Scottish politics

The ‘Three Scotlands’ and How to Win an Independence Referendum Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, January 4th 2012 Scottish politics post-the election and the return of a majority SNP Government have existed in a seeming state of limbo, a kind of political phoney war. The SNP have won a landslide victory but have yet to produce a serious strategy for winning independence; the unionist parties in Scotland have all been reduced to an existential crisis about defining their purpose and point; while David Cameron’s government (if it ever thinks about Scotland) is of the view that the break up of the

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How to Play Political Poker: The High Stakes of the Independence Debate Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 31st 2011 The Scottish constitutional debate will increasingly be the main, if not the only, debate in our national politics over the next year. It is going to be a debate which not only has a Scottish interest, but for obvious reasons, a UK audience, alongside a wider European and international relevance. It is crucial for many reasons that we conduct this debate in the best way possible. International attention, including the world’s media, will be on us. We have to rise

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Why are so Many Women’s Voices Missing from Scottish Public Life? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 24th 2011 Scotland was once a masculinised culture and society, a place where men built big, heavy things and large numbers of women stayed at home. We have changed in many respects, and to some the separate worlds of men and women’s work have almost disappeared. This is the feminisation of Scotland to some, seen in the gender revolution that was the first Scottish Parliament which saw record numbers of women MSPs, numerous women Cabinet ministers, and a raft of prominent women

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Dear Johann or Ken: A Seven-Step Recovery Plan for Scottish Labour Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 17th 2011 Dear Johann (or, in the unlikely event, Ken), Congratulations on being elected Scottish Labour’s sixth leader in twelve years; that’s nearly as hot a seat as Hearts or Chelsea FC, those two tottering giants. Of course, I should be accurate, and acknowledge you as the first ‘official’ leader of all Scottish Labour; but I wouldn’t get too excited about presiding over your mighty empire now shrunken. Once the powerhouse of Scotland, Labour now holds Glasgow and North Lanarkshire at council

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The Search for an Alternative to Trad Labour: The Cul-de-sacs of Marxism Today and Tommy Sheridan Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, December 16th 2011 Andrew Pearmain, The Politics of New Labour: A Gramscian Analysis, Lawrence and Wishart £15.99. Alan McCombes, Downfall: The Tommy Sheridan Story, Birlinn £9.99. Stories which explain British politics and in particular Labour politics capture a phenomenally narrow strip of the political landscape. The classic accounts and influential books on British Labour have been of this kind. Life in the distant provinces of Scotland, Wales and the North of England exists either in a small walk

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The Voice of ‘We are 99% Scotland’ Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 10th 2011 The Scottish debate trundles on; accusation and counter-accusation are traded in the Scottish Parliament, Westminster and media about the most important issue in recent political history, namely independence. All of the political parties are in unfamiliar terrain and don’t quite know what to do. In this strange situation, everyone sticks with what they know best, trying to feel safe in their comfort zones. Behind the often arid talk of the constitution and things like ‘devo max’ and fiscal autonomy, the real issue is what kind

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The Power of Black and White Scotland Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 5th 2011 Scottish political debate is characterised and marred by a host of difficult divides and fractures. There is anti-Nationalist Labour hatred; the rage of the so-called ‘cybernats’; and a widespread, almost national sport of anti-Toryism. All of these are part of a Scottish problem which we see not only in our politics, but also across society, culture and football. Why do large parts of the Labour Party so virulently hate the SNP? And why do part of the Nationalist community, ‘the cybernats’

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Ian Davidson, the Labour-SNP Divide and the Language of Violence Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, October 28th 2011 Does the recent Ian Davidson-Eilidh Whiteford controversy matter? Is it a storm in a political teacup? Or does it reflect something wider and more sinister in our culture? First, there are the alleged words of Ian Davidson, Labour MP for Glasgow South West, about giving a woman, Eilidh Whiteford, SNP Banff and Buchan MP, ‘a doing’, meaning threatening actual physical violence and abuse. This does sound like the sort of thing that Davidson could say; he has form with using aggressive, hard,

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What do you do when democracy fails you? The crisis of Scottish Labour Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, October 15th 2011 Scottish Labour has at last awoken from its slumber. Douglas Alexander’s speech at Stirling University on Thursday was an important moment for the party and wider body politic. Alexander expressly admitted that the traditional Labour approach is over, conceding that ‘the old Labour hymns’ have become ‘increasingly unfamiliar to an audience increasingly without personal knowledge of the tunes’. He recognised the need for ‘an alternative story’, ‘a renewed story’ and ‘a new statecraft for this new decade’.’ Old Labour’ has

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The Missing Ingredient in Scottish Labour: Leadership Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 17th 2011 The Scottish Labour Party might be in a terrible place at the moment, but it believes that it is slowly beginning to dig itself out of the mess it is in. It has started to address the inadequacies of its structures through the Jim Murphy-Sarah Boyack review – which seems so far more cautious, than transformative. Politics isn’t just about structure, but more tangible issues such as culture, purpose and the issue of leadership. Labour politicians touched on this during and after the election when

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