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15 families have arrived on the tiny island of Bute, off the West of Scotland Scottish minister Humza Yousaf said their arrival was a 'proud day', adding: 'I would like to extend the warmest of welcomes on behalf of the people of Scotland, and wish them all the best as they start their new lives here.' For her part, Home Secretary Theresa May tried to reassure locals by saying all arrivals would be screened to ensure they did not pose a security threat, amid fears that some would-be terrorists who have travelled to Britain posing as refugees. Indeed, in September,...

As leader of the SNP, Alex Salmond tried to boldly go where none of his predecessors had gone before and win independence for Scotland. But the former First Minister overreached himself when he booked on to a British Airways flight as Star Trek’s James T. Kirk, captain of the starship Enterprise. Mr Salmond faced embarrassment when BA flatly refused to let him on the plane at Heathrow because the name on his ticket – belonging to the character played by William Shatner in the seminal science-fiction series – didn’t match that in his passport. Only a series of frantic calls...

A married politician was horrified to find her details were on a list of email addresses leaked after the hacking of infidelity website Ashley Madison. \ Michelle Thomson, the SNP MP for Edinburgh West, said her identity had been ‘harvested’ as part of a smear campaign against her. The mother-of-two said: ‘Along with potentially millions of others, an out-of-use email address seems to have been harvested by hackers’. Today hackers, working under the name Impact Team, published the names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card details and sexual fantasies of the social networking site’s 37 million members. Around 2.1 million of...

David Cameron: Every School In The Country Could Become An Academy Prime Minister says the Tories will give all schools the opportunity to be free from the control of local authorities by becoming academies Every school in the country should become an academy, David Cameron says in a move that would represent the most significant reform of the education system since the introduction of the national curriculum. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the Prime Minister says that the Tories will give all schools the opportunity to be free from the control of local authorities. Taking advantage of the disarray in...

German Social Democratic Party (SPD) MEP Jo Leinen told The Local on Monday he was unhappy with comments from European Parliament (EP) President Martin Schulz, who suggested that Britain should be allowed to opt out of the call to work towards “ever closer union” among EU countries. “The only country that has opted out of European integration with special rules in the past decades has been Great Britain,” Schulz told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. “We would only be recognizing what has been true for London for a long time.” But Social Democratic MEP Jo Leinen told The Local that Schulz’s...

Recently released emails detail then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's interest in arming Libyan opposition groups using private security contractors before the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 – though at the time, the opposition was not formally recognized by the U.S. or United Nations, which prohibited arming without following strict guidelines and oversight. The issue remains so sensitive that the emails recently released by the State Department redacted a key line on the matter. But the unredacted version of the same email, released to the congressional Benghazi Select Committee and first posted by The New York Times last Thursday, showed...

Controversial former MP George Galloway is to seek election as the next mayor of London. The Respect Party leader, who has threatened a legal challenge over his general election defeat, declared his bid on Twitter. Mr Galloway posted a picture of himself sitting on an unmade bed with his young son and the slogan "Dad, you've got to do this. I've got your back!". "I'm standing for Mayor of London 2016," he added. On 7 May, Mr Galloway lost the Bradford West Commons seat he took from Labour, his former party, in a 2012 by-election. The seat was won by...

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has voted to allow congregations to ordain gay ministers who are in same sex civil partnerships. Delegates voted 309 in favour and 183 against. The vote followed a church-wide debate and consultations with all 45 presbyteries, which voted 31 to 14 in favour of change. A further vote will be held this week on whether or not to extend ordination to ministers in same sex marriages. Supporters said it was time for the church to be inclusive and recognise the "mixed economy" of modern Scotland. Opponents warned that the move was contrary...

Church of Scotland Votes To Let Deacons And Ministers Have Same Sex Civil Partnerships Vote maintains Church's traditional view of marriage between a man and woman, but allows individual congregations to "opt out" By Nicola Harley 16 May 2015 The Church of Scotland has voted in favour of allowing people in same sex civil partnerships to be called as ministers and deacons. The decision was made by the General Assembly on the Mound in Edinburgh on Saturday, where the motion was passed by 309 votes in favour and 182 against. The outcome is the culmination of years of deliberation within...

The election results in Britain has given the Conservative Party a majority in the UK parliament. But the most interesting story in the election, is the events in Scotland. The Labor Party has been wiped out in Scotland. The Scottish National Party (SNP) increased their seats in the British Parliament by 833 percent, the greatest increase seen by any party in the post World War Two era. Scotland has 59 seats in the British Parliament. The list below shows the distribution of Scottish UK Parliament seats from the 2010 election to the 2015 election. 2010 - Labor (41), Liberal Democrats...

George Galloway, the socialist firebrand best known in America for his condemnations of Israel and the Iraq War, was soundly defeated for re-election to Parliament in Thursday's British general election. Galloway, a former Labour member who won the seat for Bradford West in the northwest of England in a 2012 special election, was beaten by Labour's Naz Shah, a political newcomer who overcome childhood poverty, a teenage forced marriage and the imprisonment of her mother for killing an abusive partner. Shah had urged voters to reject Galloway because "we do not need a one-man Messiah to tell us how to...

<p>Labour Party grandee Jack Straw, leaving Parliament after 36 years that included several Cabinet stints, called the party's showing in Scotland "an unbelievably bad situation in Scotland which frankly nobody anticipated."</p> <p>Throughout the campaign, Scottish voters told pollsters and journalists they were tired of being taken for granted by Labour, and many had not been impressed when Miliband joined forces with Cameron to urge Scottish voters to reject independence in last September's referendum. Scots whose families had for decades voted Labour turned away in droves.</p>

:: Follow the election results live on skynews.com, our mobile apps and on Sky News TV from 10pm. Voters are going to the polls across the country to decide who will form the next government. Polling stations opened at 7am and close at 10pm in the United Kingdom's 650 constituencies.

...The prospect of an in-out EU referendum driven by David Cameron's desperate attempts to keep the Conservatives together on Europe while fending off the threat from the UKIP [insert laughter here -- 'Civ] right is a nightmare scenario for the Irish government. Dublin often takes comfort from hiding behind Britannia's skirts in Brussels when the British take all the flak for opposing tax and other financial harmonisations in a belligerent stance that also benefits Ireland. With Nick Clegg trading away yet another of the Lib Dems principles and doing a U-turn on his previous opposition to a referendum, if Cameron...

Posters telling Muslims not to vote in the election were plastered across an area of Cardiff yesterday. They read: 'Democracy is a system whereby man violates the right of Allah.' Posters were stuck on lampposts and bus stops across the Grangetown suburb telling the Muslim electorate: 'Islam is the only real workable solution for the UK'. Cardiff Council have begun removing the posters, dubbed 'chilling' and 'threatening' by locals. The full message on the poster reads: 'Democracy is a system whereby man violates the right of Allah and decides what is permissible or impermissible for mankind, based solely on their...

Its getting pretty rough and intense on the eve of a hotly contested general election. The tactics of the big parties are squarely aimed at the smaller parties. In recent hours, Prime Minister David Cameron has made comments saying Wales and Scotland should have tax raising powers. A pitch to the nationalist parties there can be no doubt. The rise of the Scottish National Party has shocked many considering their loss in the independence referendum last year. It looks like the SNP will win 50 to 60 of Scotland's 71 seats in the House of Commons tomorrow. There have been...

Voting for UKIP is like writing a “suicide note” which will “not be forgiven” if it denies Britain the chance to vote on whether to remain a member of the EU, Iain Duncan Smith warns today. In a heartfelt intervention just 48 hours before polling day, the former Conservative leader urges those considering voting UKIP not to jeopardise a decades-long campaign he has waged to change Britain’s relationship with Brussels. • Latest election polls for May 5 The Work and Pensions Secretary describes a vote for Ukip as “unfathomable” as it risks allowing a weak minority Labour government – backed...

The poll showed Labour support was on 34 percent, Conservative support on 31 percent and support for the anti-European Union UK Independence Party was at 17 percent.

The SNP could win every single seat in Scotland in next week's General Election, a bombshell poll revealed this morning. Nicola Sturgeon's party has moved 34 points ahead of Labour, according to the pollsters Ipsos MORI, sparking a stark warning from David Cameron that Britain faces being brought to a 'shuddering halt'. If the SNP repeat the result on May 7, it would win all 59 of Scotland's seats – up from just six today. The Prime Minister, speaking in Birmingham today, said the SNP surge risked giving the balance of power to a party which saw Britain as the...

A future Labour Government is committed to outlaw the scourge of Islamophobia by changing the law and making it an aggravated crime, according to the Party’s Leader Ed Miliband. “We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime,” Miliband told the Editor of The Muslim News, Ahmed J Versi in a wide ranging exclusive interview. “We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely clear of our abhorrence of...