Social Democcracy

The future for centre-left politics after the Trump disaster Gerry Hassan Sunday National, November 8th 2020 The most dramatic US Presidential election in recent times has caused the emergence of a host of issues about power, democracy and power. The election of Joe Biden and defeat of Donald Trump throws up questions about politics beyond the US - including how progressive politics can refashion what they stand for in a world of continual change and turmoil. Centre-left parties used to be anchored in organised labour and the politics of class. In Western Europe this grounded the appeal and rationale of

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The future of Labour matters to everyone – and to Scottish self-government Gerry Hassan Sunday National, January 5th 2020 Nearly a month ago Labour stumbled to one of the worst defeats in its history. Yet the weeks after the calamity of the election of a Boris Johnson government with an overall majority of eighty seats, have seen Labour no further forward in recognising the scale of its reverse or how much it needs to change. This matters – for, despite everything, Labour still matter. They are still by far the principal opposition to the Tories at Westminster and the only

Continue Reading The future of Labour matters to everyone – and to Scottish self-government

Could Corbyn’s Labour be the future? A work in progress, but now imaginable Gerry Hassan Compass, September 27th 2018 Labour conference this week is an important staging post in the new Corbyn-led, energised mass party - not just the biggest in Britain, but bigger than all the other party memberships put together. The Jeremy Corbyn-John McDonnell leadership has been three years at the helm, and are the new establishment running and defining the party. They are now in near-total control of the party, its institutions and in tune with the expanded grass roots. This is their party now and

Continue Reading Could Corbyn’s Labour be the future? A work in progress, but now imaginable

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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