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Scottish politics

The Challenge of Success for Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP

November 17, 2014
The Challenge of Success for Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 16th 2014 The SNP are in good spirits with new leader Nicola Sturgeon describing the party as having ‘the wind in its sails’. The party might have been on the losing side of the recent independence referendum, but is riding high in the polls for Westminster next year and the Scottish Parliament elections the following year, with party membership sitting now at 85,000 and rising. This is the party that Nicola Sturgeon inherits from Alex Salmond this weekend. ‘The country has changed, and changed utterly’ claimed

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What kind of Scotland does Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP want?

November 13, 2014
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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Time Travel: the Parallel Universe of Post-ref Scotland and the Voice of Doubt

November 6, 2014
Time Travel: the Parallel Universe of Post-ref Scotland and the Voice of Doubt Gerry Hassan Twenty five years ago this coming Sunday an event occurred which changed our lives and is still shaping much of the modern world: the fall of the Berlin Wall. This brought about the demise of the Soviet bloc, the end of the Yalta settlement which had divided Europe from 1945, the unification of Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it, its monolithic variant of Communism and any aspirations it had to making and being the future. Much of the last 25

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Does Scottish Labour Really Want to Change?

November 3, 2014
Does Scottish Labour Really Want to Change? Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 2nd 2014 What is the point of Scottish Labour? Apart from providing good copy, entertainment and stories of endless political infighting and gossip. This is the question Labour’s three declared candidates need to answer: Jim Murphy, MP, and Sarah Boyack and Neil Findlay, both MSPs. And after the resignation of Johann Lamont and Anas Sarwar as leader and deputy, the party now faces the challenge of electing an entire new leadership team. Will the party wake up and smell the scent of decay which surrounds it? It

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Scottish Labour: The Never-ending Soap Opera That Matters

October 30, 2014
Scottish Labour: The Never-ending Soap Opera That Matters Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 29th 2014 Scottish Labour loves talking about itself.  The evidence for this is everywhere in the last few days, in print media, TV and radio studios, and social media. Organisations which have lost their way, which are in decline and crisis, often do this as a displacement activity. Think of the Tories ‘banging on’ about Europe, or the BBC post-Savile. Such behaviour is never a good sign. It makes people think their internal obsessions are important, and that the minutiae of such debates matter to the

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Is Social Justice Really What Defines Modern Scotland?

October 9, 2014
Is Social Justice Really What Defines Modern Scotland? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 8th 2014 There are many Scotlands and there are many realities, lives and experiences which do not find favour or voice in prevailing public descriptions. Many of our dominant versions give centrestage to politics, which isn’t all there is to life anywhere. Think of Yes and No, unionism and nationalism, left and right, Labour and SNP, Tory and anti-Tory. These are all politically restrictive labels in which some see themselves, and that define others who are different to them. How much of Scotland do these terms capture

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After the Spirit of 2014

October 2, 2014
After the Spirit of 2014 Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 1st 2014 It is now coming up for two weeks tomorrow since Scotland’s independence referendum. The world moves on. The UK media’s attention has switched back to its usual tropes: Westminster parlour games and internal Tory and Labour machinations. The UK Parliament was recalled, not as some expected it would be, to deal with the backwater of a Scottish Yes vote to independence, but the predictable act of the UK providing cover for US lead action, yet again, in Iraq. There was dignity and solemnity in the Commons debate, showing

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We are One Scotland: Anatomy of a Referendum

September 25, 2014
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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Why Scotland has finally woken up and become a democracy

September 21, 2014
Why Scotland has finally woken up and become a democracy Gerry Hassan September 21st 2014 It has been an incredible few years to live in Scotland. Assumption after assumption about public life, society and the closed order of how politics has been traditionally done, has been turned upside down. People will still feel raw on either side. Yes people feel deflated and disappointed; No supporters sense that they were forced into a debate they didn’t want to have. But if we step back the bigger picture is an impressive and powerful one. It is one many of the observers from

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Britain is on Borrowed Time: The Future of Scottish Independence

September 19, 2014
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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Gerry Hassan is a writer, commentator and thinker about Scotland, the UK, politics and ideas.

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