One Year on from the IndyRef: Making the Scotland of the Future
One Year on from the IndyRef: Making the Scotland of the Future Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, September 2nd 2015 Scottish public life has dramatically changed in recent times – the SNP 2011 first landslide, the independence referendum, and the 2015 tartan tsunami. Yet Scotland, like everywhere, is about more than politics. In this and other areas there have been huge changes, but also continuity and conservatism, the balance of which we are still trying to make sense of, and with huge consequences for the future of Scotland and the UK. Take the indyref. It didn’t come from nowhere. It came
Continue Reading One Year on from the IndyRef: Making the Scotland of the Future
The Myth of ‘Divided Scotland’
The Myth of 'Divided Scotland' Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, July 16th 2014 One of the most oft-repeated descriptions of Scotland at the moment in the heat of the independence referendum is the problem of ‘divided Scotland’. A Yes victory will leave a ‘deeply divided Scotland’ claimed Better Together chief Blair McDougall (Better Together, June 8th 2014), while a pro-independence website declared in response, ‘A deeply divided Scotland will be the result of a No vote’ (Arc of Prosperity, June 9th 2014). Much cited recent polling shows that 38% of Scots believe divisions will remain whatever the referendum outcome, while 36%
