggle to win an election by trying to make it a referendum on the incumbent's record, when your own party has no approval for its own - far more salient - record Rightly or wrongly, it's Starmer who is tanking Sarwar, not the SNP.

We think we've found the source of the briefings against Wes Streeting...

NEW: A senior Scottish Labour source says of the Starmer/Streeting briefings... "This is an entirely self-inflicted wound today and there's no need for it. "It is a massively unhelpful and ill-disciplined briefing. It could come from the PM's own mouth and still be that.

Why a 2p increase in UK income tax will cut the Scottish Budget by £1 billion: read our first budget preview and find out more:

Sums up Scottish Labour's challenge next May Nat support down on 2021/22 highs but Labour are not benefitting enough from straight switchers *or* from Westminster incumbency and Tory tanking Instead Reform are nicking votes Labour need to win next May. A massive vibe switch needed to reverse that

NEW: Holyrood 2026 will NOT have an overnight count Instead, votes will be counted on the Friday after the polls close Nervous waits all round and, critically, more time for spin/narrative setting for winners and losers...

The SNP's record on child homelessness is appalling and unforgivable, but this is *yet another* example of how all they will have to do during the Holyrood 2026 campaign is point at Sir Keir Starmer's record It's completely sinking Anas Sarwar

Ash Regan quits the Alba Party and with that decision, the spectre of Alex Salmond finally recedes from any meaningful impact at next May's election Alba now surely dead and buried.

A few days after Labour Conference, here's my take on what it means for Scottish Labour They're a party that feels high on copium, dragged down by a party chief they know is a bust but can't change

EXCLUSIVE: Snooty Tory MSPs forced party chiefs to order upmarket pizzas — after they moaned about Domino’s ones. The politicians staged a revolt over the takeaway meals delivered to Holyrood during a debate that went on for hours longer than usual. www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/1540029...

Anas Sarwar's argument at Labour conference is for the party not to be "shy" on their achievements It's effectively a belief that comms, not policy or vision, is what's dragging the party down Not sold.

Reason No. 1 not to call the UK's new digital ID a "Brit Card"

At some point, other political parties will clock that Farage's policy announcements are not about anything other than driving British politics in a generally favourable direction *for him*, so that by 2029, the sort of relatively 'unpopular' and extreme policies are the opposite

Brilliant from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com Benefits and social care spending in Scotland is to pensions in the UK - politically difficult, ruinously expensive, and ever-increasing policy decisions which ignore fundamental failures of post-2008 governments and economies. www.ft.com/content/d419...

EXCLUSIVE: The SNP have quietly changed how no-shows and cancellations count towards waiting list targets, artificially reducing the number and length of long waits The change will make it easier to hit election promises and was last night branded "sleekit" www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/1533841...

Meaningless whiffle.

Cat, meet pigeons EXCL: Political parties should be subject to freedom of information laws to help unearth their “murky” inner workings, Scotland’s transparency tsar will say. www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/1524301...

Unclear what the potential fallout for the Lochaber Smelter deal with GFG Alliance and the Scottish Government is But in terms of a general health check of GFG's assets, it's hardly a ringing endorsement.

Labour and the SNP both circling the same "how do we hold on to power by not annoying more people than we already have" drain Which ultimately leads to total policy paralysis and, therefore, lack of any meaningful progress on any policy issue that does actually matter to voters

The Scottish Government have said their use of social media is under constant review after the anti-Semitic controversy surrounding X's AI chatbot Grok Officials said the gov doesn't use the tool, but refuses to commit to stopping the use of the platform