Global Politics

This article was originally published by The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in Carnegie Ethics Online on 17 August 2015. In Klaus Harpprecht’s 1995 biography of Thomas Mann, he highlights a statement which Mann wrote in 1947, which, as Harpprecht puts it, “one reads with a distinct shiver half a century later”: In […]

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The UK’s vote last year to leave the EU has resulted in Scotland once again re-evaluating whether or not independence would be in its best interests. The Brexit decision and the subsequent triggering of Article 50 have both generated significant political upheaval throughout the UK. In a recent speech, Nicola Sturgeon has added to that turmoil […]

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CC Image courtesy of Rareclass This piece was also published in Huffington Post on 23rd June 2016 Something we in Scotland learned the hard way in 2014 is that referendum questions are dangerous because they make both choices on the ballot paper seem equally plausible. By giving the people a choice we somehow assume that […]

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The Conservative party has this week been briefing about the possibility of a Labour government supported by the SNP leading to a constitutional crisis. However, this crisis may be largely of their own making. Polls currently suggest that the Conservatives will be the largest party in Westminster, both in terms of vote share and seats, […]

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Will Hutton has probably been the most influential writer on the British constitutional state over the last two decades. Last night he issued a call to arms arguing that the party leaders at Westminster have just 10 days to announce a constitutional settlement to ‘save the Union’. Personally I think it’s a bit late in the day for […]

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This piece was originally published in Huffington Post on 20 February 2014 Apart from 2014 being the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, the year Glasgow hosts the Commonwealth Games, and that Scotland plays host to the Ryder Cup, the vote on Scottish independence is also being held 100 years after the outbreak of […]

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Post by Better Together.   A friend of mine in St Andrews who owns a legendary bar in the town (as well as being a legend himself), and who is supporting independence, voiced what I regard as a very honourable position on Scotland’s right to self-determination, even though I disagree with it: How come every […]

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I’m voting ‘No’ this Thursday. I’ve been leaning ‘Yes’ for a while, but as the referendum approaches I’ve found myself changing my mind. There are real potential benefits to a ‘Yes’ vote: I believe that a parliament based on proportional representation will give us better (though more boring) governance over the long term and more accurately […]

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  The term – broadly understood as data sets which are too large and complex for normal software – is now everywhere, from debates about the future of banking to healthcare. For example, Google has claimed to better predict flu outbursts than The Center for Disease Control, just by analysing what the company’s masses of users are […]

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