The wild thing about this poll isn’t the headline that six months after winning a massive landslide majority, Keir Starmer now trails Nigel Farage – leader of a party with five MPs to Starmer’s 411 – as the electorate’s choice for best Prime Minister.
It’s the little grey numbers sitting quietly at the bottom.
As more horrific experiences from survivors of rape torture gangs surface from across the UK, we must focus not on knee-jerk political posturing but on the root cause that led to the failure of these children by our society.
Political inaction has now opened the door to inevitable political mileage, nurtured from stoking vengeance in a rightly-angered public. Those only interested in creating cultural conflicts no more support justice for survivors than those who allowed this abomination to fester by looking away or worse, covering up the problem.
For any functioning society, inflicting unimaginable pain on children on an alarming scale seems unimaginable. Yet, the evidence has been in front of us for years – so why has immediate action to ensure the safeguarding of children – and vulnerable adults – not been a pressing priority?
Any rational assessment of Scottish (or indeed UK or world) politics at the moment tends to be negative and depressing, so since it’s a new year we thought we’d make an extra-special effort at writing something positive.
Unfortunately that does require us to enter the realm of fantasy. But hey, everybody needs a little holiday from time to time, right?
Polling in Scotland, the UK and Wales in the last few days has shown Great Britain taking a fairly heavy swerve to the right after just five months of Sir Keir Starmer’s government. Labour now lead Reform (who have five seats to Labour’s 411) by just three points in the UK and are even more remarkably now in THIRD place in Wales, a country where the party has won every single election for over 100 years.
Scotland, meanwhile, is heading for a hung Parliament in 2026 in which – as this site has been telling its readers for the last year and a half – the only possibility of a stable administration will be an SNP-Labour coalition.
The proceedings at the Supreme Court this week were a tough follow even if you could get the court’s abominably bad livestream to work. They’re all archived here now, but non-lawyers will probably glaze over quickly during the nine hours of intense legalese.
We’re not allowed to clip up any illustrative sections, on pain of possible contempt of court, so perhaps the best way to explain the key parts of what happened in a vaguely comprehensible way is by showing you some commentary from social media.
In many ways, the fabricated, hysterical furore of Humza Yousaf Vs Elon Musk is the ultimate in summer-silly-season politics stories.
Absurdly plainly, the former First Minister ISN’T going to take any legal action against the billionaire owner of Twitter. He only likes bullying small nurseries, and even then he doesn’t follow through. He didn’t even sue us for calling him racist a few months ago, so there’s zero chance he’s going to square up to the world’s richest man.
We’ve been off for a little break in the country, and as far as we can tell we’ve missed absolutely nothing in the moribund world of Scottish politics. We did, however, arrive back just in time for something mildly interesting, or at least revealing.
It’s the latest episode of a new podcast by veteran Scottish political journalist and broadcaster Bernard Ponsonby and jobbing opinion columnist Alex Massie, inventively titled The Ponsonby And Massie Podcast.
The first 35 minutes or so weren’t very noteworthy, other than the curious omission – when predicting the makeup of the next Scottish Government – of the idea of a Labour-SNP coalition, which to this site remains by far the most practical and logical outcome of the 2026 Holyrood election.
David Davis may be the last of his kind – a libertarian Tory from a council-scheme and grammar-school background, and also one of the few remaining big beasts occupying the political jungle of the back benches.
(He could in fact have been Tory leader, and would have been if David Cameron and George Osborne hadn’t teamed up to defeat him in 2005 after he won the first ballot.)
So on the rare occasions when he leads a Commons adjournment debate, as he did last Thursday evening, those with an educated eye for politics sit up and take notice.
C MacKay on The Pillars Of Sanity: “There’s a multi-coloured bus going round Glasgow with Pride markings all over it. They forget Pride’s a sin. Brilliant in-depth…” Jul 20, 11:00
C MacKay on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Great stuff- there’s a multi-coloured bus going round Glasgow with Pride markings all over it. They forget Pride’s a sin” Jul 20, 10:59
sarah on The Pillars Of Sanity: “That is excellent, Lorn. Please send to the best newspapers for wider viewing. It makes the topic so clear and…” Jul 20, 10:52
Grace Green on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Dearieme, Dearieme, you’ve got that all wrong! Witches were neither bad, mad, nor deluded. They were practitioners of natural medicine,…” Jul 20, 10:20
Willie on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Excellent article Mr Campbell. Summarises very well how the wheels have now been taken off the insanity bandwagon. The transcripts…” Jul 20, 08:50
stuckdoonhame on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Massive kudos to you, Lorn, not only for your ever sensible analysis of this nonsense but for your correct use…” Jul 20, 02:20
stuckdoonhame on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Massive kudos to you, Lorn, not only for your ever sensible analysis of this nonsense but for your correct use…” Jul 20, 02:13
Rob on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Its perfectly obvious that NHS Fife are trying to find something, anything, to blacken Peggies character t try and salvage…” Jul 20, 00:26
Lorn on The Pillars Of Sanity: “The National is a disgrace as a national newspaper. Its pages are in vested with ‘trans’ dogma and its support…” Jul 19, 23:23
dearieme on The Pillars Of Sanity: “James VI decided, later in life, that he’d been wrong about witches. They weren’t bad, they were mad. He supported…” Jul 19, 22:43
Alf Baird on The Pillars Of Sanity: “UKSC, Court of Session and ScotGov and other state institutions all serve the English (as British) Crown, i.e. they do…” Jul 19, 20:25
agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@ Kelpie If they withdraw their defence then it becomes a default judgment and every point raised by the clamant…” Jul 19, 20:03
agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Notice also that Upton is described as “she” despite having a cock and bollocks.” Jul 19, 19:34
Aidan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@Kelpie – you are exactly right, that is definitely what they are planning to do” Jul 19, 19:22
Aidan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@Alf – how does that relate specifically to the comments raised?” Jul 19, 19:20
Kelpie on The Pillars Of Sanity: “There are plenty of legal types on X saying that NHS Fife can totally end this right now by basically…” Jul 19, 19:15
agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “The National barely mentions the Sandie Peggie case but yesterday published: “Sandie Peggie denies making racist comment as new allegation…” Jul 19, 19:09
Alf Baird on The Pillars Of Sanity: “In the colonial situation there is only colonial governance: which implies “a government and a judicial system fed and renewed…” Jul 19, 19:04
Dave Hansell on The Pillars Of Sanity: ““The days when police forces across the UK acted as pet goon squads for every misogynist incel with a grudge,…” Jul 19, 18:39
Dave G on The Pillars Of Sanity: “As a matter of strict law the Northumbria Police judgement does not apply in Scotland since the jurisdiction of the…” Jul 19, 18:30
James on Points Into Prongs: “Dave L; yep, they don’t call he/she/it the Site Prick for nothing….” Jul 19, 18:19
agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@ Alf “On 8 December 2023, the Outer House of the Court of Session, part of Scotland’s highest civil court,…” Jul 19, 18:15
Confused on The Pillars Of Sanity: “balance is restored to the force www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAbIL8C2JJ0” Jul 19, 18:12
agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “16 APRIL 2025 – VICTORY #1 Arguably (we’ll come to that later) the most crucial victory of them all was…” Jul 19, 18:11
Andy Storrie on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Come on, Campbell. You just canny help yourself, son. Let it go. This bullshit is yesterdays propaganda, lad!” Jul 19, 17:33
Aidan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@Alf – but isn’t that exactly what has happened, look at who are the hero’s in this story. The U.K.…” Jul 19, 17:27
William G Walker on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Dear Rev, I’m pleased that your “report of victories” got a first-class response from all your fans! It must take…” Jul 19, 17:21
Lorn on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Great piece, Rev. I do hope that you, with all the other people who placed their heads above the parapet…” Jul 19, 17:13
Alf Baird on The Pillars Of Sanity: “A widna haud ma breith on any UK state quango protecting the rights of Scots, though she may learn something…” Jul 19, 17:06
Peter McAvoy on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Well done to everybody who refused to accept and challenged this woke fascism and to the deserved victories you have…” Jul 19, 16:22