Scotland’s ambition to become a serious player in artificial intelligence will be decided less by technology than by leadership. The country has set out a strategy running to 2031, and the harder work now is the unglamorous business of turning a published…
The Scottish Government’s latest economic bulletin reads less like a verdict than a balancing act, capturing an economy where genuine strengths sit alongside persistent strains. For the leaders tasked with steering it, the document is a reminder that governing a modern economy…
Scotland has spent years talking about building an entrepreneurial economy. Increasingly, the leadership question is whether it can reach the country’s youngest founders early enough to keep their ambitions, and eventually their companies, at home. Programmes aimed at first-time entrepreneurs have become…
Strategies succeed or fail on the strength of the people willing to champion them, and Scotland’s push into artificial intelligence has found a determined one in Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes. She has put her weight behind a five-year plan that treats…
Governments talk endlessly about backing entrepreneurs. Rather fewer put a structured programme behind the words. Scotland’s First Minister has moved to do so with a new Start-Up Challenge aimed squarely at young founders, an attempt to turn the country’s entrepreneurial rhetoric into…
Every technology strategy eventually runs into the same constraint, the shortage of people who understand the technology well enough to lead with it. Scotland’s answer, folded into its wider AI plan, is an AI Leadership Academy designed to build that expertise where…
The European Union has come down on Spain’s side over Ceuta, praising the speed of Madrid’s response after the bloc’s interior ministers met on Tuesday. Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska put the number of migrants who crossed into the North African territory…
Katy Clark has decided against a run at the Scottish Labour leadership, though she is not leaving the field without instructions. The left-wing MSP, who had been weighing a bid to succeed Anas Sarwar, confirmed she will stay out. That narrows the…
Andy Burnham will not appear at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe after withdrawing from an in-conversation event two weeks out from the date. The Stand comedy club, which had sold out the 19 August slot, said it was incredibly disappointed and is refunding…
Women Against State Pension Inequality has gone directly to the top of government, writing to Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Chancellor John Healey to ask for a meeting on compensation. The letter, from Waspi chair Angela Madden, presses for what she describes…
