Alex Salmond

An Open Letter to the SNP Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, May 15th 2016 Congratulations on last week’s historic third term. It was well deserved. The party has rightly established a reputation for competence. Nicola Sturgeon is popular and liked; none of the opposition come near. The SNP has contributed enormously to public life. It is seen as standing up for Scotland’s interests and after decades of Labour cronyism has been a new broom. This is probably as good as it gets. For the good of the country, the party and independence, it needs to understand the nature of its

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Time for an Independence of the Scottish Mind Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, August 9th 2015 A second independence may be off the agenda of SNP conference for now, but Alex Salmond regards it as ‘inevitable’. Such are the pressures and tensions of success. Where do you take a movement which came close to winning independence last September? How do you balance pragmatic and idealist hopes? What do you after the SNP ‘tartan tsunami’ of May this year which carried nearly all before it – and, when your opponents are so weak and disorientated? There is talk in places of a

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The SNP Ascendancy is changing Scotland and the SNP Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, June 14th 2015 The Scottish sun is out, and summer is approaching. This is true not just of the weather but reflects the mood of the SNP, their popularity, and especially that of leader Nicola Sturgeon. In the last week a TNS opinion poll for next year’s Scottish Parliament election put the SNP on 60% and Labour 19% in the constituency vote - a historic all-time high and low respectively. This would give the SNP a second overall majority and more seats than it won in its

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What kind of Scotland does Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP want? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, November 12th 2014 Scotland and Scottish politics are in unchartered waters. The post-indyref has shaken and rearranged the normal reference points: SNP membership has gone through the roof, while the Labour ‘winners’ have laid claim to putting on a paltry 1,000 members. Amid all the noise and debate, there is in the confusion, an eerie lack of substantive discussion, as people try to find their way. In the Labour Party a clutch of left-wingers believe that their core problem is the party’s embrace north

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We are One Scotland: Anatomy of a Referendum Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, September 24th 2014 It was a momentous moment in Scottish and British history. The Scottish independence referendum. It dominated Scottish and British airwaves in the last couple of weeks, and became a huge international story. Nearly every single cliché has been dug up, used and then over-used to exhaustion. What then as the excitement, claim and counter-claim quieten down, is there left to say and do? Actually, there is quite a lot. Let’s talk about the immediate reactions post-vote from the Scottish and British political classes. They both

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Britain is on Borrowed Time: The Future of Scottish Independence Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, September 19th 2014 Scotland voted No to independence. In answer to the question, ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’, 1,617,989 voted Yes (44.7%) and 2,001,926 voted No (55.3%) in a massively impressive turnout of 84.6%: the highest ever anywhere in the UK in post-war times. The result, and campaign, will be rightly mulled over and analysed for years, but in the fast moving aftermath it is important to lay down some thoughts and calm-headed thinking. Scotland has changed and shifted in how it sees itself

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A Hopeful Guide to Scotland Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, September 17th 2014 This week, depending on the building US-UK government clamour for more military action in Iraq, Scotland will be the biggest story on the planet. News crews and journalists from all over the world are covering this. Glasgow and Edinburgh hotels are enjoying an unexpected bonanza with high occupancy rates. For at least one week, James Robertson’s famous dictum about ‘The News Where You Are’ will be met by the shock that for a short while, ‘The News Where We Are’ will be the same! It has,

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The Power and Absence of Doubt in the Nationalist Independence Cause Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 13th 2014 It has not been a great week for the independence cause and for the SNP. This has been made worse by the self-denial and delusion expressed by a host of independence supporters including parts of the commentariat, the SNP and on-line opinion. The SNP’s position on currency union, along with EU membership, has for ages been the weak flank of their entire proposition. Thus, it should have been no surprise to anyone when Alistair Darling basically mugged Salmond on the former in

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The Battle for Britain and Why Alex Salmond and Independence Has Already Won Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, February 7th 2014 This year is witnessing several battles for Britain – of numerous anniversaries of past military triumphs, of the Scottish independence referendum, and the rising tide of the Tory Party’s continued obsession with Europe. All of these are inter-related in the long-term, almost existential, crisis of what Britain is, what is it for, what kind of society and values it represents, and what kind of future it offers its people. This tumultuous moment we now find ourselves in is one with

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The Limits of Labour and Nationalist Scotland Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 20th 2013 The Scotland of the present is a product of how we understand our past; and the past is always been made, remade and contested. It is not then too surprising that in recent weeks Labour figures such as Brian Wilson and Maria Fyfe in this paper have laid into what they have seen as the over-promotion of the Nationalist tradition – with both criticising visitScotland for profiling Robert McIntyre’s election as SNP MP for Motherwell in 1945. What people like Wilson and others are asserting is

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