Simon's Blog

Hubris is a great political teacher. Yesterday my great friend and I spent the day consuming art and talking politics. We discussed many subjects dealing with matters of the day from the forthcoming UK general election to inevitably ‘the Donald‘. We even touched on Scotland and what impact it might have on the new government after the UK general election. We never once thought that the UK general election would be after the Scottish parliamentary election as there is over a year or so to go before the next Scottish election is due. 24 hours later that doesn’t look so sure (the ghost of The Lord Wilson of Rievaulx will be smiling) – shows how much we know.

Whether Humza Yousaf survives the next week or so the winner is no other than Alex Salmond who has many faults but is no one’s fool when it comes to the dirty game of politics. Technically he doesn’t have a say in the forthcoming confidence vote into Yousaf’s First Minstership, (after all he isn’t even an MSP) but technicalities have never stopped Salmond so expect his well round features to dominate the news cycles over the next few weeks.

Welcome back The Right Honourable Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond, a political survivor (I’m sure if he were to read this blog – that if is doing a whole lot of lifting – he would point out he has never been away). If only the incumbent First Minister and Prime Minister had just 1% of his dark political skills then Keir Starmer might not be looking at a record breaking Parliamentary majority in the UK Parliament and Scottish Labour wouldn’t have a reasonable chance of retaking the Scottish Government – maybe as early as the Summer.

Forget a week, 24 hours nowadays is an eternity in today’s politics.