Scottish Review

The Declaration of Arbroath is Alive and Kicking in Modern Scotland Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, January 28th 2020 This year is the 700^th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath. This seminal and pivotal point in Scottish history, in the making of our nation and collective imagination, still says something about each and everyone of us to this day. It has echoed down through the years, along with William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Bannockburn and the Wars of Independence. These are all part of the foundation stories and myths of what Scotland is and what it means. The Declaration was designed

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An Example of the Good Public Life for All of Us: Nigel Smith Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, January 22nd 2020 Nigel Smith who died unexpectedly at his home in Campsie Glen in East Dunbartonshire last week at the age of 78 was never a household name. Many reading this will never have heard of him, but he was an important figure in the public life of Scotland and the UK over the past 25 years. In his working life, Nigel was a businessman, running his own engineering company in Glasgow’s Springburn for just under 30 years. More than this, he

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The Royal Family Story is more than mere soap opera Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, January 15th 2020 The world of 2020 is filled with important events and news: the Iran-US conflict, Australian bush fires sweeping the continent, and the ongoing Brexit process. Yet what story has dominated the UK media to a claustrophobic and obsessional degree in the early days of the new year? The answer is none of the above but the ongoing crises of the Royal Family engendered by Harry and Meghan’s declaration of semi-independence. This saga has nearly everything for the modern media including familiar reference points,

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Whose Edinburgh is it anyway? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, January 8th 2020 Edinburgh has been feeling good about itself or - to be accurate – those who claim to speak for the city, its public agencies and business organisations have been feeling this about themselves and the city. They feel the city has had an unprecedented decade of growth, has bounced back from the crash and implosion of Fred Goodwin’s RBS, and that the future is rosy, of continued prosperity and good times. Alongside this neverending mantra storm clouds and criticism have increasingly been becoming more vocal, most publicly connected

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The 2019 election and the End Games of Imperial Britain Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, December 17th 2019 The 2019 UK election campaign had few memorable moments, but despite this the result will have implications for most of us for the rest of our lives. Maybe this is what ugly history looks like. The phrase ‘British politics’ is now a misnomer. There is no real UK-wide politics, rather a distinct four nations politics, and within this all kinds of divisions and cleavages - of young and old; within the working class; in education and housing; and between and within cities, towns

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Isn’t it time we got serious about democracy? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, December 12th 2019 Democracy is not in good health in the UK or across most of the developed world. The UK election has not been, putting it mildly, an edifying spectacle or healthy clash of ideas and interests. Instead, it has signalled something deeply wrong in the democratic process – something that the political classes do not seem to understand needs to fundamentally change. This election has not felt owned by people. Rather it has felt like something done to voters by others. This malaise is evident

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Democracy isn’t working: Can it be fixed? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, December 4th 2019 Britain likes to claim to be the inventor of democracy, and England to assume the mantle of being ‘the mother of Parliaments’. These are national myths - leaving aside that the oldest national legislature in the world is the Icelandic Parliament. The Whig story of democracy has been one of the most prominent interpretations of British and English public life and traditions. It is one which has been told and retold by enlightened and less enlightened sections of the British establishment. It has also been uncritically

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History in the Making: The End of the Era of Neo-liberalism – in the UK and Globally Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, November 27th 2019 This, we are continually told, is meant to be a seismic, even historic election - usually referring to the fundamental implications of Brexit. What is seldom addressed is that this election also signifies far-reaching change in another aspect of politics. This is the confirmation of the jettisoning of the economic assumptions which have defined UK politics for the past 40 years - sometimes described as neo-liberalism. This shift is a continuation and reinforcement of a change

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Men Behaving Badly: Boris Johnson, Prince Andrew and Trump Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, November 19th 2019 Boris Johnson in the past week has seen his Tory fortunes soar. This was in a week when Johnson belatedly went and spoke to the people affected by the Yorkshire floods and faced their anger. In the same period, he struggled to answer why he might be ‘relatable’; avoided giving a straight reply to that well-known killer question, ‘how many children do you have?’, and with wider consequences for our politics professed to not know the number of Russian oligarchs who fund the Tory

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Conventional wisdom is no guide to the future in an age of turmoil and surprise Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, November 13th 2019 UK general elections are never about one single subject even when politicians try to define them as such. Ted Heath’s ‘Who governs Britain?’ election of February 1974 became about the state of the country, and Winston Churchill’s belief after the war in Europe ended in 1945 that he would be elected by a grateful electorate turned out to be illusive as voters instead looked to the future. Similarly this election will not be about just one issue

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