How to defeat fascism and the far-right in Britain and elsewhere Gerry Hassan Sunday National, 27 October 2024 Twenty-five years ago, at the height of Blair, Bill Clinton and “The Third Way”, many felt that the future direction and progress of the world was safe and secure. Widespread optimism and belief in globalisation and economic freedom leading to political liberty ran from Thomas Friedman in the New York Times and Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker to cliché-filled PowerPoints by public agencies such as Scottish Enterprise. This was a mixture of projection, groupthink and propaganda. Fast forward to the present

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Ten Years on from 2014: Making Sense of the Next Ten Years of Scotland Gerry Hassan Sunday National, 29 September 2024 The ten-year anniversary of Scotland’s indyref has come and gone relatively unmarked. For something which shook things up so much it was very quiet and understated, a low-key affair from every political persuasion, media and academia. This does not mean that the ten-year point is not significant. Rather it is a time to pause, to draw breath and reflect on what has passed, on the bigger context and forces changing Scotland and the UK, and what the future may

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Scotland Ten Years On from the Indyref Gerry Hassan Bella  Caledonia, 18 September 2024 Ten years ago today Scotland voted 55% to 45% to remain in the UK union and against independence. This was a momentous, historic watershed under which we are still living, not yet having come to terms with its consequences and continued influence. Many across the political spectrum, pro and anti-independence, have struggled post-2014. But most of the mainstream politicians who participated in the 2014 campaign, including SNP senior figures and strategists, failed to see the indyref at the time in its wider context - of a

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Where stands the SNP and independence? Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 2 September 2024 The SNP conference met in Edinburgh over the past weekend. It was an understated affair compared to the huge gatherings in the years post-2014. The mood was not surprisingly of a diminished party in numbers, appeal and rationale - but at the same time less demoralised and defeated than might have been expected. Rather party members at least on the surface appeared to still have some spirit and energy. This begs the question were they just putting on a brave face, do they have an inner core

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Project: The Next SNP. Deadline: Post-2026 Election Gerry Hassan Sunday National, 25 August 2024 The SNP meets next weekend in Edinburgh in a state of transition which marks the end of one political era - that of SNP dominance - and the beginning of a new era. The SNP is experiencing a mix of emotions in having to navigate a very different political environment from the one that it has become used to since 2007. It has experienced election defeat, political turbulence - and a crisis of party, government and independence. The SNP used to have a positive narrative and

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Are we witnessing the Strange Death of Nationalist Scotland? Gerry Hassan New Statesman, 29 July 2024 Twelve years ago, I co-wrote The Strange Death of Labour Scotland – a historical account of how Labour’s dominance of Scotland ended. At the first public event held to discuss the book, the land reform campaigner Andy Wightman commented rather prophetically that “in a decade you will be writing the follow-up - “The Strange Death of Nationalist Scotland”. And so, it has come to pass. In the 2024 election, Labour swept back from near-extinction in 2015 to take 37 seats, reducing the SNP to

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Three Futures of Scotland Gerry Hassan Sunday National, 28 July 2024 Understand the present and shaping the future depends on understanding the past. Sometimes difficult through the noise, smog and smirr, but during disruption and change it is more necessary than ever. The major shifts experienced by Scotland over the past 25 years - the establishment of the Parliament following the emphatic victory for self-government in the 1997 referendum; the SNP’s coming to office in 2007; followed by the 2014 indyref bringing the idea of independence centrestage and into the mainstream, where it has remained since – are seismic. Yet

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Can a New SNP emerge which speaks a new story of Scotland? Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 17 July 2024 The scale of SNP defeat should not have taken anyone by surprise. It has been a long time coming, and is a long way down from Peak Nat. But it still shocked many, whilst others too sensitive have looked away from the resulting carnage. This is what happens when parties experience defeat. Unity goes. The sense of shared purpose and direction diverges. And unless the SNP wake up, they could still fall much further. In particular, the 2026 Scottish elections now

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Anatomy of a Loveless Landside Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 12 July 2024 One week ago the UK underwent a quiet kind of revolution. We drew the curtain on years of Tory chaos and psychodrama. A Labour Government was elected with a large overall majority; the Tories won their lowest ever vote in their history; the SNP suffered a significant reverse; while the Lib Dems, Reform and Greens increased their representation and votes. The UK election was an expression of multi-party politics in voting. It was a very European-style result with five GB-wide parties competing besides SNP and Plaid, along with

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Barbarism Begins at Home Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 2 July 2024 Across the West politics are fractured, divisive, and raise more questions than answers. Biden vs. Trump; the authoritarian US Supreme Court extending Trump’s Presidential immunity; the march of the far-right in the French legislative assembly elections; the UK election and emptiness of the mainstream – a trend reflected by Andrew Hindmoor in Haywire: A Political History of Britain since 2000 as ‘the growth of modern miserabilism’ and as evidence that ‘the country is in decline and everything is getting worse.’ Everywhere the forces of the populist right are either

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