Posts Tagged ‘The Guardian’
Salmond’s Big Leap Forward or Not: Rethinking the Case for Independence
Gerry Hassan
The Guardian Comment, June 30th 2010
Alex Salmond has dominated the last few years of Scottish politics, and become the leading figure of the first decade of devolution.
Labour figures have come and gone, but it is Salmond who has transformed the SNP into a disciplined force, made what was called ‘the Scottish Executive’ into ‘the Scottish Government’, and the office of the First Minister into the undisputed leader of the Scottish nation.
He has fundamentally altered the character and nature of Scottish politics, yet while he has achieved all this he is further away than he ever has been from securing the historic mission of his political career and that of his party: namely Scottish independence.
In the last few days Salmond has explored setting out new ground on independence, acknowledging that post-bankers crash, the SNP case has weakened dramatically. Combining that with future spending cuts and public sector job losses isn’t really the ideal environment for making to voters the case for independence. Read the rest of this entry »
The ‘Anyone But England’ Phenomenon and the Scottish Psyche
Gerry Hassan
The Guardian Comment, June 23rd 2010
The Scotland-England relationship has been historically one of the defining features of Scottish life.
In recent years Scottish football fans have begun more and more to identify with whoever England is playing whether it be the World Cup, European Championships or a mere friendly.
All of this has now reached epic proportions. There has been the ‘Anyone But England’ (ABE) phenomenon which has spawned a website, campaign and numerous commercial ventures. Kilt makers Slanj have got into trouble for making ABE t-shirts and HMV for selling them.
STV have run a campaign inviting viewers to identify ‘Who will you support?’ in the World Cup, with TV advertising and billboards listing a range of countries from ‘Cameroon because it rhymes with Macaroon’ and ‘Holland because their strip matches my burd’s tan’. Gill Petrie, managing director of STV, dismissed the whole thing as a bit of ‘fun’ stating, ‘It doesn’t really matter how tenuous the link is between the country and the reason for choosing to support them; it’s all about getting involved in a great sporting event, and having a sense of humour about the fact our national team isn’t participating!’ Read the rest of this entry »
Why Labour Needs to Ditch Both Fabianism and New Labour Centralism
Gerry Hassan
The Guardian Comment, June 3rd 2010
The Labour leadership campaign is one of the first indications of the state of the party. If the six contributions from the current candidates are anything to go by in yesterday’s Guardian (June 1st), the party is going to have a long time before it gets it act together.
Platitudes and generalities were aplenty; the party has to ’renew’, rediscover its ‘idealism’ and ‘moral purpose’. Underneath all the warm words one area was revealingly ignored: any understanding of the character and nature of Britain.
None of the candidates acknowledged the make-up of Labour in Britain, even at the last election. This is a party which did relatively well in London, but suffered huge reverses in the South and Wales. In particular, not one mention was made of the one party of the UK Labour increased its vote: Scotland and thus no examination was made of whether this might offer some lessons for the future. Scottish Labour, and the generation of John Smith, Donald Dewar, Robin Cook and Gordon Brown, did contribute hugely to keeping Labour together in the 1980s and laying the groundwork for the party’s UK fightback. Yet, strangely despite a decade of devolution Labour is more Westminster centred than ever before. Read the rest of this entry »
The Taxing Issues of Tartan Taxes
Gerry Hassan
The Guardian Comment, May 26th 2010
The Queen’s Speech has shown that the intention of the Con-Lib Dem coalition is to be as considerate and thoughtful as possible to Scotland and Wales. To David Cameron this gives him the opportunity to show his reasonable manner towards the two hostile territories. The Scots have been promised implementation of the Calman Commission and the Welsh a referendum on more powers for the National Assembly.
At the same time, the decade of growth of the Scottish Government budget which doubled over the period is clearly over. The public spending cuts announced on Monday by George Osborne and David Laws identified cuts of £332 million for Scotland which are going to be deferred this year into next, and rolled into a total of nearly one billion pounds. It’s the old ‘tough cop, soft cop’ routine, which looks like it will become the modus operandi of the governing coalition.
What then are we to make of this, and where is it all going to end up? The Calman Commission proposals are intended to unleash a new era of fiscal accountability and responsibility. Whereas the Scottish Government has no link between spending and taxation, and thus between its decisions, consequences and economic growth, Calman proposed to address this. Read the rest of this entry »
Scotland, the Return of ‘the Tories’ and the Politics of ‘No Mandate’
Gerry Hassan
The Guardian Comment, May 19th 2010
The British political landscape has been dramatically altered by the arrival of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. All around Westminster, politicians, media and observers, are continuing to pinch themselves to check that what they are seeing in front of their eyes is actually happening and not some strange dream or illusion.
One part of the UK stands apart from this: Scotland. The prevalent tones of Scottish political debate – marked by David Cameron’s visit north to the Scottish Parliament last Friday – is that this is the return of a Conservative Government and ‘the bad old Tories’, with the raising of the time-honoured battle cries, ‘Tory cuts’ and ‘no mandate’.
In the 1980s the main Scottish opposition parties – Labour, Lib Dem and SNP – increasingly coalesced around a pro-home rule, centre left, anti-Tory agenda which marginalised the Conservatives. This associated the opposition parties with being ‘Scottish’ and defending Scottish interests, and the Conservatives as ‘anti-Scottish’, questioning the legitimacy of a UK mandate to govern Scotland on a minority of votes.
Despite the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, Scottish politics are still shaped by this formative period, with both Labour and SNP eager to define the Lib Dems by their alliance with the Tories, while challenging the Conservatives in a way which draws from and reinforces the mythologies of the 1980s and Scots views of Mrs. Thatcher and Thatcherism. Read the rest of this entry »
