Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Isn’t it time we got serious about democracy?
Gerry Hassan
Scottish Review, December 12th 2019
Democracy is not in good health in the UK or across most of the developed world. The UK election has not been, putting it mildly, an edifying spectacle or healthy clash of ideas and interests. Instead, it has signalled something deeply wrong in the democratic process – something that the political classes do not seem to understand needs to fundamentally change.
This election has not felt owned by people. Rather it has felt like something done to voters by others. This malaise is evident everywhere in the ever present vox pops with one voter declaring on Monday that politics and politicians were even invading morning TV, sighing about the election: ‘we cannot escape it’.
The inference is that we are far removed from the age when people themselves created and could see themselves collectively in the democratic process. No longer do people feel this is their democracy; rather it feels like someone else’s story – an exercise in window dressing run for the benefit of the political classes.
Once upon a time election campaigns happened out there – in constituencies up and down the land – and then those events and occasions were reported in the media. Nowadays, there is little real campaigning in the traditional sense, but all sorts of stand-alone, pop up, voter contact and virtual events and happenings. Much of this, if not nearly all of this, is done to provide the media, particularly the broadcast media, with content and pictures. We have turned full circle in the campaign-media relationship, with the latter reporting activities that are not organic or grass root, but rather a replica and pretence – and voters can sense it. Read the rest of this entry »
Scottish Labour after Dugdale and what comes next?
Gerry Hassan
Scottish Review, August 30th 2017
Scottish Labour used to offer certainty. It had its differences and divisions, but it was in the business of running Scotland, dominating local government and town halls, and was concerned with administration, holding office and doing practical things.
That seems a long time ago. Where did it all go wrong for Scottish Labour? The resignation of Kezia Dugdale means the party has gone through a staggering eight leaders in eighteen years, and will by the end of this year have a ninth.
Scottish Labour’s neverending crisis continues when things are looking up for the British party. Corbyn’s June election recovery made all of this more likely as Dugdale was on record as not supporting Corbyn in both his victorious leadership contests and many of Corbyn’s supporters haven’t forgotten or forgiven this.
British Labour are now making the political weather. The June election and rise in the party’s vote and seats, depriving the Tories of their majority and confidence, has given Corbyn a sense of belief. It has been an amazing transformation, for pre-June Corbyn was widely treated by the media with scorn and condescension. Suddenly such people are having to take him and the prospect of a Labour Government seriously. Read the rest of this entry »
Living the High Life and Post-War Dream in Dundee
Gerry Hassan
Scottish Review, June 28th 2017
In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy tower blocks and social housing are everywhere in the news.
Much of it has been ill-informed, instant commentary. People asserting that tower blocks aren’t suited to modern living or making sweeping statements about the failings of council and social housing, A large part of this seemed to be a displacement or discomfort of middle class opinion having to talk about a forgotten and neglected section of the country, and confront the living conditions of large numbers of poor people.
Housing is a topical subject. Long neglected by the British political classes it has become a social and generational scandal – one that has overlooked millions of people, and in particular, younger people, from owning or renting a decent home. It is all a far cry from the Thatcherite hubris of a ‘property owning democracy’ in the 1980s: a phrase which came of age in the 1950s and which was invented by the Scottish Tory Noel Skelton in the 1920s. Read the rest of this entry »
The Named Persons legislation and who stands up for liberty in Scotland?
Gerry Hassan
Sunday Mail, July 31st 2016
The summer of 2016 is proving dramatic and historic. Brexit, David Cameron resignation as PM, Theresa May becoming the new PM, Jeremy Corbyn’s travails.
That’s just Britain. Across the world there is Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, violent and terrorist attacks in Germany and France, Putin flexing his muscles, while a belligerent China shows its power in the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Government has been playing an astute game on Brexit. This week Nicola Sturgeon spoke in a way no pro-European UK politician has yet managed. She was empathic, thoughtful, and forward-looking, while calmly making the case that this mess and crisis is not of Scotland’s making.
It then comes as a bit of a bolt and bringing back down to earth that the UK Supreme Court found against the Scottish Government on the Named Persons Act – which would appoint for every child a named person to look after their wellbeing – finding it not unlawful in principle, but in practice, and in particular, in terms of data sharing between public agencies. Read the rest of this entry »
Gerry Hassan, Independence of the Scottish Mind: Elite Narratives, Public Spaces and the Making of a Modern Nation, Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-137-41413-7
Reviewed by Scott Hames
Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, Summer 2016
The feverish upheaval of Scottish politics has gradually become its own kind of normal. On 5 May the voters practically yawned as they seized their second chance in twelve months to slaughter the Scottish Labour party. (The body-count is considerable, but it was an apathetic smothering compared to the gore of 2015.) As the SNP’s post-referendum insurgency beds down into cautious hegemony, boredom and campaign-fatigue take hold. With little prospect of a change in Holyrood government, less dynamic patterns of public life return to the fore.
It’s a good moment to reflect on how we got here, and what has and hasn’t changed along the way. Gerry Hassan’s lively and comprehensive study offers ‘a longer-term perspective on the loosening of the inner ties of the UK and weakening of British identity, combined with the rise of a Scottish political dimension and debate’. Independence of the Scottish Mind combines the merits of a richly theorised history of the developments that made devolution inevitable, a shrewd insider’s guide to Scotland’s largely invisible civic-institutional elite, and a sharp critique of the nation’s social-democratic consensus. Read the rest of this entry »
