Alex Massie

Alex Massie is Scotland Editor of The Spectator. He also writes a column for The Times and is a regular contributor to the Scottish Daily Mail, The Scotsman and other publications.

Kate Forbes’s gay marriage blunder

21 February 2023 9:25 pm

Mistakenly, I assumed that politicians supporting Kate Forbes’ campaign to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the SNP understood she…

Nicola Sturgeon was made – and destroyed – by independence

16 February 2023 5:22 pm

The greatest trick an ideologue can ever pull off is convincing people they are not, in fact, an ideologue. But…

Nicola Sturgeon isn’t above the law

17 January 2023 11:33 pm

The first thing to say is that the argument between the Scottish government and the British government over the former’s…

James Cleverly’s shameful silence on the fate of Jimmy Lai

13 December 2022 9:47 pm

Have you heard about the British citizen facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in a Chinese…

It could soon be game over for Nicola Sturgeon

23 November 2022 11:52 pm

The idea that a referendum on Scottish independence could be held without it having any bearing on the constitution of…

Truss’s Sturgeon jibe is bound to backfire

2 August 2022 8:01 pm

If the first rule of leadership is, as Barack Obama once said, ‘don’t do stupid shit’ then this Tory leadership…

The impossibility of separating Scotland from Britain

23 July 2022 9:00 am

A ‘global’ history of Scotland must, by its very nature, be one of Britain and Empire too, says Alex Massie

Boris’s implosion was inevitable

7 July 2022 1:30 am

So it ends as it was always likely to end: as a disgrace inside a shambles, lost in a fog…

Another Scottish independence referendum is coming

29 June 2022 12:50 am

Despite what the SNP and its supporters insist, Nicola Sturgeon did not ‘announce’ a second referendum on independence today. Far…

The game is up, Boris Johnson

7 June 2022 7:13 pm

The worst possible outcome for the Conservative and Unionist party is also a pretty lousy result for the country. That…

Rest in peace, Shane Warne

5 March 2022 3:16 am

Headingly, July 22nd 1993 and the opening day of the fourth test that summer between England and Australia. This, as…

Boris must go!

2 February 2022 12:50 am

Conservative sympathisers, Conservative voters and Conservative parliamentarians have a simple choice to make this week. Do they stand by a…

Boris's dwindling bunch of supporters must now come clean

15 January 2022 3:36 am

Oh for heaven’s sake, come off it. British politics has long had a comfortable relationship with the absurd but this…

Douglas Ross is right: Boris Johnson must go

13 January 2022 3:30 am

In May 2020 Douglas Ross resigned from Boris Johnson’s government. Though only a junior minister in the Scotland Office –…

The unfathomable inadequacy of Boris Johnson

11 January 2022 10:20 pm

There is no room for wriggling here and not just because multiple witnesses put Boris Johnson and his wife at…

The joy of Boris’s bungled by-election

17 December 2021 10:04 pm

By any reasonable standard the result in the North Shropshire by-election must be reckoned the funniest in years. Perhaps even…

Boris Johnson is eating reality

9 December 2021 12:45 am

It is neither fair nor correct to say it was obvious from the moment Boris Johnson became Prime Minister that…

Is this the beginning of the end for Nicola Sturgeon?

27 November 2021 1:00 am

The SNP are holding their annual conference this weekend and, the times being what they are, it is a virtual…

Boris's rail betrayal is no surprise

19 November 2021 12:13 am

A promise made is merely a promise waiting to be broken. If events complicate life for all governments it is…

Labour’s Scottish problem isn’t going away

29 September 2021 8:11 pm

Certain questions are eternal and many of them are correspondingly dreary too. ‘How should Labour deal with the SNP?’ and…

Is Boris brave enough to confront the truth about the NHS?

20 July 2021 10:30 pm

If a government does not wish to break a manifesto promise it should punt fewer such ‘promises’ into its manifesto.…

The 'mandate wars' won't be resolved anytime soon

9 May 2021 2:41 am

So what does it all mean? The first thing to bear in mind is that more than one thing may…

Scottish nationalism is no better than any other kind

6 May 2021 2:16 am

Even the Americans are noticing Nicola Sturgeon now and if you are – like many nationalists – the kind of…

Does anyone doubt Boris's leaked 'bodies' comment?

27 April 2021 4:07 am

Of course Boris Johnson raged, King Lear-like, that he was prepared to ‘let the bodies pile high in their thousands’…

Alex Salmond is a gift to the Unionist cause

7 April 2021 2:50 am

If Alex Salmond and his new Alba party did not exist, pro-Union parties would find it necessary to invent them.…