Scotland and the UK feel in hiatus and stasis - awaiting the unfurling and unraveling of Brexit.
THE Conservative Party loves to tell itself it is one of the most successful parties electorally in the Western world. Chancellor Philip Hammond was giving Tories this reassuring message on Monday.
SCOTTISH politics feels, and looks on the surface, becalmed at the moment. This is an age of permanent disruption – of populist movements, protests, anger, indignation, dismay and social division. This shouldn’t surprise anyone considering the politics of the last 40 years across the West: the rise of inequality and insecurity, the grand theft and appropriation of the super-rich. In the 10 years since the financial crash, the fundamentals of finance capitalism haven’t changed, while in the UK, US and elsewhere real-terms living standards have flatlined.
THIS weekend I attended a Donald Trump campaign rally in New Hampshire. It was a surreal experience – watching a presidential candidate who isn’t a professional politician, who has a limited conventional manifesto, and is running on populist instinct and anger.
THE BBC is one of the key institutions of Scotland and the UK. It arouses passion in many forms: identification, reverence for some of its past glories, fury at current and historic shortcomings. These can come from anywhere on the political spectrum.
