The Strange Story of Labour Scotland Gerry Hassan Sunday Times, March 14th 2010 The Scottish Labour Party has always been a strange beast, misunderstood by many, but with a romantic, sentimental sense of itself. It is a party which has won every Westminster election since 1959 – thirteen in a row – which makes this part of Scottish politics even more uncompetitive than the SPL! What is interesting is how the party has done this and been changed in the process. For all its myths, Scottish Labour has achieved this success without being that popular. The party has never won

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The Land of Wild West Labour: The Steven Purcell and Strathclyde Passenger Scandals in Context Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 11th 2010 Glasgow as a city has always been a bit on an enigma from ‘second city of the Empire’ to ‘second city of shopping’. Its politics have been shaped by the allure of ‘Red Clydeside’, while driven by the reality of a city of pragmatism, deals and doing business. As long ago as 1953, ‘The Times’ said in an editorial, ‘Nowadays, the ‘Red Clyde’ is no more than pink’, and that has been the prevailing motto of the last

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Changin Scotland No. 15: A weekend of politics, culture and ideas Friday March 19^th to Sunday March 21st The next Changin Scotland weekend includes the usual mix of politics, culture and ideas with film, discussion and blether in The Ceilidh Place. A whole weekend of interesting and intimate conversations in a beautiful, relaxing environment. Speakers include two of the most radical and penetrating voices on the state of British politics and democracy, Peter Oborne and Anthony Barnett look at where politics are, the coming election, and what the future holds. Oborne has been hailed as ‘one of the most challenging

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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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