John Lloyd book review: ‘What marks the book out is Lloyd’s personal transition to virtually self-hating Scot. This is not just the regular Unionist assertion that Scotland is too wee, too weak, to cut it as an independent country but a visceral assault on “Scotland’s self-serving, self-pitying, self-obsessed keening about others, mainly the English, stealing their birthright and smashing their culture” and/or continuous “moral superiority.”‘
Independence
Radical challenges for the SNP
‘To say that the SNP should now revisit its economic plan for independence is therefore in keeping with the times we are in. My call for a radical rethink is not a challenge for the leadership, nor is it a challenge to the leadership. This new situation is a challenge for all of us and a challenge for our party as a whole.’
Leadership, learning and knowledge: lessons from COVID-19
‘Not everything is about the constitution. We need to find a way out of the lazy constitutional rut Scottish politics has descended into. This is not to suggest that the constitutional question or relations between London and Edinburgh are unimportant, only that there are other ways of looking at politics and policy. Even in the midst of this crisis, this needs to be a learning exercise and not only when we look back and seek to learn lessons retrospectively.’
Remembering Edwin Morgan at 100
Edwin Morgan became Scotland’s first makar in 2004: a tribute to him on his centenary from his biographer. ‘He was an acrobat of words and identities. Perhaps his own identity as a gay man, risking censure or imprisonment through most of his life, encouraged that ability to shape-shift.’
Salmond, the SNP and Brexit
A contrarian view from Glasgow-born MacShane: “It will be hard for Labour or the Lib Dems to get back into the game, which suggests that the SNP is likely to win a clear majority and a large majority of Holyrood seats.”
Can Scotland meet EU economic criteria?
‘If (national debate about indy Scotland joining the EU) is to be meaningful, there needs to be far more active engagement by both the political class and civil society.’
The need for cultural change
‘The economic statistics published by the SG tend to pick out relevant data from UK-wide surveys and administrative data. This approach needs to change if Scotland is to generate a more reliable, relevant and holistic evidence base of its performance from which to base its future economic vision and objectives.’
Statistical test of independence
‘Without fundamental change in the way we produce data in Scotland, we may find ourselves reheating old data to try to answer new policy questions’: the case for an independent Scottish Statistics Agency (Pt 1)
Ireland: small EU state model?
‘Brexit will undoubtedly shape the next chapter in Ireland’s European story and test whether the ‘island behind the island’ can transcend its geography to define its future.’
Bitter truths in Brussels
‘…there may well be sympathy for the Scottish case but it is, for now, entirely irrelevant to what’s at stake now. As we know from the last 43 months, that’s even more true of Westminster and Whitehall.’