The Empire State Building of the United Kingdom Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 8th 2010 The 2010 election campaign has now formally begun, as politicians zigzag up and down the country in search of voters. There is a palpable sense of anxiety and doubt about the multiple crises the country faces: economic, democratic, and where we see ourselves in the world and how we conduct our foreign policy. Despite all this there is a propensity in our political classes to adopt a business as usual approach and talk in only the narrowest of ways of the crises we face. Politicians

Continue Reading The Empire State Building of the United Kingdom

The Battle of Britain 2010 Edition and Living in the Shadow of Empire Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, April 6th 2010 After a seemingly never-ending period the ‘official’ election campaign has finally begun. The 2010 British general election will be about many things: thirteen years of New Labour, Cameroon’s Conservatives, the state of the economy, public services and public spending, and the condition and character of our politics, political system and democracy. Underlying all of this is a wider set of questions and issues which can be summarised as: who are we, what do we want to be, what kind of

Continue Reading The Battle of Britain 2010 Edition and Living in the Shadow of Empire

Doctrine and Ethos in the  Scottish Labour Party Gerry Hassan and Eric Shaw Paper to the Political Studies Association Annual Conference,'Regionalist Parties and Territorial Politics' April 1st 2010 Before I was born my father was involved in socialist politics and from boyhood I have known all the great men – Hardie, Maxton, Tom Johnston and Wheatley. I have heard some describe the wonderful society that socialism will bring to the working class. All of them went down to the Parliament in London, and from there they could never deliver socialism to the Scottish working class.

Continue Reading Doctrine and Ethos in the Scottish Labour Party

Some Thoughts on Sovereignty, Voice and Power Gerry Hassan from Rosemary Bechler (ed.), The Convention on Modern Liberty: The British Debate on Fundamental Rights and Freedom, Open Democracy/Imprint Academic 2010 What is the UK? British political science says that the UK is a unitary state. But it is not: it is what’s called a ‘union state’. A union state is shaped by national and regional differentiation beginning with 1707 and the negotiation of Scottish autonomy, the retention of pre-union rights, and so on. These are political concepts known across the world, yet the political centre has

Continue Reading Some Thoughts on Sovereignty, Voice and Power

Go Brown To A Fourth Term: The Strange Story of Labour’s Comeback Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 27th 2010 As the Scottish Labour Party meets today in Glasgow, the party now finds itself in the surprising situation of an open, competitive election with everything to play for. Labour has been through a lot these last few years: recession, a banking crisis, three attempted coups against the leader, cash for honours, the expenses crisis, and that’s without mentioning Iraq and Afghanistan. Labour is short of members, resources and monies, and yet it is still standing. Is Gordon Brown really ‘the Comeback

Continue Reading Go Brown To A Fourth Term: The Strange Story of Labour’s Comeback

The Rotten State of British Democracy and A Five Point Plan on How It Works For Some! Gerry Hassan March 24th 2010 Just the usual kind of week in British politics, the type of which we have had many of in the last year of two of this totally rotten, corrupted British Parliament. The whole thing defies belief sounding close to an Ortonesque caricature about politics, the power of money and the loss of any sense of moral compasses in a whole host of the political classes. We have just had Alistair Darlings’ Budget which was a carefully calculated

Continue Reading The Rotten State of British Democracy and A Five Point Plan on How It Works For Some!

Beginning a Conversation about Change and Glasgow: A Discussion with Carol Craig Gerry Hassan Sunday Times, March 21st 2010 Glasgow is a place of complexity, many identities, of both dreams and problems. This is the city of ‘Glasgow: Scotland with Style’, the supposed new, vibrant city, and then there is the urban wasteland of gangland ‘No Mean City’. Then there is the Glasgow of fiction, film and prose, from James Kelman to Edwin Morgan. Carol Craig’s new book on the city, ‘The Tears that Made the Clyde: Well-being in Glasgow’ is an attempt to address some of these contradictions. In

Continue Reading Beginning a Conversation about Change and Glasgow: A Discussion with Carol Craig

The Auld Enemies Still? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 19th 2010 The Scotland-England relationship is one of the defining ways many Scots view the world. It ranges from football and rugby rivalry to history, politics, culture and identity. At the weekend Scots rugby fans booed English players at Murrayfield, while we have grown accustomed to Scots football crowds booing the playing of ‘God Save the Queen’ for England at Hampden. And then there is the ‘Anyone But England’ phenomenon. Why should Scotland define so much of its identity and sense of itself via what we think of England? This gives

Continue Reading The Auld Enemies Still?

The Future of the Left and Neo-Liberalism’s Appeal as a Liberation Movement Gerry Hassan Open Democracy. March 15th 2010 The Future of the Left is one of those perennial subjects that run through time memorial, from the crises of how to deal with Nazism and fascism in the 1930s, to the problems of Stalinism in the 1950s, affluence in the 1960s, and Reaganism and Thatcherism in the 1980s. On Friday I contributed to a panel discussion on this subject which also included Tariq Ali, historian Tristram Hunt and Chris Mullin, MP and was chaired by journalist Ruth Wishart. This was

Continue Reading The Future of the Left and Neo-Liberalism’s Appeal as a Liberation Movement

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

Continue Reading The Strange Story of Labour Scotland