I'd like to draw readers' attention to an interesting new post rom Gerry Hassan. He is responding to a piece from Nick Pearce of the IPPR (The Institute of Public Policy Research)...a anglocentric left leaning think tank. You need to be careful with think tanks. In my recent blog I exposed the connections between another,the CPPR (Centre of public policy for the regions) and the Labour establishment - although they are regularly cited as an independent academic body on the BBC.
Gerry Hassan's reveals that the IPPR will soon publish a paper by Jim Gallagher on why Scotland needs to "move beyond" the independence debate. That is the same Jim Gallagher who was an 'impartial' senior civil servant at the Scotland Office under Labour, who effectively wrote the Calman Commission report, and who now sits - despite embarrassing conflicts of interest - as an adviser to the Scotloand Bill Committee that is supposed to scrutinise legislation based on his own Calman report.
Gerry is much more generous to Pearce and the IPPR than I would ever be. And he is also critical of the SNP's "timidity" in office - though revolution is hard with a lead of one seat over the next largest party. But I do feel it is worth drawing attention to his analysis. What Pearce says exposes the way supposedly progressive UK thinkers see Scotland as a mere instrument of their wider aims. We are a means of delivery, nothing more. Our national sovereignty is of no consequence other than to serve their interests.
Gerry is also particularly good at getting to the core of Labour clientalism in the West of Scotland, the party's sense of entitlement and the very apt comparisons to the Pakistan Peoples Party. But all things must change and we are challenging Labour's nihilist culture. The story of Scottish politics since the 1960s have been the move towards progressive nationalism.
@lallands you are correct to be pendantic. I have changed the offending phrase to a "lead of one seat over the next largest party". @Iain Ross I hope today's MORI poll has cheered you up
Posted by: joan mcalpine | February 16, 2011 at 01:49 AM
I think we can all agree that the Labour client state needs demolished. In my view it is one of the more genuine failings of four years of SNP Government - albeit in a minority - that the client state continues to exist, and reproduce itself. Who, for example, became Chief Executive of Citizens Advice Scotland when Kaliani Lyle retired. Who is head of the National Trust for Scotland? The thing is, the client state is criminal in its aims and practices, yet seems only to be tackled when it runs up against English law. Compare and contrast the fates of those two law-breaking Labour politicians, Wendy Alexander and Jim Devine...
Posted by: Am Firinn | February 15, 2011 at 08:30 PM
Aye,Joan,and the older you get the more aware you are of the suffocating influence of Labour.In 1960 I was an active member of the Labour Young Socialists. Some of us were invited to a 'do' in the City Chambers as a reward for helping win Govanhill for Labour from the Progressives in the Glasgow Corporation elections. The table was literally weighed down with booze. 'Who is paying for this?'I asked the Councillor whom I had helped. Without a bat of his eyelid he responded,'the common good fund'.My first hint of disillusion had set in.
Posted by: Alan Clayton | February 15, 2011 at 11:51 AM
I thought that the theme of "moving beyond the independence debate" was very much one of Gerry's own although I believe his favoured term is a "post Nationalist Scotland".
Posted by: GrassyKnollington | February 14, 2011 at 09:54 PM
Oh god! Mr Hassan is such a pseud. I really mistrust these hopelessly wordy plonkers! And so should Joan.
As if devolution was going to serve up a new Enlightenment, why even discuss such tosh.
But wait, here is an opinion "the politics of the crash removed the party leadership’s case for independence". Well, there you are then. Scotland's case is entirely dependent on the performance of the FTSE 100.
Brilliant! What a mind. And people are convinced this isn't fifth column thinking.
Posted by: JohnMcDonaldish | February 14, 2011 at 09:08 PM
Apologies for being pedantic, but...
If revolution would be hard with a majority of just one in the parliament (1), consider how difficult is to engage in transformation when you are in the minority, with only 47 of 128 meaningful votes...(2)
(1) A majority being 65 votes of an effective 128, knocking out the Presiding Officer; in percentage terms, 50.7% of the assembly...
(2) Or 36.7% of the total in parliament.
Posted by: Lallands Peat Worrier | February 14, 2011 at 04:06 PM