“It is this total vacuity of devolved politics, self-consciously free from conflict and danger, that allows the spectre of Scottish Toryism to haunt us so brazenly. They can happily adopt the rhetoric of the centre-left parties that have predominated in Scottish politics, articulating a politically empty ‘Scottish’ interest that means whatever the voters want it to”.
Scotland’s lost architectural futures
Owen Hopkins’s book Lost Futures surveys the rise, fall and rise again of the reputation of British post-war architectural modernism, including iconic Scottish projects such as Glasgow’s Red Roads Flat and Hutchenstown C, the Cockenzie Power Station and St Peter’s Seminary.
Baby boxes, universalism and higher taxes
“If it is baby boxes for all as a sign of our equality, let it be free fuel for all, free transport for all, citizen’s income for all, free school meals, shoes and coats for all. If the aim is the best start in life for all of Jock Tamson’s bairns, then why not? What would stop us?”
EU citizens must keep rights to vote after Brexit
Voting is a founding block of citizenship. Mark Lazarowicz urges UK and Scottish governments to make a clear declaration on maintaining legal rights of EU citizens to vote in devolved parliaments and local elections after Brexit.
Coming of age: 2017 as year of resistance
“If 2016 was the year in which millennials realised that they had to confront the true reality of their meagre inheritance, 2017 must be a year in which resistance to authoritarian nationalism takes definite form. The awful questions that the past twelve months have posed can only be answered if we first understand this moment as a generational coming of age.”
Imagining a ‘progressive communitarianism’
Communitarianism doesn’t have to be regressive: the pre-war origins of social democracy hold lessons for today’s left.
The triumph of Trumpocracy
Trump’s trriumph “portends the imminent destruction or disabling of the institutions on the Hill, both Senate and Congress, and the marginalisation – to the point of irrelevance or puppetry – of NGOs and institutions of civil society, including unions, that could provide advocacy and protection for many sections of the population.”
Mayism and the economics of nationalism
“It won’t work. May’s project will flounder. It cannot deliver the communitarian goals it strives for, and will damage Britain’s competitive position.” But: “In Scotland, things will keep going catastrophically nowhere.”
So what’s so bad about being a Trotskyist?
Though there is fierce disagreement about the extent of any Marxist revolutionary incursion into Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour there is less dispute – for both his supporters and opponents – that it is bad news. For most, it seems, Trotskyists are simply beyond the pale, distinguished by an unmistakeable whiff of sulphur. But why, exactly?
A resurgent Labour under Corbyn is good for Scotland
A SNP member here explains why he is backing Jeremy Corbyn for Labour’s leadership and thinks an alliance between the two parties and with the Greens is the right way forward and could be on the cards.