Page 20 - Union Unit News Today

The Union Unit now enters its fifth iteration in just 16th months. In October 2019, it was announced that “to strengthen the Union and Scotland’s place in the UK, the Government has established a Union Unit within Downing Street. The unit is tasked with reviewing the impact of all policy proposals on the Union, ensuring all nations and regions are taken into consideration”. Just nine months later we heard “a new Cabinet group has been set up to promote Boris Johnson’s agenda and...

DURING his stint as editor of The Spectator, our beloved Prime Minister once published a now infamous poem that referred to Scots as a “verminous race”. The questionable attempt at satire concluded that Scotland "deserves not merely isolation, but comprehensive extermination". For all of my criticisms of Boris Johnson, I never thought he’d take the advice quite so literally as to have a stab at it. Yet what else could be said about a Prime Minister who knowingly took a cross countr...

IF you can cast your mind back to the summer of last year you might remember Boris Johnson ordering his prime ministerial jet be painted in the colours of the Union flag. The £900,000 paint job caused controversy not least because of the price tag, but Downing Street insisted it was money well spent. No longer would the Prime Minister have to fly around in a drab grey plane he labelled "boring", instead he would have all the flash and panache of a British Airways look-a-like.  Culture S...

THE SNP have warned the Better Together band “is being tuned up” after it emerged a new five-step plan by Boris Johnson’s government to stop independence has been shared with former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown. The new proposals were drawn up amid mounting concern in Downing Street about support for independence and increasing demands in Northern Ireland for a border poll. They have come forward from a special Union committee, chaired by Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove, ...

Collision course: Sturgeon ups ante and points to Scottish Govt staging its own Indyref2 if Johnson keeps saying no THE Union of the United Kingdom is today facing mounting pressure on two fronts as opinion polls suggest that a majority of people in Scotland and Northern Ireland now want referendums on their membership of it within the next five years. The snapshots, commissioned by The Sunday Times, come as the SNP has set itself on a constitutional collision course with the UK Government,...

Be in no doubt, May’s Holyrood vote is the independence election. It’s not just that, of course. It is also about trust in government...

WITH typical shameless hypocrisy, Tory leaders in Scotland have recently condemned mention of Scottish independence during our pandemic times. They have also alleged a lack of transparency both in the provision of Covid response data and in the current Salmond inquiries. Meanwhile, the Tory Gang of Three (Baroness Davidson, Alister Jack and Douglas Ross) have been working under the shadows of the pandemic to undermine the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government. Tory work is under way f...

THE Scottish Tories have come under fire for saying the Scottish Government have reached "an all time petty low" in a tweet about the Covid vaccine. The tweet, from the official Scottish Government account, referred to the "Astrazeneca vaccine", but numerous Scottish Tories claimed it should be referred to as the "Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine". Maurice Golden claimed Nicola Sturgeons Government is promoting a "nationalist" agenda. He tweeted: "The rest of the world knows it as the Oxford...

I WAS curious to read the moderate view of the former SNP “spin doctor”, Kevin Pringle, in rejecting the short time frame for a referendum to be conducted next year – the first year of the newly elected Scottish Government, no doubt it will be an SNP one (Indyref will not happen in 2021, says former SNP spin doctor, December 28)! Mr Pringle opines that indyref2 is a matter for the medium term of the Scottish Parliament and not the short term of 2021. I wish to challenge that assertion...

Updated Robert Jenrick insisted the amount of money we spend on political advisers is very small by international standards A TORY minister has defended the UK Government’s decision to give Dominic Cummings a £40,000 pay rise this year. Cummings, the Prime Minister’s most senior adviser, left Downing Street last month to work from home until mid-December following a power struggle in Number 10. A report released yesterday showed the adviser was paid between £140,000 and £144,999 th...