British politics

Britain has become an Unequal and Unfair Society Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 13th 2013 Britain has been mired by scandal this week: MPs proposed pay rise, BBC Executive payouts, and the controversy of G4S and Serco engaging in corporate abuse of power. Yet through all this people tell themselves that one of the central characteristics of being a civilised country is progressive taxation and the degree to which we successfully redistribute resources from those who have the most to those who have the least. This week the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures which showed what many have

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Living on an Island: Scotland and the London Question Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 29th 2013 May 2015: Boris Johnson wins the UK general election and declares London de facto independent from the rest of the UK, stating that it will from now on keep the taxes it raises and spend most of the money it needs itself. Rewind to today. On a regular basis plaintive pro-union voices can be heard asking when Scotland’s constitutional debate will ever end. The answer is that it won’t, because it will never fully reach a final destination. That is because a large part

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British social democracy is dying a slow death Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 8th 2013   Ed Miliband and Labour have been busy this week making policy announcements, marking out political terrain, and in the eyes of opponents, making unprincipled U-turns. Labour has announced it will not reverse the end of winter fuel payments for wealthy pensioners and child benefit for top rate taxpayers, as well as imposing an overall ‘cap’ on welfare spending for the first three years of a future Labour Government. There are short-term factors at work. Labour are increasingly keen to reposition itself and challenge the

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Nigel Farage, the Scottish Debate and the Future of Europe Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, May 19th 2013 This is an age of uncertainty, crisis and doubt. The UK is experiencing multiple crises: political, constitutional and economic, of the UK in Europe and of Europe itself as an idea and project. And underneath all of this is a deep-seated Western fear, of loss of confidence in Western modernity and anxiety about the future. The lack of sureness now being displayed in Britain’s political elites is one manifestation, as is the rise of Nigel Farage’s UKIP. The Westminster village has been

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What Difference Does It Make? Making Explicit the Change of Independence Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, May 4th 2013 It has been another fast-moving week in Scotland’s constitutional conversation even leaving the comedy controversies aside. There was Denis Canavan, chair of ‘Yes Scotland’, distancing himself from SNP policy in suggesting Scotland that should have its own currency; while the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee made the startling observation that independence will involve shaking things up for the UK. Then there was Alex Salmond’s announcement that an independent Scotland would not have a central bank. This is part of the

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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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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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The UKIP Policy Nigel Farage Doesn’t Want to Talk About Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, March 8th 2013 UKIP are suddenly everywhere in the aftermath of their second place and 28% in the Eastleigh by-election. Nigel Farage, their irascible leader, is even more omnipotent with even more appearances on BBC ‘Question Time’ to look forward too. North of the border UKIP have always had a perception, identity and popularity problem. They are widely seen as an English nationalist party, one whose idea of Britain is narrowly centred on a time when the two terms could be used interchangeably. It is a

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Talking about the Elephant in the Room: The British State Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, January 12th 2012 ‘The Great Debate’ is away to begin. More than a year and a half of sound and fury and already tanks and troops are being mobilised and on maneouvres on both sides. There is one massive elephant in the room which nearly always goes unstated and unacknowledged, namely, the reality of the British state. For different reasons, both pro-independence and anti-independence supporters refuse to engage with the complexities and challenges of this. Pro-independence supporters do this continuously. Irvine Welsh in a piece this

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Time to have an equality for all citizens Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 15th 2012 The issue of same sex marriage has become a major political controversy both sides of the border. Both the Scottish and UK Governments are planning to legislate and at the same time try to balance freedom and equality of sexual orientation with freedom of religious expression. There are huge differences between Scotland and England and Wales. The Cameron Government once viewed same sex marriage as an easy way of proving its liberal modernising credentials, but now finds itself enmeshed in bitter Tory wars. They

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