In the Times today: Support for the SNP and Scottish independence has jumped to the highest level recorded by a Panelbase poll for The Sunday Times. It raises the prospect of a second referendum on the future of Britain within a year of next May’s Holyrood elections. Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, appears to… Read more

Ferdinand Mount, head of the Number Ten Policy Unit under Margaret Thatcher in 1982-83, in the London Review of Books on 2nd July: It has been painful to watch the steadiness and sombre dignity of the first ministers of the devolved parliaments – notably Nicola Sturgeon – and then turn to the slapdash boosterism of… Read more