​​Despite the double whammy of electoral woes facing Scottish Labour, with the UK Labour Government recently overtaken in the opinion polls by the gutter politics of the Reform party and the news that the Scottish party’s support had halved since the election, somewhat surprisingly, the Scottish Labour Conference was brimming with excitement. Nowhere was this clearer than In Anas Sarwar’s speech on Friday, with his limitless optimism on full display as he declared ‘We will defy the odds again…we will win in 2026,’ to rapturous applause.

ANAS SARWAR, leader of the Scottish Labour Party, took everyone by surprise — at least everyone outside his inner circle — when he announced last week that should Labour win the 2026 election in Scotland, all pensioners would receive a payment of the Pension Age Winter Heating Payment which will be paid by Social Security Scotland.​

IN THE discussion around the Budget, you may have noticed the odd reference to “modern supply-side economics,” much beloved of the Biden and now the Starmer administrations.
Supply side economics in Britain was an ideological approach shared by both Labour’s last administration and of course the Tories.

THE Scottish media is, naturally, dominated by the death of Alex Salmond. His life makes good copy: a stellar rise to almost achieving independence in the referendum of 2014 as leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland to a prolonged fall.
First, he announced his resignation as leader of the SNP and first minster immediately after the failure to win the referendum and then in 2020 he faced a criminal prosecution on charges of sexual assault.
The jury returned not guilty verdicts on 12 charges and a not proven verdict on a charge of sexual assault with intent to rape.

THE crisis of capitalism, which provided the context and to some extent fuelled the vibrant Yes campaign described by Coll McCail in his excellent article on Wednesday, is still with us.
The question which has haunted the Scottish left before and since the referendum is how we can maximise unity in order to challenge the power of capital in Britain and Scotland