Opinion
Reset Part Three: Us in an imperfect world
If we move from me to us, from demands to negotiation and from personal to structural, we can reverse the wall-to-wall nastiness of the identity politics era – and focus on the big things our generation must tackle
Reset Part Two: Words and moans will break your bones
A politics based on individual identity needs a way to police and segregate those identities – and so language became a bitter and volatile battlefield, with few winners.
Reset Part One: The rise of the moral elite
How a new academic theory transformed all of western politics, how an exploitative elite grabbed the chance to rebrand itself and how the whole thing led to all-out war.
Can poverty escape the B-list?
The gap between the political rhetoric on how terrible poverty is and the political action on doing anything about it widens constantly. Is there any way Scottish politics can start taking the poor seriously?
Scotland had one intellectual – and then he died
The death of Tom Nairn casts a pretty harsh light on Scotland’s relationship with big ideas and big thinking. Are we really a nation which has turned its back on intellectualism?
Freeports – everything that is wrong with Scotland
A hard-right policy no-one voted for and which benefits only Scotland’s elites but manages to block the political space for a proper industrial strategy – it is the Scottish Government in a nutshell
The fallacy of 51
The independence movement tends to believe we’ve run an effective messaging campaign in recent years and so gets downhearted about the lack of shift in the polls. Optimism lies in the fact that we really didn’t.
Scotland has no political vehicle for independence
There is no ‘secret brilliant plan’ for independence. At the weekend the truth of the emptiness of the SNP’s promises were laid bare and it should stimulate some serious soul-searching in the independence movement.
The Shape of 23 Part Four: Only Coppers Left
The independence movement has been forced into ever-decreasing circles of process-obsession as a means of delay and control. In 2023 that is likely to run out of steam.
The Shape of 23 Part Three: Scotland’s Democrisis
A disparate range of conditions have merged and they’re undermining Scottish democracy. Unless this can be addressed the most likely outcome is perpetual government failure.
The Shape of 23 Part Two: The Toynbee Cycle
The UK is fundamentally weak and immune to reform, so it doesn’t really matter what happens politically or socially in 2023, the UK will trundle on as is until it is buffeted about by conditions outside of its control.
The shape of ’23 Part One: The New Cold War
Global politics is not currently the battle between good and evil you are encouraged to believe it is. It is, as always, mainly about cynical empires pursuing their own selfish interests.