It is not just Boris Johnson that is the problem but Toryism and the British State Gerry Hassan The National, 25 January 2022 Boris Johnson’s Premiership is in tatters, he is discredited as a person and politician, and his tenure is coming to a predictable, messy end. The only question is timing. Already lots of once true believers in Johnson are trying out unconvincing lines like “let’s look at the big picture, and all the right calls the Prime Minister has made” which is delusional and an insult to voters. Others try to be subtler, distancing themselves from the PM,

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Time for a Genuine Tartan Tory Party! Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 19 January 2022 The Scottish Tories have had a shoogly past week. Douglas Ross, Scottish Tory leader, dared to put his head above the parapet and say the unthinkable - that Boris Johnson was long past his sell-by-date and should for once do the decent thing and resign. He was subsequently followed by the entire group of Tory MSPs at Holyrood; while former Scots Tory leader Ruth Davidson was even more indignant and incandescent with fury. This was met by Jacob Rees-Mogg calling Douglas Ross ‘a lightweight’ and even

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“Scotland deserves better than this": the broken UK constitution Gerry Hassan The National, 18 January 2022 The reputation of the UK PM is in tatters; UK Government is in chaos, denial and vengeful; Toryism has become toxic again and the stories of Boris Johnson’s misdeeds and blatant lies have become the object of anger, indignation and satire. A backdrop to all this is that what passes for the British constitution is literally falling apart – buckling under the pressure of a government and individuals who don’t accept the rules and think they can gather unchecked power to themselves. There are

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Novak Djokovic, the Celebrity Class and the End of News Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 12 January 2022 The start of the new year brings the prospect of fresh perspectives but not it seems in the world of mainstream news. Across nearly all news outlets, and in particular TV and radio broadcasters, the main story for the past week globally has not been the Trump insurrection anniversary and US democracy hanging in the balance, or the Russian invasion and violence in Kazakhstan. It has not even been the ongoing domestic scandal of UK PM Boris Johnson’s continued evasions and refusal to

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Is this an elegy for the end of Britain? Gerry Hassan The National, 11 January 2022 The UK is in serious crisis – a malaise that affects its politics, political elite, system, and the ethos and practices by which they govern, act and think. That much is obvious to anyone studying the descent of Britain. But what is rare is for this to be spoken about openly and candidly, clearly directed at those who have produced this sorry mess. Tom McTague’s essay in The Atlantic magazine, “How Britain Falls Apart?” last week showed insight and honesty along with a

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The rise, fall and rise of party and movement and the changing idea of Scotland Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 7 January 2022 Review of The National Movement in Scotland, Jack Brand, Routledge The SNP have been in existence for a long time and a serious electoral force since the 1960s. But at the same time there have been few studies of the party that have contextualised it within the wider nationalist movement and the changing nature of Scotland, and that have attempted to analyse and understand the dynamics of this relationship. The National Movement in Scotland by the late Jack

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The Queen’s Jubilee is the time to have a debate about Britain’s atrophied democracy Gerry Hassan The National, 4 January 2022 The monarchy goes to the heart of what the UK is and what it is to be British. It is strange then that most discussions try to avoid the implications and consequences that flow from the power, influence, status and role in public life of the monarchy. All of this will come to a head in 2022 with the Platinum Jubilee – marking the 70^th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth on the throne – on 6 February; then celebrated in

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Scotland needs to learn the lessons of how we defeated Margaret Thatcher Gerry Hassan The National, 28 December 2021 Margaret Thatcher looms large in the history of modern Scotland. Her minority rule of Scotland, her dogma and indifference to hardship and suffering, her English nationalism wrapped in the flag of the Union Jack: all this and more irritated an overwhelming majority of Scots. She did change history here, although not in ways she intended. She underlined that the old union of compromise was broken; she weakened the strength of the unionist case; and she was a handmaiden in creating the

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Life after Boris Johnson: The Tories, “Freedom” and the rise of authoritarianism Gerry Hassan The National, 21 December 2021 For many on the left and pro-independence describing Toryism is simple - it is callous, lacks compassion and is about a brutal class politics looking after its own and shafting others. Yet understanding your opponents is key to successful politics, a point that Kennedy and LBJ’s Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara observed in The Fog of War documentary saying you should “never dehumanise your opponents.” That said British Toryism is in an advance stage of degeneration, distortion and bitter division. This

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My Musical Highlights of the Year Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 17 December 2021 This year in music does seem to have been incredibly long, with what I was grooving to at the start of the year seems eons ago. Part due to COVID and the lack of live music, and part it being a year of two halves - one in Glasgow, one in Kirkcudbright – with the resulting upheaval of moving a lifetime’s worth of music. Without further ado, here are my best new albums of the year, best reissues and older albums that I have turned to for

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