Ireland

The death of British conservatism as we have known it Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, September 11th 2019 British conservatism has been one of the most successful political philosophies and political parties the world has ever known. As we speak it is engaged in the latter stages of its thirty year civil war on Europe, which has convulsed the party, bringing it to a state of near self-destruction, abandoning its traditional tenets and debasing constitutional norms that for most of its history have been its raison d’etre. Whatever happens on Brexit in the next few months and years, much will have

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What would Power to the People really look like? And are our politicians ready to let go? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, June 6th 2018 The people are continually cited and invoked everywhere in democracies. Not only that but this is the age of directly asking the population via referendums – such is the disdain mainstream politicians are held in. None of this is surprising. Politicians or most politicians talk a strange, discombobulated, evasive, managerialist language. They show in nearly everything they say and do that they are not to be trusted. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson – he of supposed

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The Ireland Question is not just about Ireland, but a selective view of Britain Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, November 29th 2017 Brexit has become a constitutional and political clusterfuck - a rolling embarrassment for Britain in a show that is set to run officially at least until 11pm on 29 March 2019, and in all probability for years after. It is a crash between a right-wing Fantasyland version of Britain (witness Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and Jacob Rees-Mogg) and at the margins, a left-wing British exceptionalist story led by Corbyn which hopes, by keeping quiet, to pick up the pieces,

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The Art of Living Together and the Art of Dying Gerry Hassan National Collective, January 22nd 2014 Sometimes it takes outside voices to reinforce what you already know. So it was with Fintan O’Toole and the second in the series of Glasgow School of Art-University of the West of Scotland ‘Cultures of Independence’ seminars. O’Toole is author of the acclaimed books, ‘Ship of Fools’ and ‘Enough is Enough’ (1), both wonderful and powerful counter blasts to the baloney and bubble of the Celtic Tiger and its excesses. He is of no doubt that Scotland is at a hugely important

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A New Scottish Democracy: A Small Nation with Big Ideas Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, January 5th 2013 The Scottish experience like most places is filled with myths and delusions about who we are and what it says about us. Unlike other places, Scotland also seems to have a deep-seated conservatism, lack of curiosity in others, and a profound insularity which sees Scotland as exceptional and unique. This spreads across the political spectrum, from complacent social democrats to safety-first nationalists and unionists who never acknowledge that in the last two decades 24 new nation states have emerged from the end of

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