The Wider Syria Debate: Challenging Britain’s ‘Empire of the Mind’ Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, December 6th 2015 Britain is off to war again. The parliamentary debate did not live up to the billing. Cameron and Corbyn underperformed. Hilary Benn stole the show and headlines. Great rhetorical moment this was not. This wasn’t of the quality of 1939 and the outbreak of World War Two, 1940 and the resignation of Chamberlain as PM, Suez and Anthony Eden comparing the Egyptian leader Nasser to Hitler and Mussolini, or even more recently, the Falklands war, when at the outset Margaret Thatcher’s political

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The Tories are shrinking the state while Labour go back to the 1980s Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 29th 2015 These are tumultuous times. Chaos in Syria. Complex and shifting alliances. The Turks shooting down a Russian plane. There is disarray in the Labour Party on Syria and Trident. And all in the week of George Osborne’s Autumn Statement on public spending. The Tories appear dominant in British politics only six months after they won their surprising majority: based on 24.3% of electors and a narrow parliamentary majority of 12 seats. Osborne cleverly positioned himself retreating from his own unpopular

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The SNP need to get back to governing – and being bold and honest with us Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 22nd 2015 Nicola Sturgeon this week marked her first year as First Minister. The SNP is hugely popular, Labour flatlining, the Tories marginalised and the Lib Dems irrelevant. The SNP-Labour relationship now seems a reverse of the 1980s. Then Labour sat for most of the decade on 50% in the polls with the SNP on 20% or less. Labour then was Scotland’s party; that mantle has now fallen to the SNP. No one is quite sure how we

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The European Debate has only just begun for Scotland and the UK Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 15th 2015 Europe has returned to the centre of British politics. The phony war within the Tories is over as David Cameron revealed his want list from European leaders. It wasn’t exactly long or substantial. He wants change in four areas - exempting the UK from ‘ever closer union’, boosting economic competitiveness, protection of the non-euro countries from further integration, and restrictions on EU migrants drawing UK benefits. These requests are not far-reaching, leading Tory MP Bernard Jenkin to ask ‘is that it?’

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If Independence is a State of Mind then we have to fundamentally change Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 8th 2015 Years ago the dream was that the Scottish Parliament would usher in a new politics. It was going to be different from adversarial Westminster – consensual, caring, thoughtful, leading to better debates and laws. Much of this was wish-fulfillment. There has always been mutual scorn between Labour and SNP – aided by the fetishisation of tiny differences, given they agree on so much. But in recent years all of this seems to have got worse. And the last week in

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Will the Real Scottish Labour Party Finally Stand Up? Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 1st 2015 Scottish Labour met this weekend. This used to be the key political gathering in Scotland. No longer. But the party is in better spirits than many would think after the May 2015 wipeout. It is a party changing. It has a new leader. Lots of new members. And more autonomy after a ‘concordat’ was signed last Monday with British leader Jeremy Corbyn. The party hopes that the tide is turning against the SNP and that its Teflon quality and Sturgeonmania have finally

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‘English Votes’ is political vandalism and fundamentally changes Britain Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, October 25th 2015 This week the United Kingdom profoundly changed in how it does politics, democracy and how Parliament operates. The House of Commons decided by 312 to 270 voters to alter the nature of its composition by differentiating the voting rights of MPs through introducing English votes for English laws. Meaning that – for English-only matters and legislation - Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs will be excluded from a new ‘grand committee’ stage of the bill – which effectively replaces the substantive second reading

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The SNP cannot afford to become the Party of the Status Quo Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, October 18th 2015 The SNP is understandably in good spirit. This is the sort of times that politicians dream of. In the aftermath of the indyref, the SNP has gone from strength to strength, winning 56 out of 59 Westminster seats in May, and looking certain to retain and even strengthen their parliamentary majority at Holyrood next year. Despite this the SNP leadership feels it has to negotiate a careful line. First, talk about a second indyref has been effectively banned in public. Even

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The Appeal and Vision of Tory Britain shouldn’t be underestimated by the left Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, October 11th 2015 The Tory conference gathered this week in good spirits after unexpectedly winning an overall majority in May, and with all their main UK political opponents in disarray. One rather significant anniversary passed unnoticed this week. This was the 65^th anniversary - the day after Cameron’s speech - of Harold Macmillan’s ‘you’ve never had it so good’ election victory in 1959 when the Tories won a third term and overall majority of 100 seats. Britain and Scotland have changed dramatically

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‘Nationalism alone is not enough’ as the SNP finally shows it is mortal Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, October 4th 2015 After eight years of defying the laws of political gravity, the normal rules of politics are back. The SNP are, like everyone else, mortal. Michelle Thomson, newly elected SNP MP for Edinburgh West, has built a £1.7m property portfolio with her husband through buying properties at knock down prices from vulnerable people. Her solicitor, Christopher Hales, who undertook the conveyancing work on 13 properties was struck off last year by the Scottish Solicitors’ Discipline Tribunal. Whatever the legality of

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