Posts Tagged ‘England’
How We Help Our Friends in the South
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, May 28th 2011
Scotland may have changed and by so doing shifted the UK. And all of this has consequences for the English and England.
Listening to the voices of some of England’s so called liberal commentators post-election has been illuminating. David Mitchell said that ‘If Scotland ever goes it alone … the British will have lost their country’. Madeleine Bunting stated that ‘If Scotland goes, all we’ll have left is the Englishness we so despise.’
There is amongst some a tangible anger about Scotland. Tim Lott, another ‘liberal’ voice, railed against the Scots. And even nearly twenty years after ‘Trainspotting’ missed the rather obvious fact that the ‘we were colonised by wankers’ soliquoy was a satire of such views. Our ‘passionate nationalism’ is according to Lott, ‘fed on the national myth of historical exploitation – built on the reality of North Sea oil appropriation, the Highland Clearances, the evils of empire and so on’.
Quentin Letts trundled out his entertaining pantomime villain impersonation. He bellowed ‘Good Riddance’ to us Scots, and then made clear his annoyance at us. ‘We English’, he wrote, ‘have grown tired of being hated, of being blamed for everything, of being forever the indulgent paymaster and scorned cousin’. Read the rest of this entry »
A Different Future: A Reply to Nick Pearce on Scotland, England and Britain
Gerry Hassan
Open Democracy, February 14th 2011
The nature of the United Kingdom, the territorial dimensions of its politics, and the national questions of these isles are going to come to the fore of British politics in the next few years.
Tony Blair post-Cool Britannia and his anxieties about multi-culturalism, Gordon Brown and Britishness, and now David Cameron mowing both lawns at the same time in Munich, all indicate the sense of uneasy and nervousness in the political class since Labour’s constitutional reforms and 9/11(1). At the same time John Denham, Jon Cruddas, Frank Field and David Miliband are among the Labour MPs who have begun to talk about one of the major no-go areas of British left politics: the English question (2).
It is welcome then that Nick Pearce of IPPR, one of the most interesting and thoughtful voices on the British centre-left, came north of the border to examine the different political dispensation (3). It also should be acknowledged that alone among the Westminster obsessed think tank world, IPPR has attempted to address the politics of devolution and the territorial dimensions of the UK (4).
Pearce’s northern travels see him find a world where voters are coming home to Labour in droves: a land where Labour is connecting to popular concerns and offers Ed Miliband’s Labour a glimpse of a progressive future. There is the potential of a Lib-Lab politics in Scotland which he thinks could offer signposts to a more pluralist left across Britain. Read the rest of this entry »
The English Democratic Deficit
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, January 29th 2011
What happens in England matters to us north of the border, from its politics and culture to general state of mind.
England is by far the largest part of the UK in population, size and wealth, and despite devolution, what goes on in England has enormous consequences for Scottish politics and society.
At the same time, England finds itself in the strange position of being the one nation in the UK without a democratic forum in the shape of a Parliament or Assembly. It is also the one nation which has not yet had a vote as a nation on its constitutional future, whereas Scotland and Northern Ireland have had two, and the Welsh are away to have a third.
The Cameron Conservatives have a mandate in England winning the most seats and votes. If England alone was represented in the House of Commons there would be no need for coalition with the Conservatives enjoying a healthy majority of 53 seats over all other parties; conversely the coalition govern the rest of the UK solely based on English votes. Read the rest of this entry »
