It’s a long time since the Scottish left found its home amid the clangs, sparks and shouts of the nation’s ship and steelyards. In today’s economy of professions and services, of university graduates and the technological juggernaut, leftism has become a middle-class pursuit. It is, largely, a hobby of the urban sophisticate, more likely to inhabit a spacious Glasgow tenement than a modest council house, whose hands remain wholly uncalloused. Eye strain is the greatest risk posed by their day job. But the high-water mark of this modern caste has also passed. It encapsulated a decade that took in the independence referendum, with its exultant gatherings and angry slogans; the Jeremy Corbyn years where, for the briefest of periods, it seemed ...

It was both predictable and predicted. Donald Trump, a politician often defined by his unpredictability, is on some questions almost maddeningly consistent. Trade policy is one of them.  “Liberation Day” wasn’t months or years in the making but decades. It was in 1987, as Trump first pondered a bid for the presidency, that he published an open letter in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. “To The American People,” it opened portentously. “For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States.”  Trump proceeded to argue that tariffs would allow his country to “end our huge deficits, reduce our taxes, and let America’s economy grow unencumbered by the cost of defending those who ...

It is all the Office for Budget Responsibility’s fault. This, plus Rachel Reeves’ rigid fiscal rules, has become the fashionable explanation for our economic travails. Were it not for these, it is argued, the government would not be announcing painful welfare cuts and could be investing in the future. For the most part, it is an argument advanced by the political left, but by no means exclusively. There are those on the right who are sceptical of a George Osborne-era institution and who bemoan the self-imposed constraints on government policy. Not least among those critics is Liz Truss, which should give others pause for thought. The cause of the recent criticism of the OBR is that its judgements on economic growth, and ...

A decade ago, the Liberal Democrats fell victim to the “black widow strategy”. Having mated with Nick Clegg’s party for the purposes of coalition, the Conservatives then devoured them. Twenty-seven Lib Dem seats – West Country fortresses thought impregnable – were won by a majority-bound David Cameron. This electoral shock cast doubt on the party’s very existence. In 2010, Clegg had aspired to break the Tory-Labour duopoly and become prime minister. By 2015, he had too few MPs to fill a committee room (eight). But the Lib Dems are now enjoying glorious revenge. At the last election they won 60 seats from the Conservatives – not only reclaiming their West Country heartlands but advancing through the Tories’ own. South-east voters repelled by ...

Should Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf course host the Open in the next few years? The US President is golf-daft, and yet the top-level Scottish course hasn’t been home to a major since he bought it in 2014. The politics of such a decision manage to be both simple and complex. First Minister John Swinney has, sensibly, said he wants to work with the Trump administration to enhance Scotland’s interests. He recently met Eric Trump, the President’s son, at Bute House, where the pair discussed the family’s business interests in Scotland. As world leaders have learned, Trump senior appreciates nothing more than flattery and obeisance. If you want something from him, you have to give him something in return – the art of ...

An out-of-work football manager has dropped a fresh batch of stone tablets and the House of Commons has found a workaround for Netflix’s password-sharing restrictions, so, under the twin waves of Adolescence and Sir Gareth Southgate, we have enthusiastically recommenced our national hunt for that promising superman: “the positive male role model”. How long have we been chasing that hopeful silhouette now? Long enough by now to realise, I think, that he’s not just elusive – he’s a chimera. He is also, really, a squeamish innuendo. Southgate has no balm for the boiling shame of your porn consumption. When a large man forcing you off the pavement leaves you livid with impotent rage for hours, visualising that you were actually Marcus ...

The original intention was that today’s Spring Statement would be a non-event. Rachel Reeves had made it clear that she would do just one major fiscal event a year – an autumn Budget at which the big decisions on the public finances would be made. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is required to produce an economic and fiscal forecast twice a year, but a Spring Statement need not be accompanied by any policy measures. The Chancellor would get to her feet in the House of Commons, announce the OBR’s numbers, deliver her economic message and sit down. It has not quite worked out like that. At her last Budget, Reeves gave herself next to nothing in terms of headroom against ...

The rare glimmers of sunlight were brief flickers only. Spring Statement? Midwinter, more like.  After halving its growth forecast for this year to just 1 per cent, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) did increase its projections for the years ahead. Rachel Reeves was pleased enough about that to leave it as a punchline. But each year, that still means growth below 2 per cent – upgrades of 0.1 percentage points or 0.2 points each year are so watery, so feeble that most people won’t notice. Real growth, of the kind we were promised at the election, seems almost as far away as ever. The Chancellor was right not to call this an emergency Budget. Had it been a Budget this ...