The British State

Britain has become an Unequal and Unfair Society Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 13th 2013 Britain has been mired by scandal this week: MPs proposed pay rise, BBC Executive payouts, and the controversy of G4S and Serco engaging in corporate abuse of power. Yet through all this people tell themselves that one of the central characteristics of being a civilised country is progressive taxation and the degree to which we successfully redistribute resources from those who have the most to those who have the least. This week the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures which showed what many have

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Living on an Island: Scotland and the London Question Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 29th 2013 May 2015: Boris Johnson wins the UK general election and declares London de facto independent from the rest of the UK, stating that it will from now on keep the taxes it raises and spend most of the money it needs itself. Rewind to today. On a regular basis plaintive pro-union voices can be heard asking when Scotland’s constitutional debate will ever end. The answer is that it won’t, because it will never fully reach a final destination. That is because a large part

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What Kind of European and British Union is Emerging? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, May 18th 2013 Prague Spring. Two words which evoke a certain feeling, the hopes of a generation, European idealism and the past. Today Europe could not be in a more different place and frame of mind, the brief optimism of 1968 and 1989 long gone. All across the continent, European political, elite and civic conversations are underway about ‘whither Europe?’ and ‘what future for the eurozone?’ In the last two weeks I have participated in two of these, attending the Prague Press Forum and before that speaking

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The Framing of the Scottish Independence Debate: A Tale of Two Referenda Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, May 15th 2013 Two independence campaigns are now running in the UK: one on Scottish independence; the other which has become more public in the last week, on the UK’s possible exit from the European Union. Strangely they operate in near complete isolation of each other, with the Euro referendum being talked about as if we still lived in the high days of untrammelled Westminster parliamentary sovereignty. In the last week, the front page of the Scottish edition of The Times reported a

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Seven Suggestions for Scottish Labour to be the Party of Change Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 20th 2013 It seems to be the age of seven questions as Tony Blair once again acts as an uncomfortable sage for Labour and Ed Miliband. With Labour meeting in Inverness this weekend and the party’s Devolution Commission interim report out, it is time for Scottish Labour to assess where it is and what it needs to do to change and to start shaping the political weather. Here then are my seven observations and suggestions for you Johann: 1. Careless Talk Costs Political Lives

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On Living in an Old Country: The Power of the Past after Thatcher Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 15th 2013 The last week has effectively been an elegy on Britain’s recent past and present rolled into one. This is not just about Thatcher, but the numerous references to the Churchill and Attlee funerals and how we marked these past titans. Is this who we really were, we ask with curiosity? Are we still that same people who dreamed dreams, stood alone against the Nazis, and built a welfare state, we ask, with a hint of anxiety? Britain seems increasingly a

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Let us recognise that we are One Scotland: The Vision of Self-Government Gerry Hassan The big day was finally announced. It was, when it came, an emotional moment and I will admit I had a tear in my eye but then I am a bit of a quiet sentimentalist, aided by it all occurring on my birthday. There has been a long journey to get to this point; but it is about us as a nation, what we aspire to, how we see our future, our values, and importantly, how we get on with each other even when we politically

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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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Dreaming of a Different Scotland: Alt Independence and Alt Unionism Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, February 26th 2013 Social justice is everywhere north of the border. It has always been about, but now it has become more explicit, as the debate on Scotland’s independence referendum hots up, the Westminster Government’s welfare plans show their character and the Tory intent at inhumane social engineering, while the market fundamentalist project of the last three decades proposes at the moment of crisis and doubt, to go into over-drive. The last week has seen Anas Sarwar, Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour give an important

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The world after Saddam, Blair and the Iraq invasion Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, February 16th 2013 February 15^th 2003 was a moment in global history: a rare articulation of political connectedness and consciousness. From London to Glasgow to Ullapool to New York, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Tokyo, people took to the streets to protest about the Blair-Bush march to war with Saddam Hussein’s brutal Iraqi dictatorship. Bush and Blair were determined on war; Bush to complete the job his father didn’t in the first Gulf War; Blair as a true believer in liberal intervention and enlightened imperialism investing his political

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