Download or read book Britain Rebooted written by David Torrance and published by Luath Press Ltd. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great Britain, (abbreviation: UK) England, Wales and Scotland considered as a unit. The name is also often used loosely to refer to the United Kingdom. reboot, ri-bu:t , verb to restart or revive... give fresh impetus to... federal, fed ar-al, adj. having or relating to a system of government in which several states form a unity but remain independent in internal affairs. Would federalism work in the UK? Wouldn't England dominate a British federation? How would powers be distributed between federal and home Nation level? What about the House of Lords? In the run up to the historic referendum on Scottish independence there has been a plethora of tracts, articles and books arguing for and against, but there remains a gap in the literature: the case for Scotland becoming part of a 'rebooted' federal Union. It is an old, usually Liberal, dream, but one still worth fighting for. It is often assumed that federalism is somehow 'alien' to the Scottish and British constitutional tradition but in this short book journalist David Torrance argues that not only has the UK already become a quasi-federal state but that formal federation is the best way of squaring the competing demands of Nationalists and Unionists. He also uses Scotland's place within a federal UK to examine other potential reforms with a view to tackling ever-increasing inequality across the British Isles and create a more equal, successful and constitutionally coherent country.

Download or read book The Great British Reboot written by Alex Brummer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An optimistic exploration of how, through radical economic reform, the United Kingdom can prosper and flourish in the new global economy Taking a refreshingly realistic approach, Alex Brummer outlines how our current moment can be reshaped into an unprecedented opportunity for economic prosperity. With a new long-term approach, Britain can capitalize on the ever-changing global market, its brilliant research universities, and new technological developments. Drawing on firsthand interviews with the leading minds in business and his own expertise as a seasoned economic journalist, Brummer creates an inspiring investigation into how careful planning and innovative reform can lead to a flourishing economy after Brexit.

Download or read book Natural and Necessary Unions written by Dan Robinson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-11 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural and Necessary Unions is a history for our time. It shows that the choice between 'union and independence' that shapes current debates about the future of the United Kingdom in the age of Brexit is a false one. Against the countervailing currents of hegemony and fragmentation that range across centuries - from the economic dominance of southern England and the burdens of social democracy to the rise of separatist nationalisms and European integration - unionists struggled to make a union-state that would protect the independence of its citizens and communities from these wider forces. Natural and Necessary Unions tells the story of how the quest for autonomy shaped the history of three communities: Scotland, Ireland, and Northumbria. It charts the different choices these societies made about their relationships within the British Isles and in wider international society, crystallizing in the choice that must be made again between the British and European unions. From these wildly differing experiences, Scotland's devolution emerges as an enviable middle-ground, compared to Ireland's satellite status and the hyper-centralism of England. Drawing on a wealth of evidence from polls to poetry, and a cast of characters ranging from Edmund Burke and Gordon Brown to Gerry Adams and Alex Salmond, Natural and Necessary Unions points the way to a new unionist politics for the twenty-first century.

Download or read book The United Kingdom and The Federal Idea written by Robert Schütze and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should political power be divided within and among national peoples? Is the nineteenth-century theory of the sovereign and unitary State still fit for purpose in the twenty-first century? If not, can federalism provide a viable alternative model? This collection looks at federalism from the perspective of constitutional law. Taking the United Kingdom as a case study, Part One tracks the historical evolution of the 'Union' and explores the various expressions of federalism that emerged between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Part Two then assesses the experience of sovereignty-sharing with other nations in the context of international cooperation. Drawing on the expertise of the foremost commentators in their field, The United Kingdom and the Federal Idea provides a timely and reflective evaluation of how constitutional authority is being re-ordered within and beyond the United Kingdom.

Download or read book State and Nation in the United Kingdom written by Michael Keating and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United Kingdom has often been seen as a unitary nation-state. This book argues that it should be understood as a plurinational union in which the key elements of demos, telos, and ethos are contested. Except in the mid-twentieth century, its territorial boundaries have been contested and the matter of sovereignty has never definitely been settled. Since the end of the twentieth century, devolution to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland has made this more apparent. With the weakening of the British national project, tensions between the centre and the peripheral nations have grown, greatly exacerbated by Brexit. Eurosceptics have long argued that membership of the European Union is inconsistent with the sovereignty of the British people and Parliament. On another reading, however, both the UK and the EU are plurinational unions and highly compatible. The EU, indeed, served as an important external support system for the devolution settlement. Brexit destabilizes it. Unionism historically served as a doctrine and a set of practices seeking to reconcile a unitary state with a plurinational reality. Since devolution, it has struggled to come to terms with the new constitutional reality or embrace the idea of shared sovereignty. The Union is under increasing strain but there is no simple way of resolving these strains, either by secession of the component nations, or a return to the unitary state. The peoples of these islands need to find new constitutional concepts for living together in a world in which traditional ideas of national sovereignty have lost their relevance.

Download or read book The Scottish Independence Referendum written by Aileen McHarg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The September 2014 Scottish independence referendum was an event of profound constitutional and political significance, not only for Scotland, but for the UK as a whole. Although Scottish voters chose to remain in the UK, the experience of the referendum and the subsequent political reaction to the 'No' vote that triggered significant reforms to the devolution settlement have fundamentally altered Scotland's position within the Union. The extraordinary success of the Scottish National Party at the 2015 General Election also indicates that the territorial dimension to UK constitutional politics is more prominent than ever, destabilising key assumptions about the location and exercise of constitutional authority within the UK. The political and constitutional implications of the referendum are still unfolding, and it is by no means certain that the Union will survive. Providing a systematic and academic analysis of the referendum and its aftermath, this interdisciplinary edited collection brings together public lawyers, political scientists, economists, and historians in an effort to look both backwards to, and forwards from, the referendum. The chapters evaluate the historical events leading up to the referendum, the referendum process, and the key issues arising from the referendum debate. They also explore the implications of the referendum both for the future governance of Scotland and for the UK's territorial constitution, drawing on comparative experience in order to understand how the constitution may evolve, and how the independence debate may play out in future.

Download or read book A Tale of Two Unions written by Mark Corner and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2023-09-30 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brexit is a tale of two unions, not one: the British and the European unions. Their origins are different, but both struggle to maintain unity in diversity and both have to face the challenge of populism and claims of democratic deficit. Mark Corner suggests that the »four nations« that make up the UK can only survive as part of a single nation-state, if the country looks more sympathetically at the very European structures from which it has chosen to detach itself. This study addresses both academic and lay audiences interested in the current situation of the UK, particularly the strains raised by devolution and Brexit.

Download or read book Rethinking Our Politics written by Henry McLeish and published by Luath Press Ltd. This book was released on 2014-08-18 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Scotland electorate wakes up in the day after the referendum, everything has changed and nothing has changed. Scottish and UK politics is broken, it desperately needs fixed. The future of Scotland will be centre stage, but so will our democracy and the future of a Union in decline. Our politics once again needs to inspire, enthuse, educate and be relevant to the needs and aspirations of the public and reconnect with the values that underpin our society. There are urgent issues that we need to deal with now - the most important of which being rampant inequality. We have to move away from the mindless tribalism and partisanship that too often dominates much of what passes as political debate. Over the past year it has become clear that regardless of their stance on the referendum debate, the Scottish people are united on one front, the yearning for change for the betterment of their nation, their institutions and their politics. For McLeish, the referendum debate is merely the beginning. It is a symptom of the need for a more fundamental shift in the way we engage with politics in the UK and Scotland today. Former First Minister of Scotland, Henry McLeish is well placed to diagnose the crisis at the heart of Scotland and UK politics. In Rethinking Our Politics McLeish looks critically at the conditions which have created an increasingly divided and alienated public and forged Scotland's yearning for radical change. He rails against the stagnation of the union and makes a rousing and persuasive case for a complete overhaul of our political thinking, demanding that instead of making decisions on the basis of fear and insecurity, we rediscover the founding moral purpose of government. This is a must read for those who care about the future of our nation.

Download or read book Ruth Davidson s Conservatives The Scottish Tory Party 2011 19 written by Torrance David Torrance and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the startling revival of the Scottish Conservative Party under Ruth Davidson's leadershipKey featuresFirst book to examine the recent revival of the Scottish Conservative PartyAnalyses the Scottish Conservative Party and Ruth Davidson's leadership in ground-breaking ways, for example in the context of gender and LGBT politics; its relationships with the SNP, Northern Ireland, the Scottish media and the UK Tory Party; its use of Scottish national identity in promoting itself electorallyComplements and updates David Torrance's 2012 edited volume for Edinburgh University Press on the decline of the party, Whatever Happened to Tory Scotland?Helps inform Scottish political and academic discourse ahead of the 2021 Holyrood electionsWhen Ruth Davidson was elected leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party in 2011, it was considered something of a joke: in electoral decline for decades, politically irrelevant and apparently beyond the point of no return. But by 2017, 'Ruth Davidson's Conservatives' had become Scotland's second party at Holyrood and Westminster, and its leader spoken of as a future leader of the UK Conservative Party, if not the next Scottish First Minister. This book, which brings together leading academics and analysts, examines the extraordinary revival of the Scottish Conservative Party between 2011 and Ruth Davidson's shock resignation in 2019. Contributors look at the importance of gender and sexuality, the 2014 independence referendum, the Scottish media and the UK Conservative Party's 'territorial code' to the changing fortunes of the party and its leader, asking if it can be sustained amid the turbulence of two ongoing constitutional debates.

Download or read book Unionisms in Times of Change written by Jennifer Todd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-05 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unions and unionisms are important because they offer an alternative form of politics to that of nation-states and nationalisms. They allow a wider variety of relations between a plurality of peoples, opening prospects of resolving territorial politics. But unionisms, as state- or polity-centred perspectives, are also typically power-centred, often using the resources of the polity to resist assertion by their members, thereby turning democratic challenges into secessionist ones. Unionisms in Times of Change: Brexit, Britain and the Balkans focusses on these two faces of unionisms: the flexible alternative to the nation state, and the assertor of central power. This book is particularly timely at a period when the unions of the British Isles and of Europe have been disrupted by the process of British exit from the European Union, creating new dilemmas and options for unionisms in Northern Ireland. The chapters in this volume map the conceptual structure of unionisms; the ways unions are defined and defended in Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom, the European Union, the Balkans and Moldova; the ways they deal with challenge, conflict and change; the prospects of negotiation; the ways unionisms move from flexibility and accommodation to repression and back; and the opportunities for agreement and conflict resolution. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Irish Political Studies.

Download or read book Uncertain Futures written by Senia Pašeta and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marking Roy Foster's retirement from the Carroll Professorship of Irish history at the University of Oxford, and recognising his extraordinary career as a historian, literary critic, and public intellectual, this essay collection charts Foster's career while reflecting on developments in the field of Irish history writing, teaching, and research.

Download or read book Uncertain Futures written by Senia Paseta and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume has been produced to mark the retirement of Roy Foster from the Carroll Professorship of Irish history at the University of Oxford, and to mark his extraordinary career as a historian, literary critic, and public intellectual. It consists of twenty three essays contributed by many of the leading historians of modern Ireland, including scholars whose work has influenced Roy Foster's own research, leading Irish historians who have influenced and have been influenced by Foster, and younger scholars who were supervised and/or mentored by Roy and whose work he greatly admires. Essays chart Foster's career while reflecting on developments in the field of Irish history writing, teaching, and research since the 1970s. Focussing on the history of Ireland since 1800, these essays cover a wide spectrum of topics and ideas including aspects of the Irish land question, generational and intellectual tensions, political biography, and social and cultural change.

Download or read book The Labour Party in Scotland written by Graham Walker and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes a timely contribution to our understanding of the dramatic political changes that have recently affected Scotland and thrown into doubt the country’s future position within the United Kingdom. Its focus is on the Labour Party and the loss of its traditional electoral support base. This theme is related to religion and its relevance to Scotland’s identity politics. The author examines how Labour was able to appeal across the ethno-religious divide in Scotland for many decades, before considering the impact of the new political context of devolution in the 21st century and the greater scrutiny given to the question of sectarianism in Scottish life. Walker demonstrates the role played by the sectarianism controversy in Labour’s loss of political control and its eclipse by the Scottish National Party (SNP). This book is also the first to assess the significance of the Irish dimension in Scotland’s political development, in particular the impact of the conflict in nearby Northern Ireland. It will appeal to students and scholars of Scottish and Irish politics, political science and political/electoral history, as well as the interested wider reader.

Download or read book Generation Scot Y written by Kate Higgins and published by Luath Press Ltd. This book was released on 2014-09-12 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is Generation Scot Y? Born in the 1980s and 1990s and comprising primarily of the children of the baby boomers, Generation Y is often perceived as being the generation that wants it all. Think you know what makes Scotland's 20-somethings tick? Knowing who Generation Y in Scotland - Generation Scott Y - is, matters for our economy, our society and our political culture. Generation has grown up with devolution: are they ready to embrace full nationhood? How has Scotland's independence referendum affected them and what does it mean for their future? In this book, political blogger at Burdz Eye View, Kate Higgins explores all this and more - Generation Scott Y's identity, influences, values, voting behaviours and aspirations. Far from being frivolous, this is a serious generation for serious times. This book only skims the surface but dip in and you'll discover something you never knew - I did and I'm the mother of one. And ultimately, you'll find that far from wanting to have it all, they just want a little of all that we've had. KATE HIGGINS

Download or read book 100 Days of Hope and Fear written by David Torrance and published by Luath Press Ltd. This book was released on 2014-11-28 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was it simply a victory for fear over hope?How did the Better Together campaign come so close to losing it?How did the Yes campaign come so close to winning it?What can the people of Scotland - and other aspirant nations - learn from this seismic democratic event? Scotland's independence referendum on 18 September 2014 was the most significant ballot in Scotland's history. The 100 days up to 18 September was the official campaign period and the world's media was watching. David Torrance was there throughout, in front of the cameras, on the radio, in the newspapers, at the debates and gatherings, privy to some of the behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings.A passionate federalist at heart, described disparagingly by the outgoing First Minister as 'Tory-leaning', Torrance made a valiant attempt to remain 'professionally neutral' throughout. His commentary and analysis as the campaign went through its many twists and turns was always insightful, if not always popular.'Reading this diary back during the editing process it was clear that, like (Nate) Silver (the US polling guru whose view was that the Yes campaign had virtually no chance of victory), I got a lot of things wrong (including the likely margin of victory) but also many things broadly correct. At least I can plead, as journalists often do, that I was probably right at the time.'His diary is deliciously gossipy, entertainingly indiscreet, and a must-read for political geeks as well as those who want to see what goes on behind the scenes of Scotland's politics and media.STEPHEN DAISLEY, STVDavid Torrance has emerged as one of the campaign's most important commentators... [his] unauthorised biography of Alex Salmond, Against the Odds, has become the prescribed text for the flying columns of English-based and overseas journalists converging on Scotland in this our hour of destiny.KEVIN McKENNA, Scottish Review of BooksTorrance has secured himself a prominent position in the referendum debate, partly through the strategic use of nice jumpers and expertly crafted hair, but largely on merit ... [he deserves] far better than the lazy impossibilist critiques to which [his federalist] proposals have been subjected.RORY SCOTHORNE on Britain RebootedF*** sake... David Torrance on again. Is the greasy weasel never aff the telly?CALUM FINDLAY [on Twitter]

Download or read book Tsunami written by Iain Macwhirter and published by Cargo Publishing. This book was released on 2015-06-29 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following on from the critically acclaimed Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won A Referendum But Lost Scotland, Iain Macwhirter casts his expert eye over the SNP's victory in the 2015 General Election, which saw Scotland swept by an unprecedented wave of yellow. One of the UK's most insightful political writers, Macwhirter examines the factors behind this result including the demise of the Labour party in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon's SNP vision and leadership, the growing dissatisfaction with Westminster, and the enduring passion for independence. Tsunami ends with Macwhirter looking forward to ultimately consider where Scotland, and the UK, must go next. Praise for Iain Macwhirter: "A truly important book, particularly at this moment." ~ Andrew Marr. "A terrific book [...] full of shrewd insights. I'd recommend it highly." ~ The Guardian. "His writing and broadcasting on politi in Scotland have been the benchmark by which many of us judge our own, more modest, contributions." ~ The Observer.

Download or read book EU Referendum 2016 A Guide for Voters written by David Torrance and published by Luath Press Ltd. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should the United Kingdom remain a part of the European Union or leave the European Union? This is the question we will have to answer on 23 June, when we head to the ballot boxes to cast our votes in the in/out referendum on EU membership. It's a complicated issue. What, exactly, would the much discussed 'Brexit' mean for the UK? With varied opinions on the EU from all over the political spectrum, do you know enough to make an informed decision? This non-partisan guide features chapters on the history of Britain in Europe, the 'Remain' and 'Leave' campaigns, and the likely timelines following both a 'In' and an 'Out' vote. With maps illustrating the EU and EEA membership and clear exposition of issues key to the debate by journalist and broadcaster David Torrance, author of guides to the 2015 General Election and the Scottish Independence Referendum, this is the only guide to 2016's referendum you will need.