According to a report by election guru Prof Sir John Curtice, published earlier this week, trust and confidence in British politics has fallen to a record low.  The report focuses on the events of the 2019-2024 Westminster Parliament, and it identifies that trust and confidence has fallen most drastically among Leave voters.

Yesterday saw the publication of a book which chronicles the long running campaign to protect women's sex-based rights in Scotland.  In “The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht” more than thirty women tell their personal stories.  I am proud to be one of them.  My fellow authors include famous established writers such as JK Rowling, respected journalists like former MSP Joan McAlpine and Mandy Rhodes, Labour, Tory, SNP and Alba politicians, and survivors of male abuse who have written anonymously about their experience of being rejected as witnesses by the Holyrood committee that scrutinised the plans for gender recognition reforms.

If Kate had stood for the leadership of the SNP, she would have had my backing.  She has not and therefore I will fall behind the leadership of John Swinney. I should have liked to see a contest and a battle of ideas about the future direction of our party, the Scottish Government, and the cause of independence, but I understand the fear that the acrimony generated by that would not be desirable with a challenging General Election so close.

Like most of my SNP colleagues, I believe that our political representatives should be accountable to the electorate and so I do not approve of the way in which the House of Lords is selected rather than elected. However, I have been surprised and impressed by the dogged insistence of their lordships on their amendments to the Rwanda bill this week.  The fight is not over yet and while cynics say the PM is happy to let the ping pong between Commons and Lords go on for a little longer while he gets his ducks in a row for the first deportation flight to Rwanda, I say credit where credit is due.

On Tuesday it was reported that right wing protesters in Israel had blocked aid trucks destined for Gaza, throwing food packages onto the road and ripping open bags of grain. Whilst the UN Aid Agency confirmed that Northern Gaza is now experiencing full-blown famine, video footage showed fit young men in their late teens and early twenties stomping on food parcels and throwing their contents down a ravine. The attack happened at the Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. US national security adviser Jack Sullivan said: “It is a total outrage that there are people who are attacking and looting these convoys coming from Jordan, going to Gaza to deliver humanitarian assistance.” 

I really wish that I did not have to write about the new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act again this week. Instead, I wish that the post 2014 leadership of the SNP had spent half as much time on advancing the cause of independence as they have spent on identity politics. Had they done so, Scotland might already be an independent country or at the very least considerably further down the road to independence.

Over the last few days, a succession of men have taken to print and to the airwaves to tell you there is no cause for concern about the new Hate Crime Act coming into force on April 1. One headline even proclaimed concerns were 'silly'. I'm here to tell you that these men are wrong as well as patronising, and that, if you are a woman, you have every right to be concerned.

On International Women's Day we need to be vigilant against a worldwide backlash against women's rights.

In July 2023, a joint report to the UN Human Rights Council by the special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, and Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, chair of the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, indicated that the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan was the worst globally.

Many column inches have been expanded over the last 24 hours on the chaos that unfolded in the House of Commons on Wednesday. National readers should be in no doubt that what we saw was a very clear indication that at Westminster, when it suits the establishment, the rules and precedent will be set aside, whether to save political skins or blushes, even when what is at stake is of the gravest importance.  What happened was a very clear example of Britannia waiving the rules. 

Many column inches have been expanded this week on the question of whether the SNP should sit in the Lords.  I am clear that we should not. Quite apart from anything else the loss of face would be hard to bear. For years colleagues have railed against the place as if it was the devil incarnate. (It isn’t but it is a very flawed institution.) You cannot attack the place in the Commons, on the conference floor and on twitter and then trick in there yourself without looking like a monumental hypocrite.  Can you imagine the optics of former SNP MPs, who have declined to put themselves up for re-election or been rejected by the electorate, donning the ermine, and partaking in all the other flummery? It does not bear thinking about.