Craig Dalzell

I’m very much of the opinion that working with someone within a coalition of mutual agreement is better than shunning them because you might oppose them, however strongly, on something else. Some of the best and most effective policy work I’ve been involved with in the past few years has been with members from Scottish Labour.

IF I could name three people who have been prominently influential in the public discussion around GERS it’d be statistical stalwarts Jim and Margaret Cuthbert, and accounting acumen Richard Murphy.

LABOUR’S failure to take Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in Thursday night’s by-election is being blamed by some on the 800-odd people who voted Green rather than the party that recently ditched most of its environmental policies – and simultaneously on one environmental policy they haven’t ditched yet.

SCOTLAND stands on the cusp of an energy transition that will define our national economy, our society and our impact on the global climate emergency over the course of the next century.

THIS week, I published my latest policy paper for Common Weal, looking at the progress of the ScotWind offshore wind auction and revealing that it has likely been a financial disaster for Scotland – potentially losing us tens of billions of pounds in auction fees and supply chain developments.

THE first paper from the Scottish Government in a series framing its view of the next stage of the Scottish independence campaign is described as a “scene setter”.

I HAD hoped that Andrew Wilson’s Sunday National article looking back at four years of the Sustainable Growth Commission (SGC) report would have included something more in the way of adjusting to how feedback, critique and circumstances have changed in those four years.

THE ScotWind auction of offshore wind assets has generated a lot of attention, both on the side of those supporting it as the largest offshore wind project begun in Scotland – but also from those concerned about the direction the project is going, in terms of privatising those assets and essentially doing to Scotland’s wind resources as was done to Scotland’s oil.

TODAY, on the first day of the SNP’s 2021 Autumn Conference, members voted to endorse the conclusions of the recent Social Justice and Fairness Commission. Amongst which was a call to create a wellbeing society with a social contract built around collective democratic decision-making.