The State of Scottish Football and can it change for the better? Sunday National, 30 August 2026 Gerry Hassan Another week, another set of controversies about Scottish football. Celtic humiliated in Europe; Rangers looking hopeless and Hibs and Motherwell out, while Hearts continue to fly the flag after a decent away result. The co-efficient of Scottish teams in Europe has fallen from 9^th to 19^th in four years. Broadcaster Danny Baker was overstating things describing this as “a collapse of Scottish football” but journalist Graham Spiers is correct to talk of “the horrifying humiliation” of Celtic and Rangers in another

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Taking the High Road to Independence Sunday National, 16 August 2026 Gerry Hassan Talk of Scottish independence is in the air; in these columns, on social media and among independence supporters. But here is a reality check - the vast majority of Scotland do not persistently talk about independence as they have more immediate things on their minds. Independence has become divorced from reality: namely the reality of most Scots. Some may think that harsh, but it is true and needs acknowledging for anything to change. There has been a vacuum at the heart of independence since 2014 with no

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The Summer of Scotland after Sarwar, Sturgeon and Swinney Bella Caledonia, 4 August 2026 Gerry Hassan The Andy Burnham administration has taken office. It faces huge challenges - economic, political, geopolitical - along with no direct popular mandate and the rising storm of radicalised right-wing opinion in the UK waiting to devour anything that gets in its way. At the same time implicit in this is a challenge to Scottish politics: its assumptions, beliefs and dynamics of recent decades and the present. This is particularly true of those of an independence persuasion who are used to treating all things Labour

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How do we defeat the rise of the extreme right in Scotland and Britain? Sunday National, 24 July 2026 Gerry Hassan Andy Burnham has completed his first week as UK PM with the role feeling nearly as temporary as the leader of Scottish Labour. Many millions of words have been expended about the challenges and limitations faced by Burnham and the UK but missing much about the wider mood of politics and how it is created. The new government will have to make its case and progress its agenda against powerful headwinds pushing in the opposite direction fuelling an increasingly

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