Lessons for Labour (and the left)
It should have been Labour's year. Only 12 months ago, Scots turned out in droves to send Gordon Brown back to Downing Street. Yet today, it looks like Iain Gray's…
Reading the Election Runes before the Polling Booths Open
This piece started as a comment on Mike Small’s article, ‘A liminal moment’, on the Bella website, but then got too ridiculously long to go in as a comment!] Elections…
Great Green Elections 1 – Mark Ballard elected Rector of Edinburgh University 2006
The upcoming Scottish and Welsh elections offer us the chance to look back at some great Green election successes in the past. Of course, Greens, as a fairly new electoral…
Get out the vote week
They say that history is made by the people who turn up. Surely though, if anyone makes history, it is those who ensure that people turn up. And this week,…
Guardian closes local blogs
The Guardian has chosen to end its trial local blogs in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Leeds. Here, Ruth Dawkins writes about the loss of the Edinburgh blog - the piece first…
A generation’s choice
This piece first appeared on the Edinburgh Green Party blog Edinburgh’s Meadows in the spring sun are always a sight – scattered with revising students and pink cherry blossom. I imagine…
A more civilised kind of politics is not ‘from another planet’
I had forgotten how civilised Scottish politics is. Last night, I was representing the Greens at the Edinburgh University Students' Association hustings. Three years ago I stood on the same…
How Personal Autonomy can Win Freedom Back for Progressives
This election has been characterised by a remarkable focus on the personalities of party leaders, on the UK coalition and by little focus on the powers of the Scottish Parliament.…
Holyrood 2011: personality politics
As you drive through Alyth, it is the yellow flashes that catch your eye - daffodils, primroses and placards. This is John Swinney country. In the small towns between Perth…
Abolish tactical voting, make elections about ideas
AV is no one's perfect system. But it does, as far as I'm concerned, have a significant advantage over First Past the Post. There is no point in voting tactically…