The British State

The Scotland of the Democratic Future: Some Tentative Lessons from Chile Gerry Hassan Della Caledonia, February 14th 2013 It has been a telling week for the contours of the future debate on whether Scotland becomes independent. Both the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns contain different tones and messages within them, but what has been revealing has been the over-reach and uncompromising character of the UK Government in dealing with its pesky, upstart northern troublemaker. We shouldn’t expect anything better. The British state has increasingly become the vehicle of a narrow set of economic and political interests, introverted, obsessed with their own

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Lessons from Anzio: Scots do not need to cling to the wreckage of Britain Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, February 2nd 2013 Today is the 70^th anniversary of the final surrender of the last German forces at Stalingrad, the battle which militarily and psychologically dealt an irreversible blow to Hitler’s plans for world domination. Last week I was in Rome on holiday and went to commemorate the 69^th anniversary of the Anglo-American landings at Anzio, just south of the capital, the summation of which occurred a year and a half after Stalingrad. This was the week of Cameron’s big European intervention,

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Talking about the Elephant in the Room: The British State Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, January 12th 2012 ‘The Great Debate’ is away to begin. More than a year and a half of sound and fury and already tanks and troops are being mobilised and on maneouvres on both sides. There is one massive elephant in the room which nearly always goes unstated and unacknowledged, namely, the reality of the British state. For different reasons, both pro-independence and anti-independence supporters refuse to engage with the complexities and challenges of this. Pro-independence supporters do this continuously. Irvine Welsh in a piece this

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Growing Up with the Idea of Independence Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 8th 2012 The Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s intervention this week on the case for Scottish independence attracted significant attention and comment. It has been rightly seen as a maturing moment and evolution of the debate both in content and tone, recognised by the responses of Brian Wilson in ‘The Scotsman’ and Alex Massie in ‘The Spectator’ online. Sturgeon’s intervention caused Wilson to call on politicians to ‘listen rather than talk. Listen and understand. Listen and be inspired’. Massie wrote that, ‘Almost every unionist in Scotland

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Manifesto for a Culture of Self-Determination Gerry Hassan National Collective/Open Democracy, December 5th 2012 Introduction: Scottish Politics and Language In the last few weeks people have become increasingly aware, and to some extent concerned, about the rising prevalence of a culture of abuse, insult and invective in Scottish politics around and associated with the independence referendum. There is a longer story to this, of the failure and dogma of Labour unionism, of the SNP’s adoption of command and control politics, and of an embryonic self-government movement unable so far to find full form and voice. At the same time

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Time for a Different BBC Scotland (and STV Too!) Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 24th 2012 The BBC is in crisis. BBC Scotland faces significant job cuts, a strike ballot of staff, and the prospect of industrial action. At a UK level, the BBC has hardly been out of the news in the last few weeks. There has been the Jimmy Savile scandal, a substantial payout to Lord McAlpine, and George Entwistle having to resign as Director General. The BBC’s problems go much deeper than these immediate problems north and south of the border, and touch on what it is

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How Ed Miliband’s Labour could change the Face of British Politics Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 1st 2012 The state of the Labour Party matters in British politics, with consequences for who will win the next UK election, the dynamic of Scottish politics, and the future of the UK. Ed Miliband has been leader of the Labour Party for coming up for two years next month and for many the jury is still out: ‘Red Ed’ to some, Wallace and Gromit to others. Yet Labour has recovered significantly from its 2010 election defeat when it achieved its second lowest

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Debating the Future of Labour: A Conversation with Polly Toynbee Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, August 28th 2012 The Edinburgh of Scotland’s late summer is awash not just with rainstorms but a plethora of festivals and happenings: the International Festival, the Fringe, the Book Festival, Television Festival, and even a Festival of Politics in the Scottish Parliament. If all this sounds like an expression of the Scots ‘democratic intellect’ or a modern day ‘Enlightenment’ city, while conversations, deliberations and cultural happenings cover a multitude of concerns, there is usually an absence of connection to the host city and anything seriously

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There is a long story to the crisis we are in Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 14th 2012 As the economic, social and political turmoil mounts across Britain, Europe and the West, some voices of certainty have arisen. One of the most vocal strands of opinion concerns who to blame for the wreckage and debris we see before us, with some wanting to lay the responsibility solely on the shoulders of Thatcherism, ‘the Big Bang’ and 1980s. It is very simple and easy to understand; the human need to rewrite history as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The 1980s as the epitome

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Scotland United: The Need to Find Common Ground against the Free Market Vandals Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 30th 2012 One of the fundamentals that we often forget in our ongoing Scottish constitutional debate is how Britain and in particular England understands or more accurately doesn’t understand us anymore. This was brought home to me in this week’s ‘Spectator’ debate, ‘It’s time to let Scotland go’, held in London. Three people, Margo Macdonald, Kelvin MacKenzie and myself were asked to speak for the proposition, and three against, Malcolm Rifkind and Rory Stewart, both Tory MPs, and Iain Martin, with

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