The ‘Anyone But England’ Phenomenon and the Scottish Psyche Gerry Hassan The Guardian Comment, June 23rd 2010 The Scotland-England relationship has been historically one of the defining features of Scottish life. In recent years Scottish football fans have begun more and more to identify with whoever England is playing whether it be the World Cup, European Championships or a mere friendly. All of this has now reached epic proportions. There has been the ‘Anyone But England’ (ABE) phenomenon which has spawned a website, campaign and numerous commercial ventures. Kilt makers Slanj have got into trouble for making ABE t-shirts and

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The Official Voice of Our Broken Constitution Speaks Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, June 19th 2010 Vernon Bogdanor is a respected authority on the British constitution, and someone who we should take seriously. In his writing and in his previous position as the tutor to the young David Cameron at Oxford University, Bogdanor has become in effect a pillar and part of the British constitution. Bogdanor is both a reformer and a deep conservative, someone who sees the British constitution in needs of radical overhaul, but believes in it as an idea and sees reform as reinforcing its legitimacy, authority and

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The Darkness at the Heart of Labour Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, June 17th 2010 British politics may have been changed utterly by New Labour and entered uncharted waters with the new coalition, but part of Britain has shifted back to what it sees as normal service. Labour post-election has returned to some of its favourite comfort zones, with the party viewing itself in opposition to what it calls a ‘Tory Government’ and opposing public spending cuts which it is seeing as the return of Thatcherism. What does all this say about Labour and the New Labour era? To many it

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Labour’s Family Affair Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 14th 2010 The five Labour candidates gathered yesterday in Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall before a packed audience of 400 party members. This proved to be a lively hustings with good humour, animated discussion and no rancour. If it had any faults it lacked any real disagreements, provided little detail, and pandered to what they thought a Scottish audience would want. Iain Gray opened the meeting declaring before anything had happened ‘that the hustings showed Labour was on the way back’. Then came the official story of Scottish Labour: the party had learnt

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Labour Begins its Long Conversation: The Leader Hustings Come North of the Border Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, June 13th 2010 The Labour summertime show headed northwards; the first UK party leader election since Tony Blair began the New Labour era in 1994. The five Labour candidates gathered in Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall before a packed audience of 400 Scottish party members. This proved to be a lively hustings with good humour, animated discussion and no rancour. If it had any faults it lacked any real disagreements, provided little detail, and pandered to what they thought a Scottish audience would want,

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The Labour Leadership Contest and What We Do About the New Labour Generation Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, June 9th 2010 It is now the famous five with Ed, David, David and Andy joined by Diane Abbott. This is the widest Labour leadership contest for thirty-four years – since 1976 when Jim Callaghan beat Michael Foot for the leadership (and hence Prime Ministership) from a field of six candidates. Thank goodness for small mercies in terms of the number of candidates, yet as has been pointed out this is the narrowest, most unrepresentative Labour leadership contest – socially – in the

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Why Labour Needs to Ditch Both Fabianism and New Labour Centralism Gerry Hassan The Guardian Comment, June 3rd 2010 The Labour leadership campaign is one of the first indications of the state of the party. If the six contributions from the current candidates are anything to go by in yesterday’s Guardian (June 1^st), the party is going to have a long time before it gets it act together. Platitudes and generalities were aplenty; the party has to ’renew’, rediscover its ‘idealism’ and ‘moral purpose’. Underneath all the warm words one area was revealingly ignored: any understanding of the character and

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Labour’s Future and the Story of Labour Britain Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, June 1st 2010 The limits of Labour’s understanding of what has happened to it, where it is, and what it should do are becoming clear. This has been given added clarity by the contributions by the current six Labour leadership candidates who have written short manifestos and credos for ‘The Guardian’ (1). All of them display different degrees of ambiguity to the two questions Madeline Bunting poses: was the 2010 election result a good result for Labour or a disaster, and ‘how does one treat New Labour’s record

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The Taxing Issues of Tartan Taxes Gerry Hassan The Guardian Comment, May 26th 2010 The Queen’s Speech has shown that the intention of the Con-Lib Dem coalition is to be as considerate and thoughtful as possible to Scotland and Wales. To David Cameron this gives him the opportunity to show his reasonable manner towards the two hostile territories. The Scots have been promised implementation of the Calman Commission and the Welsh a referendum on more powers for the National Assembly. At the same time, the decade of growth of the Scottish Government budget which doubled over the period is clearly

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A Moment for Reflection and Radicalism Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, May 26th 2010 The first Queen’s Speech of the Con-Lib Dem government provided the opportunity to show how much they understand Scots (along with Welsh) sensibilities. We are different up here, driven by different political motivations, and with an entirely different set of political dynamics. So apparently the key word is ‘respect’, despite its overuse and misuse by the Blair Government for dodgy initiatives involving czars! Whatever we think of the Calman Commission’s proposals the next stage of Scotland’s constitutional journey has begun. No matter the road we take the

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