Goodbye to ‘Churchillism’: From Munich and Suez to the Iraq War Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, March 5^th 2010 Gordon Brown’s role in the Iraq war will come under focus today when he gives evidence to the Chilcot inquiry. The Iraq war is the point where Tony Blair lost his political touch, and became ‘Bliar’ in the eyes of many voters. Despite four previous inquiries into the war, none of them as comprehensive as this, a sense of anger, frustration and lack of trust now pervades how the public view politicians and the conflict. Much of this anger is addressed personally

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From Munich and Suez to the Iraq War Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 5th 2010 Gordon Brown’s role in the Iraq war will come under focus today when he gives evidence to the Chilcot inquiry. The Iraq war is the point where Tony Blair lost his political touch, and became ‘Bliar’ in the eyes of many voters. Despite four previous inquiries into the war, none of them as comprehensive as this, a sense of anger, frustration and lack of trust now pervades how the public view politicians and the conflict. Much of this anger is addressed personally at Tony Blair,

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An Age of Anger: The London Review of Books and the British Crisis of Democracy Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, March 1st 2010 The current crisis of the British state, politics and democracy should be a golden moment for radicals, constitutional reformers and campaigners. It should also be an era in which left and liberal publications have the opportunity to engage and involve a wider audience about the state of the nation and democracy. One of those publications is the ‘London Review of Books’, which sees itself as urbane, cosmopolitan, liberal minded, addressing British concerns and global issues in a challenging

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The Missed Opportunity of ‘Broonland’ Gerry Hassan Sunday Times, February 28th 2010 Christopher Harvie, Broonland: The Last Days of Gordon Brown, Verso £8.99 Chris Harvie is a rare bird in the field sport of Scottish politics, a cultural and historical polymath and bon viveur who in part seems to belong from another era, one of Victorian romance, grand visions and eclectic ideas. Harvie has spent most of his academic life in Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany and upon retiring came back to Scotland. Standing for the SNP in the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections, he found himself, as No. 5 on the list

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Goodbye to New Labour and What Comes After It? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, February 26th 2010 It has been a momentous few days in British politics, dominated by Andrew Rawnsley’s allegations of bullying by Gordon Brown, whose style of politics and behaviour was further put under the spotlight by Alistair Darling’s remarks that ‘the forces of hell’ had been unleashed upon him by No. 10. At the same time an equally significant, if not more important political development went completely unnoticed in the firestorm of the last few days: the demise of New Labour. Last Saturday, the Labour Party gathered

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The Curtain Closes on an Era: The End of New Labour Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, February 23^rd 2010 We all know that our politics are becoming more and more trivialised, sensationalised and reduced to gossip, innuendo and about people and processes, as the storm of the last few days has illustrated on Andrew Rawnsley’s book, Gordon Brown’s behaviour, and the counter-actions of Christine Pratt of the National Bullying Helpline. Rawnsley is one of the leading culprits of politics as devoid of content and in particular, values, interests and ideas. Instead, everything in his political world is about information, and in

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The English Question and the Rise of a Zombie Political System Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, February 22nd 2010 The British constitution is in a bad way. The Westminster system of absolutism is creaking and falling apart as we speak, centralisation has been taken to a point under the Blair-Brown dual monarchy of New Labour beyond caricature, and the British political classes are held beneath contempt, along with bankers and journalists. This should be a golden era for radical reformers and democrats, with idealists and campaigners pushing at an open door in terms of the popular imagination and mood, a political

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A Hung Parliament Could Be Good for Our Broken Democracy Gerry Hassan The Scotsman,  February 19th 2010 A Conservative Government has for a long time been seen as the inevitable outcome of the next election. David Cameron was viewed as a Prime Minister in waiting, and the Labour Party, unpopular, led by a disliked leader, and seen as having lost the will to live. Now all of this is beginning to change. The prospect of a hung Parliament, where no one party has an overall majority is now being seriously considered. The Conservatives have proven less than sure-footed, while Labour

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The Man Who Saved the World: The Many Faces of Gordon Brown Gerry Hassan Open Democracy. February 15^th 2010 All week the British media have trailed two domestic political stories – one about the unravelling of the Cameroon Conservative project, and the other about Gordon Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan (1). The Brown interview marks many claim a new phase in ‘the Broon project’: one his backroom staff have often been working on day and night with no visible result – namely the humanising of the coarse, dull, workaholic ‘Broonman’. The other angle is of the slow corroding of our

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It’s More than a Ball Game: Scottish Football and Culture Gerry Hassan February 14^th 2010 The state and importance of Scottish football both fascinates and repels large parts of Scotland – but there can be little doubt that the condition of the game and how we see it throws light on Scottish culture and society. In the last week, I have watched Motherwell v Rangers and Aberdeen v Celtic live on TV, and went to the St. Johnstone v Dundee United cup tie. Taking all three of these together gives a number of pointers about the health of the game.

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