Scotland faces a significant political reset after the Labour Party pummeled the Scottish National Party (SNP) in UK-wide elections, dealing a thumping setback to its already-fading hopes of forcing another independence referendum.
As Labour swept to emphatic victories north and south of the border, and routed the ruling Conservatives, the SNP wilted to its worst performance in more than a decade. It won just eight of Scotland’s 53 districts counted so far — fewer seats nationally than the Liberal Democrats. With the SNP now only the fourth-largest party in Westminster, the result muffles the pro-breakaway Scottish voice across the UK.
The result caps a torrid couple of years for the SNP. The party’s leadership has been in turmoil, police have been investigating its finances and its running of the Scottish government has come under increasing criticism. However, SNP leaders past and present preached a message of contrition and defiance.
Photo: Reuters
First Minister John Swinney, appointed to the job in May to calm the turmoil in the party, pledged a period of soul searching. Nicola Sturgeon, one of his predecessors, maintained that the election in Scotland was all about ousting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak from Downing Street in London.
“This was always going to be a really tough night for us,” she told STV.
The outcome all but kills off the party’s plan to press for another vote on independence, something both the Conservatives and Labour repeatedly rejected anyway. The SNP now has two years to regroup before it faces a Scottish Parliamentary election in 2026.
“On independence, the issue has not gone away, but we need to focus hard on making it relevant to people,” Sturgeon said.
In other news, pro-Irish unity party Sinn Fein has become Northern Ireland’s largest party in London for the first time, holding its seven parliamentary seats while the largest pro-UK party lost three of its eight. Sinn Fein, formerly the political wing of the paramilitary Irish Republican Army during the British region’s long-running conflict known as the “Troubles,” is also the largest party at council level and at the devolved Northern Ireland assembly.
Newly elected Sinn Fein MPs — who abstain from taking up their seats in the UK parliament because they do not recognize British sovereignty over Northern Ireland, include former UK midwives’ union head Pat Cullen.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS