Can Ed Miliband’s Labour Challenge the Westminster Consensus? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 27th 2013 Ed Miliband does not have to seek out his troubles and much of it seems to come from his own side rather than from opponents. This week Len McCluskey, head of Unite laid into Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander claiming that if Miliband listened to them, ‘he’ll be defeated’ and ‘cast into the dustbin of history’. Worse, George Galloway endorsed Miliband for PM, just the sort of thing to scare off marginal voters. Labour’s poll ratings are on average 9% ahead of the Tories producing

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Seven Suggestions for Scottish Labour to be the Party of Change Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 20th 2013 It seems to be the age of seven questions as Tony Blair once again acts as an uncomfortable sage for Labour and Ed Miliband. With Labour meeting in Inverness this weekend and the party’s Devolution Commission interim report out, it is time for Scottish Labour to assess where it is and what it needs to do to change and to start shaping the political weather. Here then are my seven observations and suggestions for you Johann: 1. Careless Talk Costs Political Lives

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The Fall of BBC’s  ‘Sportscene’ and Why It Matters Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, April 18th 2013 Scottish football matters to lots of us. Its images and halcyon images define many of our lives - the Lisbon Lions in 67, Rangers in Barcelona in 72, Aberdeen in Gothenburg in 83, the Jim Baxter keepie-up and the Archie Gemmell run. When you think of English football one of the many images that might spring to mind is ‘Match of the Day’ and this may include its current opening credits. You would not say the same of the current BBC Scotland version of

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On Living in an Old Country: The Power of the Past after Thatcher Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 15th 2013 The last week has effectively been an elegy on Britain’s recent past and present rolled into one. This is not just about Thatcher, but the numerous references to the Churchill and Attlee funerals and how we marked these past titans. Is this who we really were, we ask with curiosity? Are we still that same people who dreamed dreams, stood alone against the Nazis, and built a welfare state, we ask, with a hint of anxiety? Britain seems increasingly a

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Games with Shadows: Living in Thatcher’s Scotland Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, April 10th 2013 We live in Thatcher’s Britain, yet that statement is obvious, contentious and deeply divisive. And this is all the more true of Thatcher north of the border. Thatcher is simultaneously both history and present day. You can hear this in the differing accounts on TV and radio; with conservative figures claiming she remade the modern world from knocking down the Berlin Wall and freeing Eastern Europe, to preventing a future ‘socialist Britain’; while elements of the left wail in pain and agony at how events have

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What do we do when we talk (and don’t talk) about Power? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, April 9th 2013 The story of modern Scotland is an obvious one: we are a nation and a community, increasingly defined by these two terms and from this comes our sense of difference and identity. Beyond that it begins to get complicated and contested; our prevailing account of ourselves is that we are centre-left, egalitarian, inclusive and radical, and the missing word in front of each of these is more; meaning more than England, which for many is the crucial ingredient. All of

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We may be anti-Tory but the ideas of conservatism are everywhere Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 6th 2013 Two laments have been constant in Scotland in the last decade. One is that our politics are not what they used to be; while another is that our media isn’t up to the task it once was (along with that our football is going down the pan!). This yearning for the past and an unspecified ‘golden era’ in public life which never was has become a sort of national pastime. It is wrong, dangerous and debilitating, and the reasons for so

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Four Nations and a Funeral: The Demise of the British Welfare State Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 30th 2013 The British welfare state is meant to be one of the ties that bind us together; along with the NHS and the BBC representing our common strands of citizenship. Each has been remarkably eroded in recent years but on Monday April 1^st huge changes will occur in the first two - the welfare state and NHS in England – which will have massive consequences for hundreds of thousands of people up and down this country already hard pressed and vulnerable, and

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Mind the Gap: Gender and the Debate over Scotland’s Future Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, March 29th 2013 The debate over Scottish independence, its constitutional status and wider future, is an important one, both north of the border and across the isles of the UK.  It is also one which elicits as much sound and fury as it does reflection, as well as a significant amount of adversarial, tribal, binary posturing and point-scoring. In the last week a Panelbase poll found on the question to be used in next year’s referendum, ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’, 36% supporting independence

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Let us recognise that we are One Scotland: The Vision of Self-Government Gerry Hassan The big day was finally announced. It was, when it came, an emotional moment and I will admit I had a tear in my eye but then I am a bit of a quiet sentimentalist, aided by it all occurring on my birthday. There has been a long journey to get to this point; but it is about us as a nation, what we aspire to, how we see our future, our values, and importantly, how we get on with each other even when we politically

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