Kevin McKenna

DEPENDING on which way you choose to view such outcomes, the fact that every member of Humza Yousaf’s first cabinet is university-educated is either a cause for celebration or lamentation. Being a curmudgeonly sort of chiel, I’m in the latter camp.

PERHAPS some of us have a tendency to become entitled and selfish about Scottish independence. We often talk in terms of it happening “in my lifetime”, or “in this generation”. We want it to happen while we’re still alive. We quickly forget though, about the hopes and dreams of all those towering figures of the Yes cause who came before us and didn’t even live to see the day when the SNP became the predominant political power in Scotland.

IN the newspaper world where I’ve resided for a few decades, we guard our customs and practices jealously. Part of this is rooted in an esprit de corps which binds us all – colleagues and rivals – alike.

THERE’S a reason why the usual suspects in the SNP’s career wing are in denial about how much damage they’ve inflicted on the party and the cause of independence.

ONE of the themes emerging from the chaotic SNP leadership contest is that the standard of debate and the personal qualities of the candidates themselves is of a low calibre. This has most often been espoused by politicians of a Unionist stamp, most especially

KATE Forbes has done a lot of stuff right during this SNP leadership campaign. She faced down an anti-Christian hate mob who all purported to be appalled that she held traditional views on the sacrament of marriage.

THERE I was last Friday evening, watching the League Cup final highlights again, when I received the fateful message which was to shape the next two minutes: “You’re being mentioned in despatches at the SNP leadership hustings in Glenrothes.”

IT was in January, 2013 that I first began seriously to consider independence as the best way forward for Scotland.

WHEN I interviewed Jeane Freeman last year, she revealed something of the mood and atmosphere that prevailed within the Scottish Government as it sought to lead the country through the pandemic.

IN George Orwell’s great novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four – written in 1949 – he imagines a future dystopian world where state control insinuates itself into every facet of the individual’s life.