Scottish politics

What do we do when we talk (and don’t talk) about Power? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, April 9th 2013 The story of modern Scotland is an obvious one: we are a nation and a community, increasingly defined by these two terms and from this comes our sense of difference and identity. Beyond that it begins to get complicated and contested; our prevailing account of ourselves is that we are centre-left, egalitarian, inclusive and radical, and the missing word in front of each of these is more; meaning more than England, which for many is the crucial ingredient. All of

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We may be anti-Tory but the ideas of conservatism are everywhere Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 6th 2013 Two laments have been constant in Scotland in the last decade. One is that our politics are not what they used to be; while another is that our media isn’t up to the task it once was (along with that our football is going down the pan!). This yearning for the past and an unspecified ‘golden era’ in public life which never was has become a sort of national pastime. It is wrong, dangerous and debilitating, and the reasons for so

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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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Mind the Gap: Gender and the Debate over Scotland’s Future Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, March 29th 2013 The debate over Scottish independence, its constitutional status and wider future, is an important one, both north of the border and across the isles of the UK.  It is also one which elicits as much sound and fury as it does reflection, as well as a significant amount of adversarial, tribal, binary posturing and point-scoring. In the last week a Panelbase poll found on the question to be used in next year’s referendum, ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’, 36% supporting independence

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The Scottish Press, Generation Gridlock and Living with Crony Capitalism Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, March 21st 2013 The Scottish media and press are not exactly in a healthy state; facing pressures and constrictions from every angle, from the expectations and demands of an independence referendum, to disappearing audiences and revenues. This is the backdrop to Leveson, the Scottish ‘expert’ response (the McCluskey report), and the debate so far. Twenty years ago, the atmosphere was completely different, filled with the air of self-congratulation and smugness of everything being labeled ‘Scottish’ and the press defined by ‘Real Scots Read the

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From ‘Generation Self’ to ‘the Saltire Generation’ Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 16th 2013 Scotland is to embrace giving 16-17 year olds the vote in next year’s independence referendum. This is a powerful statement of intent of Scotland wanting to do something different, and enfranchise young people in the debate on Scotland’s future. Yet it leaves important questions unanswered. How different are young people from the rest of society? What political motivations dominate a generation who grew up as children after Scotland last qualified for an international football tournament – the World Cup of 1998? And more seriously, who began

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The Beginning of the End of ‘the Global Kingdom’ Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 9th 2013 This week something momentous happened for the future of the Britain, its economy and politics, for Europe, and our relationship with the continent. The European Union proposed and agreed a curb on bankers bonuses, over-riding the predictable opposition of the UK Government and George Osborne. The EU proposals supported by the European Commission, European Central Bank, and 26 out of 27 EU members, will put a ceiling on banker bonuses of one year’s salary, or two years if approved by a large majority

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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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The Mantras of Professional Scotland are Part of the Problem Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, February 23rd 2013 Social justice is in the air. This week there was Anas Sarwar’s speech on Monday; by the close of the week there was ‘Yes Scotland’s’ mini-summit and its response to the STUC’s ‘A Just Scotland’ document. In-between we have had another litany of grim statistics telling the familiar story: of the inequality, poverty and exclusion in Glasgow and parts of the West of Scotland. And the now well-trodden path of politicians and public sector professionals saying they have learned from the past and

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Do we want to tell a story of Scotland’s ‘Good Society’? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, February 9th 2013 ‘We are all social democrats now’, Scots politicians might say – Salmond, Lamont, Rennie, even the occasional Tory seeking redemption. Scotland is a land imbued and shaped by social democracy, but which has spent little time or energy in defining this in terms of its philosophy, values and practice. And increasingly this matters. To Labour, social democracy has always been what it says it does from the local Labour council to Labour in government. To the SNP a catch-all populist party, social

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