Archive for February, 2010
The Missed Opportunity of ‘Broonland’
Gerry Hassan
Sunday Times, February 28th 2010
Christopher Harvie, Broonland: The Last Days of Gordon Brown, Verso £8.99
Chris Harvie is a rare bird in the field sport of Scottish politics, a cultural and historical polymath and bon viveur who in part seems to belong from another era, one of Victorian romance, grand visions and eclectic ideas.
Harvie has spent most of his academic life in Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany and upon retiring came back to Scotland. Standing for the SNP in the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections, he found himself, as No. 5 on the list in Mid-Scotland and Fife, in the surprising position of being elected.
There is something joyously surprising and uplifting in today’s age of party automatons in Harvie’s election, a feeling added to by the sight of seeing him strutting around the Parliament, dressed like a character from some age of Tory squires or an Ealing ‘Victorian’ comedy. Read the rest of this entry »
Goodbye to New Labour and What Comes After It?
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, February 26th 2010
It has been a momentous few days in British politics, dominated by Andrew Rawnsley’s allegations of bullying by Gordon Brown, whose style of politics and behaviour was further put under the spotlight by Alistair Darling’s remarks that ‘the forces of hell’ had been unleashed upon him by No. 10.
At the same time an equally significant, if not more important political development went completely unnoticed in the firestorm of the last few days: the demise of New Labour.
Last Saturday, the Labour Party gathered for its major spring event to launch its new campaigning theme, ‘A future fair for all’, and did so with a variety of vacuous sub-themes from ‘securing the recovery’ to ‘protecting frontline services’ and ‘standing up for the many’.
Alongside this, gone from the election campaign website or Labour’s main website is any mention of New Labour, its logo, branding or straplines. Instead, it is plain, simple, good old-fashioned Labour. Read the rest of this entry »
The Curtain Closes on an Era: The End of New Labour
Gerry Hassan
Open Democracy, February 23rd 2010
We all know that our politics are becoming more and more trivialised, sensationalised and reduced to gossip, innuendo and about people and processes, as the storm of the last few days has illustrated on Andrew Rawnsley’s book, Gordon Brown’s behaviour, and the counter-actions of Christine Pratt of the National Bullying Helpline.
Rawnsley is one of the leading culprits of politics as devoid of content and in particular, values, interests and ideas. Instead, everything in his political world is about information, and in particular, gossip about who is up and who is down, who has access and who doesn’t, and who is managing and manipulating the structures of power to their advantage.
‘Servants of the People’ was a defining book of this kind of approach in the early, still hopeful days of New Labour, just as it was all beginning to turn sour. The only book of comparable reach in this formative period was Paul Routledge’s equally suspect ‘Gordon Brown: The Biography’ which blew open the nature of the Blair-Brown ‘deal’ in a way that was unprecedented, and caused No. 10 to reply with their famous ‘psychological flaws’ remark about Brown. Read the rest of this entry »
The English Question and the Rise of a Zombie Political System
Gerry Hassan
Bella Caledonia, February 22nd 2010
The British constitution is in a bad way. The Westminster system of absolutism is creaking and falling apart as we speak, centralisation has been taken to a point under the Blair-Brown dual monarchy of New Labour beyond caricature, and the British political classes are held beneath contempt, along with bankers and journalists.
This should be a golden era for radical reformers and democrats, with idealists and campaigners pushing at an open door in terms of the popular imagination and mood, a political community looking desperately for a different kind of politics, and a country knowing that the eviction of one political party of the Westminster state, Labour for the Tories, will change little for the better.
One of the paradoxes of our current malaise is the widespread crisis of the British political system is combined with a crisis of confidence amongst reformers. The crisis of our politics seems to have not only affected the corrupted, tainted ‘mainstream’, but those who want to replace the whole rotten edifice. Read the rest of this entry »
A Hung Parliament Could Be Good for Our Broken Democracy
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, February 19th 2010
A Conservative Government has for a long time been seen as the inevitable outcome of the next election. David Cameron was viewed as a Prime Minister in waiting, and the Labour Party, unpopular, led by a disliked leader, and seen as having lost the will to live.
Now all of this is beginning to change. The prospect of a hung Parliament, where no one party has an overall majority is now being seriously considered. The Conservatives have proven less than sure-footed, while Labour has shown itself less dead in the water than previously assumed.
A hung Parliament is now possible for a number of reasons. The most cited is the way the current electoral system works to the Conservatives’ disadvantage and Labour’s advantage. This is because Labour’s constituencies are generally smaller in the number of voters they have and have lower turnouts, resulting in Labour winning more seats with less votes than the Tories. Read the rest of this entry »
