The British Royal State is in terminal decline but still holds all of us back Gerry Hassan Sunday National, December 13th 2020 The Royal Family have been in the news of late with Kate and William’s three-day, whistle-stop ‘Royal Train Tour’ making just nine stops in Scotland, Wales and England. This marks an end to a very uneasy year for the Royals, defined by personal difficulty, crisis and continued scandal. In terms of supporting their subjects, the Royals have effectively been invisible this past pandemic year. There was the Queen’s TV address in early April; she commented in May

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How not to do a break-up: Brexit and lessons for Scottish Independence Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, December 9th 2020 Today is 1,630 days since the UK narrowly voted for Brexit – and Scotland along with Northern Ireland voted Remain. ‘Taking Back Control’ was meant to be simple, smooth and straightforward, according to its adherents. It was meant to be ‘the easiest trade deal in history’ where the UK held all the cards in any negotiation. And so the Brexit denialism continues with David Davis, former Minister for Brexit, saying on Monday that ‘we must remember that Britain has nothing to

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Independence is a story about all of us – and there is serious work to do Gerry Hassan Sunday National, December 6th 2020 2020 has been the year of many striking things. It has been a year of progress for Scottish independence. A raft of polls show a consistent majority for independence and the SNP is polling strongly. Nicola Sturgeon is massively more popular than Boris Johnson; while the SNP’s trust ratings on a range of issues is impressive. All of which points towards the likelihood of a pro-independence majority in seats and votes in the 2021 elections. Some independence

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The Great Big Lie of the British Royal Family  Gerry Hassan The National, December 6th 2020 Feeling a bit blue as the nights grow colder and darker? Worried about all those avoidable COVID-19 deaths and the threat of a chaotic Brexit? Are you worried about Boris Johnson and his hapless government being in charge of anything - let alone a vaccine roll-out - as they shamelessly reward their corporate pals with billions of our monies with no due process and diligence? Never fear because such inauspicious circumstances are the perfect conditions for a royal tour. And not just that,

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The Worldwide War over Truth and Free Speech Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, December 2nd 2020 The battle for truth is all around us. Fake news. Fake media. The argument over free speech and freedom to say what we like and think, alongside controversies over ‘cancel culture’ and ‘safe spaces’. Meanwhile an American President who has lost an election still, one month after polling day, refuses to accept the result. He has called the contest ‘rigged’ and ‘stolen’ – a denialism that 77% of Trump voters agree with according to a Monmouth University survey. This is the world all around us.

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The SNP, independence and the politics of solidarity Gerry Hassan The National, November 30th 2020 The SNP annual conference was, like all party gatherings at the moment, a strange affair conducted through virtual discussions connecting thousands of homes and living rooms. This gave it a decent social media footprint, but restricted what broadcasters had to cover and portray to the wider nation. This conference was the starting gun for the 2021 elections, with the major chance for any cut through being Nicola Sturgeon’s keynote address on St. Andrew’s Day. This was carried by most broadcasters - with the right-wing

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Scotland and life after COVID-19 Gerry Hassan Sunday National, November 29th 2020 2020 has been a year like no other in living memory. As our lives have been thrown upside down, politics and public life have struggled to keep up and find a language to convey the scale of human loss, tragedy and disruption. It goes without saying that the UK Government and Boris Johnson have had an appalling pandemic. The Prime Minister has been unable to find the right response, words and tone; while Downing Street has embodied chaos and farce. And shockingly, but hardly surprisingly, dozens of Tory

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A Tour Inside Gordon Brown’s Britain Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, November 25th 2020 Gordon Brown in recent times has increasingly recognised that something is wrong, even rotten, in the state of Britain, regularly talking about ‘a dysfunctional UK’. This is part of Brown’s continual manoeuvres post-2014 to have a say in the future of Britain’s constitutional arrangements and to make the case that the status quo increasingly ill-serves the nations and regions of the UK. Thus it comes as no surprise that he has taken pen to paper and written a substantial New Statesman essay that makes his case of

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Boris Johnson and the Tory attack on Devolution is about more than Johnson Gerry Hassan Sunday National, November 22nd 2020 Thirty years ago today Margaret Thatcher resigned as UK Prime Minister and yet still casts a shadow over British politics and the Tories. Fast forward to this week, with Boris Johnson revealing his true feelings about Scotland and devolution – saying that ‘devolution has been a disaster north of the border’ and that it was ‘Tony Blair’s biggest mistake’ - a bit of a tall statement given the Iraq war over which Johnson called for Blair’s impeachment. Cue lots of

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The battle for Scotland and the language of apocalypse from Andrew Neil and the right Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, November 20th 2020 One of the recurring themes of Scottish politics, from those of a pro-union disposition who are trying to find ammunition to attack the SNP and independence, is the propensity to dismiss the record of the Nationalists in office in language which borders on the apocalyptic. This entails talking of Scotland as some kind of disaster, basket case – while ignoring where such logic would take descriptions of Boris Johnson’s government. Some of this overblown rhetoric is a sign

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