IndyRef
19th November 2022
'Sometimes it feels like all the possible takes on the independence debate have already been 'well rehearsed'. Can the debate be refreshed and also gain some new subtlety and complexity? Richard Finlay assesses Gerry Hassan's new book-length contribution and is optimistic about its possible influence.
24th April 2021
What would the introduction of control on the border between Scotland and England mean for those two jurisdictions? What would a politically independent Scotland's controlled borders mean for its relations with the rest of Europe? Giovanna Guidicini looks at the history of the frontier which set Scotland apart and marked out its national territorial integrity. How and why did it come about, and what were the Scots' and outsiders' reaction to it.
17th April 2021
The fever is high, but public engagement seems, as yet to lag... Scottish politics is running a factionalist temperature from the 'Manky Jaiket' so-called greens to the Alba blues. New parties have appeared suddenly in the fray and schisms, nastiness, invective, small hatreds and big ugly prejudices seem the order of the day. Owen Dudley Edwards attempts a dispassionate round-up, and counsels an end to self-harm.
9th April 2021
Lorna Miller’s incisive work for The Drouth here brilliantly demonstrates how the lightning-fast flare of phantasmagorical developments in Scottish politics at the minute can only be truly grasped and conceived of in its bizarre momentum through a visual medium.
26th March 2021
THIS IS NOT AN ALLEGORY -A charismatic male political leader who gathers his support around his powerful personality, is revealed as a dodgy bully, who uses his power to prey sexually on women, is taken to court -nay takes the whole nation to court himself -twice!- is publicly disgraced, but sets himself up in a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, and in Russian media, sets up his own new political party, full of sycophantic followers ... and ... WE MAKE NO EXCUSES FOR REPUBLISHING THIS REVIEW FROM SEVERAL YEARS AGO (from New Left Project 2012) - will we never learn ? It's enough to make us recommend never voting for a man to lead your country ...
9th November 2020
Can the kingdom still be united if there’s no unionism in the union? And was ‘Unionism’ simply the most charming and esoteric of checks and balances on the ‘union’? It may all seem abstruse now, but Scott Hames sees us hurtling through an absurdly persistent pragmaticism towards a constitutional car crash.
27th February 2020
Until one month ago, British people were among the few lucky individuals on this planet that could count themselves to not only one, but even two citizenships. Facing a deterioration of the positive powers that are granted to UK-citizens, it begs the question of who has really benefitted from taking away these ‘bonus rights’. Would it be possible to reinstate this safety-net by connecting mobile and transitory points of resistance to connect to a new form of citizen-power? Meet the emerging Parallel State. Simon Poulter gives a recap of the day on which the ambitions of the Parallel State were drawn out and reviews the territory it was inescapably born into.
4th December 2019
Colin Kidd muses on relations (if any) between the near unanimity of the literary world and the actually existing historical world in his review of Scott Hames’s new book The Literary Politics […]
TOM NAIRN: THE WORK reviews by Mitch Miller & Johnny Rodger