Anatomy of a Loveless Landslide: Labour’s Victory, the Nature of Britain and Post-Democracy
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
Barbarism Begins at Home: The Continuing Great Moving Right Show and War on Democracy
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
How not to do radicalism: The hold of capital-ism on Labour’s left from Benn to Corbyn
The Searchers: Andy Beckett, Allen Lane £30. Review by Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 14 June 2024 This book covers the rise and fall, and rise again and subsequent fall, of the Labour left over a period of over fifty years - from the late 1960s to the present. Andy Beckett locates such an epic canvas through telling the story of five connected individuals - Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott. Such an approach aims to make this more human and relatable. However, this is a questionable conceit, as it assumes a major thread connecting all
UK Election 2024: The emptiness of the mainstream, punishment elections and ghost parties
UK Election 2024: The emptiness of the mainstream, punishment elections and ghost parties Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 11 June 2024 The UK is experiencing a turbulent, messy, argumentative election contest. One where the main players and institutions seem unsure of themselves; their place in the world; their relevance - and moreover their ability to govern and present policies and ideas. Whatever the final election result it looks certain that the Labour Party will be elected with a sizeable majority. The Conservatives will be decisively rejected, the right split by the rise of Farage’s Reform; while in Scotland the dominant governing
The Art of Growing Up: The SNP after Sturgeon, Independence and the Power of Light
The Art of Growing Up Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 14 May 2024 Sunday was the 25th anniversary of the Scottish Parliament’s opening day in 1999; and the 30th of the tragic death of Labour leader John Smith - two totemic moments which changed political realities and with implications to this day. The Scottish Parliament opened with its most senior member, Winnie Ewing, declaring: ‘The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened’, an expression of a nationalist narrative. The political void left by John Smith’s death produced the election of Tony Blair
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Walls come tumbling down: The SNP crisis and the state of Scottish politics and independence
Walls come tumbling down Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 1 May 2024 The events of the past few days have caught many off-guard. Humza Yousaf‘s abrupt termination of the agreement with the Greens, their resultant fury and desire for revenge, with the inevitable resignation of Yousaf as it became obvious that he could not win a vote of confidence without paying a high price to Alba and Alex Salmond. All political parties, parliaments and political systems have crises. They are the life and blood of politics. They are revealing, tell us much about what the main players (whether parties or individuals)
Twenty-five years of the Scottish Parliament and the need for a new story
Twenty-five years of the Scottish Parliament and the need for a new story Gerry Hassan Sunday National, 28 April 2024 The past few days have seen Scottish politics shaken to the core. Humza Yousaf terminated the SNP-Green Bute House Agreement bringing the prospect of a vote of no confidence. This could end his Premiership and SNP rule, and even result in a special Holyrood election before the coming Westminster contest. In such a febrile atmosphere no one could be sure how voters would act in a surprise poll, or who they might blame for calling it! Politics in Scotland hasn’t
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What Scotland’s big independence debate is about and should be about
What Scotland’s big independence debate is about and should be about Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 15 June 2022 Nicola Sturgeon has fired the gun on Scotland’s independence debate, standing in Bute House yesterday with Patrick Harvie, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, launching the first of several papers on independence. This has brought forth the usual and predictable claims and counter-claims. SNP, Green and independence supporters are excited and hopeful; Labour, Tories and Lib Dems along with pro-union advocates of no party are filled with scorn and fury that anyone would want to progress independence in such times of upheaval and
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The rise, fall and rise of party and movement and the changing idea of Scotland
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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My Musical Highlights of the Year
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
