The Scottish independence question is one of the pivotal questions facing British politics and the future of the United Kingdom. It is also one of the most contentious and misunderstood. In Scotland ...Rising, Gerry Hassan addresses the fundamental questions covering the Scottish independence debate so that people can better understand the case for independence and the nuances, contours and implications for the whole United Kingdom. Looking beyond the merits and shortcomings of the SNP and the Conservative government in Westminster, Hassan tackles the larger driving dynamics of 'the Scottish Question' - a growing desire amongst many Scots for an explicit discussion about society, public policy choices and wider values. Addressing the constitutional framework, and questions about the role of government and democracy, the nature of the British state, society and capitalism, Scotland Rising makes an urgent and intelligent contribution to one of the defining political questions of our time.
The Scottish Labour Party is at an unprecedented crossroads. Though it had been the leading party in Scotland for fifty years, it has now lost the election and office to the SNP. This book addresses, ...examines, and analyzes the last thirty years of Scottish Labour, from the arrival of Thatcherism in 1979 to the aftermath of the party's defeat in the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections. It asks fundamental questions about the nature of Scottish Labour, its dominance of Scottish politics, the wider politics of Scotland, and whether its decline is irreversible. Surveying both contemporary events and recent history, the volume draws on extensive research in archival sources and interviews significant members of Scottish Labour.
This collection of essays explores how the 2014 Scottish referendum was presented in the media not only in Scotland but elsewhere in the United Kingdom, in Europe and beyond.
The establishment of the Scottish Parliament created new institutions and a political environment which has had lasting implications for Scottish and UK politics, including furthering the rise of the ...Scottish National Party and the independence question. One central element of this new terrain has been the emergence of the Scottish government and the post of First Minister of Scotland. The latter, the most prominent devolved political position in Scotland, has so far been subjected to little detailed analysis.
Drawing on a wide array of material, research and interviews with key individuals, this article explores four aspects: first, the nature of the office of first minister; second, how it has evolved over the past quarter century; third, what various post‐holders have brought to the role; and finally, how they have been influenced by wider contextual factors such as the changing dynamics of party support, electoral competition and intra‐party considerations. The article offers some provisional conclusions about the changing nature of political leadership and the interplay between institutional factors, public opinion and the role of the individual political actors in the twenty‐first century, which has relevance not just for Scotland but further afield.
Scotland's media has traditionally provided one of the central aspects of Scottish distinctiveness, autonomy and identity. This has often historically been viewed unproblematically and uncritically, ...but in recent times, the selective discourses of the mainstream media have come under increasing scrutiny and challenge, particularly in the recent independence referendum.
This article examines the changing output of BBC and STV, considering in detail the evening news and current affairs programmes of both channels, and charting how they have evolved in media content and output. It also examines wider output and representation by BBC and STV, and concludes by addressing the evolving political and media environment.
The pre-election conventional wisdom about Scotland (both inside the country and even more in the rest of the UK) was that the SNP seemed to carry all before it. A little less impressively than ...previously, but the party still dictated the debate and shaped the political terrain, and had an aura of invincibility along with an inevitability about Scottish independence. Now, conventional wisdom post-election states the opposite—that the SNP juggernaut has been halted and reversed, independence put on hold, that there is a new-found confidence in unionist sentiment, and a greater prospect than for a decade of an enduring future for the union. This is what passes for much political commentary these days, as one orthodoxy replaces another with barely a pause or learning curve evident. A more accurate representation would be to say that Scottish politics has experienced a topsy-turvy world where perceptions have struggled to keep up with realities. The SNP has become the party of government and the establishment. The Tories are increasingly the party of protest and insurgency. This is a switch in classic roles for both—the SNP, until winning office in 2007, was the party of outsiders, while the Tories were that of the traditional establishment. Lest forgotten, Scottish Labour, for fifty years the dominant force of Scottish politics, has in the last decade struggled to find a new role. This was the backdrop to the 2017 election. The SNP remained Scotland’s leading party in votes (36.9 per cent) and seats (thirty-five out of fifty-nine), but lost 476,867 votes and 13.1 per cent between the 2015 and 2017 Westminster elections. The Scottish Tories finished in second place on votes and seats—with their highest vote (28.6 per cent) since 1979 and highest number of seats (thirteen) since 1983. The Labour party won 27.1 per cent of the vote—rising from the nadir of 2015 and 2016 and its representation increasing from a solitary one seat two years ago (when it lost forty of its forty-one Scottish seats) to seven now. The Lib Dems saw their vote fall to 6.8 per cent—but their number of seats increase from one to four. Scotland matters above its actual weight in the UK. The Tories had a net loss of thirteen UK seats, but Scotland contributed twelve gains out of their twenty UK gains. Scotland is also again live electoral territory for Labour. Despite its improved showing, Labour still needs sixty-four further seats for an overall majority of one seat, eighteen of which—more than one quarter—are in Scotland. Some commentators even said that the Scottish Tories ‘saved’ Theresa May and kept her in office. The argument was that without their thirteen seats and twelve gains, the party would have been in a more vulnerable position and perhaps ousted from power. But another way of assessing the picture is to note that England returned a Tory overall majority (297 Tory to Labour’s 227, eight Lib Dems and one Green). It was the combined effect of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—anti-Tory territory, and in the latter, completely non-Tory—which prevented the Tories having an overall majority and produced a hung Parliament.
We live in a society which has become fearful of the future and of change, and instead seeks sanctuary in imagined and contested versions of the past. A highly successful Churchill industry taps into ...this mood, marketing and repackaging the man and his image. Boris Johnson's Churchill
biography is perhaps only the most overtly self-seeking of these efforts. Most of the industry concentrates on Britain's darkest hour in the second world war: the Churchill of this period invokes a particular idea of Britain, as a place of purpose, moral certainty and national calling - the
idealised conservative nation. But these ideas are losing their purchase. Underneath the current public crises of the contemporary Conservative Party sits a longer-term set of issues: what constituencies and social forces does it represent? what sort of Britain is it championing? The answers
we need now and for the future are not to be found in the past - and this also applies to the Labour Party. To search for a politics based on past heroes only serves to throw a light on the depth of crisis we are in.
The starting point of this discussion is Wright's On Living in an Old Country (1985), which sought to understand how a selective idea of national tradition had been mobilised by Thatcher for a ...disruptive political project that was fundamentally destructive of tradition. This is a rhetorical
strategy that is extremely widespread today, alongside the notion that there is one, singular, version of history to be told. In the 1980s the postwar social-democratic settlement was portrayed by the right as a betrayal of the noble sacrifices made in the war, and the case for Brexit relies
on a similar appeal to an allegedly interrupted national past. The left has been much less successful in mobilising such stories of national history, and tends to avoid questions of Britishness and Englishness. Given an increasingly disunited kingdom, however, the question of Englishness has
become ever more pressing. This does not mean that it is a good time to adopt an unreflected idea of English 'patriotism'. Rather, the left should seek to foster a new, less beleaguered and resentful, more generous and more various experience of cultural identity within England: its ambition
should be for a much broader cultural and political transformation. For the conditions into which the Conservative Party has led the British nations may not prove to be enduring. Things can shift suddenly. Nevertheless, as a slogan for the sugar harvest in Castro's Cuba once proclaimed: 'A
Decisive Effort is Necessary'.
