After 'new Britain': The Strange Death of 'the Labour Nation' Gerry Hassan Renewal:  A Journal of Social Democracy, Autumn 2010 The question that hovers above the Iraq inquiry is – since the evidence on Saddam Hussein’s weaponry was so flaky and the post-war planning so atrocious – why on earth Tony Blair did it. One theory, albeit not the one likely to be offered by Mr Blair himself, is that his militarism and messianism, the mix of responsibility and entitlement that he evinced, are part of the inheritance of all post-imperial British leaders… If empire is the backdrop of Britain’s

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Why Labour’s New Leader Needs to Play it Long in Opposition Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 25th 2010 Labour delegates gather in Manchester in much better heart than many expected a few months ago. The party is recovering in the polls, having drawn level with the Tories in one poll, and by next week ‘the Miliband momentum’ of David or Ed will have taken Labour into the lead for the first time since Gordon Brown failed to call the election he had been planning for in 2007. Many myths exist about Labour in opposition - with differing degrees of truth.

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Labourism, the New Labour revolution and what comes next? Gerry Hassan Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, Autumn 2010 The New Labour era has finally ended. And though the full scale of the destruction and wreckage which it has inflicted upon British politics, society and progressive ideas will not be entirely clear until we can gain an element of hindsight through the passage of time, this is not a happy story. Nor is there any prospect of a ‘Back to the Future’ politics for Labour - a ‘restoration’ that returns us back to the certainties and parameters of

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The Times are Changing Musically Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 18th 2010 Music connects emotions, transports us from the here and now to strange, bewitching lands, giving us heroes and heroines to follow. In times of change, music has played a major role. In the 1960s across the West, the Beatles, Stones and Hendrix created music for a generation of protest; in the late 1970s a divided Britain witnessed the insurrectionary sound of the Sex Pistols and the Clash; while the early 1980s saw a plethora of artists rage against Thatcher, from the Specials ‘Ghost Town’ to UB40’s ‘One in

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How do we avoid the Bunker Mentality with the Scots Public Sector? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 11th 2010 We face an unprecedented crisis of the public sector, in Scotland and the UK, one which is financial, cultural and touches the question of the sustainability of public spending and the economy. Public sector ‘cuts’ and ‘reform’ are coming north of the border, but this leaves a whole host of questions, about the nature and scale of ‘the cuts’ and the kind of ‘reform’ we are away to witness. This could be a once in a generation moment which passes into

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The Twilight of the Westminster Model: Scotland, Europe and Referendums Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, September 9th 2010 The SNP minority government under Alex Salmond has finally accepted political arithmetic and retreated on its promise to hold an independence referendum before the May 2011 Scottish Parliament elections. At the same time there is to be an AV referendum on the same day as devolved elections – something the Electoral Commission has already made a previous ruling against (1) – on a policy no one supports, as well as a future Welsh devolution referendum. Now Daniel Hannan, Tory MP and freethinker has

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If A Spaceman Came Travelling to Scotland …. Gerry Hassan September 8th 2010 I went to an enterprising and illuminating event run by the Scottish Parliament Futures Forum, the Royal Society of the Arts and Barnardos Scotland called ‘Open Thinking’. Here are the opening thoughts I explored …. Imagine for a second – that a Martian landed here today amongst us. How would they understand the Scotland and the world they find: A footballing mad nation – not very good at football – which doesn’t really take it all very seriously – and isn’t very interested at changing

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What Does the Public Think of Tony Blair? Gerry Hassan September 6th 2010 Amidst all the hullabaloo about Tony Blair’s autobiography and the frenetic activity around promoting it, protesting at book launches, and people moving it around book shops – and placing it in crime or sci-fi – it is interesting to note the complex pattern of public attitudes towards Tony Blair. A YouGov poll last week asked whether voters thought Tony Blair had been a good or bad Prime Minister: it found 47% thought he had been ‘a good PM’ and 46% ‘a bad PM’; this wasn’t that different

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The First Tony Blair Book and the Failure of New Labour Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, September 5th 2010 This week has been a total Blair-fest. The launch of Tony Blair’s memoirs, the carefully crafted and controlled TV interviews, and the even more planned book signing with resulting protests. It has all had a certain cinematic, star quality to it; like outtakes from Piers Brosnan in ‘The Ghost’. An interesting aspect of ‘Tony Blair: A Journey’ is how little Blair wrote as a politician, and how temporary and superficial it all was. So where Gordon Brown has written or edited thirteen

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They Might Be Giants: The Old Firm’s Great Escape to England Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 4th 2010 Scottish football sells newspapers, fills the airwaves and carries a resonance way beyond the football field. It contributes economic benefits, social capital, the occasional feel good factor, and raises Scotland’s profile and reputation globally. Scotland per head is the third most fanatical football nation in Europe after Iceland and Cyprus. It is also since the advent of the European Champions League the joint most uncompetitive senior football league anywhere in the continent – along with the Ukraine. The two nations – Scotland

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