Mr. Salmond is a brilliant electoral manager reminiscent of the late Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago in his taste for skullduggery and Louisiana's historic Huey Long in his repertoire of populist skills.
Mr. Salmond party is light on ideas and does not offer a coherent model for Scottish society in which the rights and duties of citizenship are clearly spelled out. There is no desire to reclaim and update the values of the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment where a political contract was pioneered for governing society based on freedom of religious affiliation, neutrality of the public space, and the insistence of the superiority of civil laws over religiously-based ones.
He's not that impressed with Alex, to the extent that he compares the SNP's Scotland to pre-1989 East Germany (presumably in terms of its economics rather than politics) and furthermore claims that the Mullahs in Iran will be dancing with delight when Mr Salmond finally manages to cast his people free from the Colonial Yoke.
I think his implication that he is somehow soft on the Jihadists is perhaps a slight exaggeration, nevertheless despite that, refreshing to read for once a less than fawning review of Alex Salmond.
5 comments:
Big problem with Gallagher is that despite trying to look non-partisan, he has been an arch critic of the SNP for a number of years - even before 9/11. The Islamic fundamentalism angle is just a new form of attack that he has developed over the past year or so.
He used to bombard the newspapers in the late 1990's with letters critical of the SNP while doing it under the auspices of being an independent academic. I think his main line in the 1990's was comparing the SNP to Serbian war criminals or something - even before the "unpardonable folly" remarks made by Salmond.
He is as bad as Arthur Midwinter who - though he has been quite quiet of late - who is very critical of the SNP and its economic policies which he always parades under the auspices of his academic standing. He never mentioned he was a long standing member of the Labour Party - indeed he fell out with his own party in 1997 as he was against devolution. He has been stumn of late as he is now on Wendy's payroll as an academic advisor and so cannot pose as a non-partisan critic now.
It would be fairer for them to at least for the pair of them to show their party colours. When George Kerevan - an ex-academic as well - writes in the Scotsman - of which he is associate editor - he has to put his cards on the table that he is a member of the SNP either in his article or in a footnote at the bottom of the article.
It is this sort of thing that gives Scottish Labour its reputation for being entrenched in many aspects of the Scottish elite - from the council hall through business through the media through showbiz to academia - and being a mafia-type organisation of vested interests. A sort of mcfianna fail.
Is it the same Tom Gallagher though?
This guy is being listed in the Washington Post as a "Reagan-Fascell scholar at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington", from what I can gather via google it is a place for up and coming journalists and academics, would your Gallagher not be too old to qualify?
Gallagher from what I have seen in his photo is in his fifties. But according to the Herald the article was written by Tom Gallagher, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University - the person I discussed above.
Actually I have just checked the NED website and they are one and the same people:
http://www.ned.org/forum/current.html#Gallagher
The Washington Times!!! Bwahahahahaha!
I'd always suspected unionism could be a bit cultish but this seems to confirm it.
aberdonian
I wasn't doubting you, it was just he was described as "scholar" on the article, which made me think he was post-grad; also even for New Labour the jump to being a member of an institute named after Ronnie Reagen (and also a Moonie if the Rev is to be believed!) seemed a bit large- but, yes , it looks like he's the same guy.
Post a Comment