Scottish politics thread

Meanwhile, the hits just keep on coming: he Scottish Government will have to return £450m of pre-Brexit EU funding because its record keeping was so pishpoor that they couldn’t prove money would be properly spent on targeted projects.

Scotland was suspended 5 times from EU projects after 2015: there were only 27 suspensions anywhere in the whole EU during the same period.

The SNP was responsible for almost 1 in 5 suspensions! It really does seem to have a problem with financial record keeping…

https://archive.ph/79Nqm

Surely not. Next thing you will be claiming it can’t build ferries.

There’s clearly an issue with public inquiries in Scotland taking significantly longer than in the rest of the UK.
I don’t believe that changing the proceedure while the Bayoh inquiry is ongoing would do anything to bringing speedier òr fairer justice for the Bayoh family

There’s clearly an issue with public inquiries in Scotland taking significantly longer than in the rest of the UK.

im not sure postmasters, the grenfell families, the Bloody Sunday families, the Hillsburgh families, the Manchester arena families, or Steve Lawrence’s family would agree!

I don’t believe that changing the procedure while the Bayoh inquiry is ongoing would do anything to bringing speedier or fairer justice for the Bayoh family

the Inquiries Act is, as far as I understand it, UK legislation and so only some specific practicalities could likely be modified by the Scottish Government.  It’s difficult for a government to change an inquiry process without being accused of interfering in the outcome.  Eg you tell the chairman he only has X budget or X months to do it – and you are effectively excluding certain types of evidence or witnesses.  The question then would be “why are Scot Gov trying to rush to a conclusion” (from either the families or the police federation).

1) not wait 5 years after the man’s death to publish the terms of reference to an inquiry.

i haven’t studied the timeline in detail but there was first a PIRC investigation.  Had that concluded “to everyone’s satisfaction” there would have been a fatal accident inquiry.  The M9 inquiry took nearly 9 years from the accident to the report.  Thats not the longest FAI reported this year.  Even very simple FAI take 3 yrs – that is wrong.  Given that inquiries effectively write blank checks it’s important that government is rigorous in deciding when inquiries are necessary.  This could have been a “standard” FAI except that that could not consider PIRCs role in the investigation etc.

2) not allowed Bracadale so much time in delivery of his report. Even allowing for COVID, it is absurd that 4 years on there is still witness testimony being gathered and no time frame for reporting.

see above why thing the hands of the inquiry is not likely to be a good idea.  I’ve not followed why it’s taken so long, but I expect that certain witnesses have dragged the process out, that bracadale isn’t sitting every day as well as all the covid and other hurdles.  You seem certain on what did or did not happen, but the issues are not just about the hour or two when Bayou died – they are about systemic issues before and after that and if we actually want to fix them it’s better to establish facts.

The Scarman Report into the Brixton Riots (or, as some locals call it, “Brixton Uprising”) was ordered 2 days after the violence finished. It has a far wider scope. It reported within 6 months. Its scope and recommendations were wider than the Bracadale inquiry. It provided a blueprint for massive reforms of police in England and Wales and how they approach ethnic minorities.

And whilst those reforms I am sure were positive they didn’t stop the need for a Lawrence Inquiry, or the de Menes inquiry and the implications that IPCC were not fit for purpose etc.

3) not allow Police Scotland to sit around and do nothing substantive for 10 years.

do you know if they’ve done nothing?  They’ve had three Chief Constables in that time.  But, quite rightly, the government is one step removed from Police Scotland.  It’s the job of SPA to ensure that Police Scotland is operating correctly.  For government to pre-empt the inquiry and pressure SPA to do something would seem odd.  But a large part of the scope of the inquiry is not about Police Scotland directly – it’s about PIRC.

Bracadale is not a judge. The inquiry is not a judicial process. It is an executive process.

technically you are correct, he’s a retired judge and Statutory Inquiries are initiated by ministers but it replaces the function of the FAI which is a judicial process and I’ve no doubt that if Bracadale though his independence was being pressured (even if only in timeline) he’d publicly quit.

using retired judges for inquiries makes a lot of sense BUT inevitably age is not on his side, probably both from his willingness to sit 5 days a week and the risk that health will add further delays or disruption.

I don’t believe that changing the proceedure while the Bayoh inquiry is ongoing would do anything to bringing speedier òr fairer justice for the Bayoh family

The point of the police identifying and addressing its own failures around restraint, training and community relations would be to stop similar deaths and injuries. This is a normal part of running a police service. It doesn’t need to sit around and wait for the conclusion of a public inquiry specifically into Bayoh’s homicide which in any case is not necessarily looking into those broader areas and will not necessarily have any recommendations in those broader areas.

The public inquiry will not end with redress for the Bayoh family or punishment of anyone. It is not a court proceeding. It has no power to being charges or award compensation. Whether the family feels like justice has or has not been done is up to them, obviously. Hopefully they will ultimately feel it has – but justice delayed is justice denied.

the issues are not just about the hour or two when Bayou died – they are about systemic issues before and after that…using retired judges for inquiries makes a lot of sense BUT inevitably age is not on his side, probably both from his willingness to sit 5 days a week and the risk that health will add further delays or disruption.

The terms of reference for the inquiry are very limited. They are nowhere near as broad as the Lawrence Inquiry let alone what Scarman was asked to do. There is no reason for Police Scotland to have sat on its hands for nearly a decade. This is an institution, government and country in denial that

Giving an old, ex-judge on a pension an unlimited timeframe and budget is a deliberate choice. Commissions, committees and inquiries are all easy ways for governments and institutions to kick the can down the road and avoid responsibility or action. It allows people to do nothing and hide behind platitudes or pearl-clutching about judicial independence.

This has worked out perfectly for Yousef as a government minister: he dodged accountability in 2015 as Justice Minister by calling the inquiry, he dodged accountability as First Minister because of the delays in the inquiry reporting, and by the time the report comes out he will neither be a minister nor (probably) an MSP!

The terms of reference for the inquiry are very limited. They are nowhere near as broad as the Lawrence Inquiry let alone what Scarman was asked to do. There is no reason for Police Scotland to have sat on its hands for nearly a decade. This is an institution, government and country in denial that

what is it you think Police Scotland should have done?  (I don’t mean on the day I mean in the intervening 10 yrs) – what is the fundamental issue that police Scotland have and how should they have fixed it.    I don’t doubt for a second that there will be individual and institutional racism; I genuinely don’t know to what extent that was a factor in this case, but even assuming it was – other than firing a small number of people who were involved what should they have done?

my understanding (and I haven’t followed the case in a lot of detail so I may be misreading the headlines) is that the whole reason for having an inquiry wasn’t about whether the officers acted appropriately that morning – a FAI could have dealt with that.  It was as much to focus on what happened afterwards: did PIRC do the job we want/expect? did PIRC have the right powers to do its job properly?  was PIRC sufficiently independent?  To ask those questions you first need to establish what if was PIRC should have discovered.

if police Scotland have not made any changes why has there been no repeat of a similar incident (AFAIK) in 10 yrs?  Does that mean there was not an institutional problem? No wrong doing in the first place? Changes to training?  Recognition that cases like this take up huge amounts of time and resource and so a subtle culture change?

Giving an old, ex-judge on a pension an unlimited timeframe and budget is a deliberate choice.

but my understanding is that is not a choice of the Scottish Government.  It’s enshrined in the Inquiries act that once you set up a public inquiry government doesn’t get to set the budget or timeline.  There probably are arguments against using ex judges – but that is the norm in the U.K. not Scotland specific.

Commissions, committees and inquiries are all easy ways for governments and institutions to kick the can down the road and avoid responsibility or action. It allows people to do nothing and hide behind platitudes or pearl-clutching about judicial independence.

but equally – if the justice secretary had simply said – there’s no need for a public enquiry, it’s quite obvious what needs done here, there would be an outcry from all directions that a man died whilst the police were restraining him, PIRC investigated and found nothing to justify prosecuting the cops involved and yet the Justice Secretary either thinks he knows better or is resisting calls for a public inquiry.

I dont think there’s anything pearl clutching about judicial independence- without an independent inquiry it’s pretty much pointless – it will come to the conclusion the government of the day wants, or it will simply be branded biased by the government of the day.  If you think Judicial Independence is a nice to have, go visit a court in a country that doesn’t really have it – and you’ll see how political interference in judicial decisions actually undermines the whole of democracy.

whilst they might be easy ways to kick the can down the road a blank cheque inquiry is difficult for the Scottish Government – they don’t get more money from Westminster for having an inquiry, they get blamed for being part of the cover up if they don’t have one, they get blamed for wasting time and money if they do.

Looks like 3 jobs Dougie is going

https://news.sky.com/story/douglas-ross-to-resign-as-leader-of-scottish-conservatives-13150604

FAIs? Seems most take under 3 years. If that isfrom the date of death that is probably not bad.

The report I googled to find that fact had this quote which was surprising to say the least.

“By looking at these specific FAIs we have learned harrowing details of the final days and hours of prisoners including young man who resorted to calling 999 from his cell because he was having a mental health crisis. Emergency services then tried to contact prison staff to carry out a welfare check, but no one picked up for 1 hour and twenty minutes. Even after speaking to emergency services prison staff didn’t carry out the welfare check, but confiscated his phone. He was found hanged the following night.

“The Sheriff who presided over the Fatal Accident Inquiry, concluded the care provided to this prisoner was ‘competent and compassionate’ and that his death was unavoidable. No findings or recommendations means there were no lessons to be learned, or to put it simply, ‘there’s nothing to see here.’”

https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_1042060_en.html

I can only say that Ì’m neither shocked nor surprised by the findings of the Glasgow University report regarding deaths in custody.
The prisons are very over crowded and the prison service requires investment urgently . The chances of that happening are very slim given the competing demands on the public purse.

Glad to see Dross headed out the door, but concerned he’ll just become ever more inflated balloon at Westminster. F’ing glad I’ll not even see his name on my ballot paper.

Shadow Scottish Secretary anyone?

Having checked out the candidates in my seat, I reckon I’ll be abstaining this time around. I was hoping that there would be a non-SNP, pro-Indy option, but there’s none.

IRC – most are under 3 yrs but 30% are over 3 yrs.  Most coroners inquiries are concluded in England in 3-6 months (that for all cases not custody cases, and they have a lot more cases).

Latest YouGov poll shows SNP to lose more than half of their seats, coming down to just 21 MPs in 2024.

If there were “perfect” PR in which parties got exactly the same percentage of the 650 total MPs as their share of the popular vote, then SNP would have got 26 MPs in 2019 (instead of their 48 actual FPTP MPs) and would get 21.45 MPs in 2022 on 3.3% of the vote (instead of their predicted 21 FPTP MPs).

Latest YouGov poll shows SNP to lose more than half of their seats, coming down to just 21 MPs in 2024.

Can’t see it happening, everyone I know votes SNP and have no intention of voting for another party.

My bubble is quite small though < 6

Earlier projections had SNP seats at 14 so 21 might be seen as an improvement 😂

Rather than vote share, I’ll be keeping an eye on the number of votes cast for SNP. I’m still of the opinion that many Ex-SNP voters just aren’t going to bother voting at all this year.

Oh, and since we’re here, should we mention Maggie Chapman (SGP) telling us that “Road building is a subsidy for wealthy, usually white men,”?

I also think the SNP will do better than is being predicted.

Most voters might look on Labour as being an English party and think, ‘well they have their new party, we’re going to stick with our purely Scottish party’

Not sure a dialogue about national “purity” is consistent with the SNP’s civic nationalism. Sounds a bit Milosevic-y to me.

That dialogue seems to be entirely in your own mind@politecameraaction

Having checked out the candidates in my seat, I reckon I’ll be abstaining this time around. I was hoping that there would be a non-SNP, pro-Indy option, but there’s none.

You’re cool with knowing that whoever is elected in your seat, you supported?

That dialogue seems to be entirely in your own mind

Dunno – it’s @dyna-ti that’s segregating political parties in Scotland into “English parties” and “purely Scottish” parties.

Dunno – it’s @dyna-ti that’s segregating political parties in Scotland into “English parties” and “purely Scottish” parties.

Surely they’re just pointing out the facts?

Oh, and since we’re here, should we mention Maggie Chapman (SGP) telling us that “Road building is a subsidy for wealthy, usually white men,”?

To be fair, she’s basically an activist currently in a political role, the greens do have a few of these unfortunately.

As for the SNP vote, not sure how they’ll do, bit like the tories, i hear a lot of negativity for the SNP just now, but push comes to shove, the voters tend to go back to normal when they’re in the voting booth, i can’t see them shedding too many seats, but the problem they always have is that the longer they are seen as being in power in Scotland, the more chance you’ll be seen as incompetent or not up to the task, this has happened to every party in my lifetime, the Thatcher years, New Labour and the current tories, the longer you’re in power, the more it falls apart at the end, although again, not seeing that just now, but it’s not far off for the SNP with the in-fighting, front page failures, etc.

You’re cool with knowing that whoever is elected in your seat, you supported?

I’m cool knowing that whoever is elected in my seat I didn’t “support” them. This isn’t the 1979 referendum.

i hear a lot of negativity for the SNP just now,

I’m struck by how little positivity I hear. Across my social media a lot of friends and colleagues tended to amplify news stories about the SNP – particularly ones that focused on friction between SNP objectives being throttled by Westminster. The SNP was in a curious position of both being the party in power and the plucky underdog.

What really surprised me is when Sturgeon resigned – amongst that cohort in particular and broadly too- no mention.

During the leadership campaign there was suprisingly little noise – nothing supportive of one candidate or another – more commentary from people who themselves were SNP members wondering aloud who they would vote for because they didn’t really know the candidates.

But that got quieter and quieter, until – the results were announced – silence

and since then nothing.

People who are / were quite enthusiastically vocal just seem to have nothing to say, or rather nothing to broadcast.

I don’t know if that means anything about how those particular people will vote (although one to two, regardless of being members of the SNP can’t vote for them because they don’t live in Scotland 🙂 ) but it seems like a lot of the shine has come off the SNP brand for its supporters. Maybe they are just as committed as voters but they’ve certainly either stopped being champions for the party or the party in government isn’t doing anything for them to champion.

Useless’s hot take on why he was forced out…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/17/humza-yousaf-islamophobia-politics-europe

Rrrrrrrrright.

Get over it Useless. So much Islamaphoba that the leaderd of both main parties were Moslem in a 95%ish non Moslem country.

Somone’s going to have to point out the part where he says Islamophobia is the reason he’s not party leader anymore because I’m struggling to find it.

No mention of Humza’s demise being down to islamophobia in that article at all.

Irrespective of their religion  all party leaders seem to have a strange relationship with the truth.

Surely they’re just pointing out the facts?

Is this the first sighting of the “no true Scotsparty” fallacy?

TBH if you don’t spot why talking about “purity” in a nationalist politics discourse and claiming your political opponents (about half a million Scottish Labour voters, for example) are not really members of the nation is dangerous, you may want to study some 20th century European politics.

“As a state of mind, nationalism is always the same. It speaks about the purity of blood, history, language, myths, and traditions – anything that can be used to reinforce a kind of national narcissism…”

https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/nyuilp26&div=27&id=&page=

Quote”claiming your political opponents (about half a million Scottish Labour voters, for example) are not really members of the nation”Unquote

Except that no one made such a claim.

Well… it would have been fairer and more accurate to say that Labour are a British party and not an English party.

Agreed

anyone got any links to decent scottish polling?  Seems inevitable that the SNP will lose seats but the estimates I see range hugely.

Still zero evidence of an election campaign here

Having checked out the candidates in my seat, I reckon I’ll be abstaining this time around. I was hoping that there would be a non-SNP, pro-Indy option, but there’s none.

You’re Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey too aren’t you?

We’ve got the Scottish Green candidate – but he’s an ‘interesting’ looking chap! Findhorn Community I think – not that I hold that against him.

I think as a constituency it’s going to be fascinating. If it had been a constituency last time it would have been a marginal SNP from the tories with Labour a distant 4th. But it didn’t exist so the tactical vote and wasted vote calculations people make would have been totally different. Like you I think a lot of SNP voters might not bother, the tory vote will clearly be down but might hold up more than it might nationally. And a Sottish Labour vote might not be considered a wasted vote like it was in 2019 and surge more than expected. It might well be a tight 3 horse race.

Like you – I’m still struggling to get particularly motivated by any candidate on offer.

I will be sticking with the SNP. Starmer is offering nothing, and the LDs still need to be punished for all their transgressions. Like TJ says, no evidence of a campaign up here at all.

Still zero evidence of an election campaign here

My parents are saying the same thing.  Apparently the SNP are out of money and some candidates are having to self-fund their campaigns.

Dunno what Labour’s excuse is.

Having been down south a few years, is this actual election that much of a thing for Scotland these days for the SNP, when i first voted back in 1995, which was a big thing as the SNP got the Perth seat and there was a lot of momentum from that, and the next full election in 1997. I notice in recent years i’ve noticed that the SNP MPs do seem a little less visible, or able to do much, it seems a real step change from previous where being an MP in the HofP was a huge thing, now they seem to want to move to Holyrood to progress?

Bit of a long one, but are these UK election as much of a bother for Scotland these days, Holyrood is where actual work gets done for Scotland, the SNP MPs are doing a job making sure Scotland gets its share, but they do seem quite isolated in parliament, are these elections really going to do anything in the long run, it just seems a completely different question being answered by how it all pans out in a couple of weeks time?

Still zero evidence of an election campaign here

A fair few signs on lamp posts here. But no door stepping or leafletting.