The Future of the Left

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 Last of the True Believers: Comrades of the World Unite! Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, February 17th 2016 The age of insecurity has turned out to be an age of rage and anger. Yet, so far, a near-decade of economic collapse, turmoil and corporate deception hasn’t led to a widespread revival in the fortunes of the left’s ideas and popularity. Instead, the picture is a very mixed, patchy one. There has been a rise in populism, xenophobia and identity politics: Trump and the US Republicans, UKIP and the French Front National, and the much more sinister hard-right examples in Poland

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Can Radical Scotland find its Voice? And if so could it be RISE? Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, August 30th 2015 This weekend a new force in the Scottish political scene emerged – RISE – standing for Respect, Independence, Socialism and Environmentalism. What do we need a new political force for, you may ask? We already have a crowded political landscape. And why do we need another pro-independence one? At last count there were already four: SNP, Scottish Greens, Scottish Socialists and Solidarity. RISE, in case anyone thinks otherwise, has no connection to George Galloway (he is another kind of Respect)

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Let Us face the Future: Labour, Jeremy Corbyn and the Power of the Past Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, August 21st 2015 This is the most exciting and cataclysmic Labour leadership contest in a generation. The nearest comparison must be the Benn insurgency for the Deputy Leadership of the party in 1981, where he narrowly lost to Denis Healey. This marked the peak of the left’s influence in Labour - until now. What is occurring in the Labour contest, with the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the diminishing of Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, is little more than

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The Summer of the Living Undead: A Labour Party for What? Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, July 15th 2015 The Labour leadership contest is noteworthy for a number of factors, none positive or helpful for the party. Labour have just suffered their second consecutive defeat. They finished 113 seats behind the Tories in England. It has now become a cliché to say they face an existential crisis; as Matthew Norman pointed out in ‘The Independent’ this week, it is in fact a ‘post-existential crisis’ (1). The party is in collective denial, retreating into its comfort zones, and almost numb at the

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Message to the Messengers: What do we do after Yes? Gerry Hassan Scottish Left Project, December 5th 2014 It is a frenetic, dynamic time to be living in Scotland – politically, culturally and in many other aspects of public life. Nearly three months since the momentous indyref Scotland is still gripped by a sense of movement, possibilities and new openings – up to and beyond the 2015 and 2016 elections. Yet at the same time in parts of the independence movement there are unrealistic expectations of political change, of belief that the union is finished, and that Scotland can embark

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A Journey into the World of George Galloway Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 27th 2014 Many ridiculous things have been said in the independence referendum. There was Alex Salmond’s questioning of Alistair Darling in the first debate on the possibilities of ‘aliens’; Jenny Hjul in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ on ‘the enemy’ next door and then trying to pass it off as humour; and only last week Polly Toynbee in ‘The Guardian’ referenced Alex Salmond and Robert Bruce, then wrote, ‘That’s what fighters the world over say’, listing a host of warzones from Gaza to Syria, Iraq and Ukraine, and then

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The Strange Death of Liberal England Continued Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, July 30th 2014 Liberal England is in a state of confusion. There is the challenge of the Scottish independence referendum, the continued right wing drift of UK politics, and the slow detachment of the UK from the European Union. All of the above cause apoplexy and dismay to the thinking elements of the English left. One response to this from people such as Labour MP John Cruddas and Billy Bragg is to try to re-ignite the English radical imagination and challenge the increasingly English nationalist overtones of Nigel

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A Time for Boldness and Honesty: 21^st Century Scottish Radicalism Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, July 23rd 2014 The independence referendum has seen an explosion of radical and progressive thinking and activism. Where there was once silence and disillusion, now there is hope, excitement and imagination. There is the generosity and pluralism of National Collective, the breadth and reach of the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), and the energy and dynamism of the Jimmy Reid Foundation. Then there is a wider set of trends looking at how to develop a deeper democracy from the work of So Say Scotland and its Citizen’s

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The crisis of Britain’s institutions is one of the labour movement too Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 23rd 2013 One of the defining characteristics of the Labour Party through the ages has been its moral dimension - its indignation at the inequities and injustices of a rotten, economically and socially divisive capitalist system. It has critiqued this via its early socialist, radical and religious roots  – more Methodist than Marx, more the Bible and ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist’ than ‘Das Capital’. As politics and society have changed - the post-war consensus, Thatcher, New Labour - these strands have weakened but

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