Malcolm Petrie

Jun 12, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Peter Clark |David Torrance |Malcolm Petrie

The​ first Labour government assumed office in January 1924 after a general election a month earlier resulted in a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives the largest party. In the previous decade British politics had changed in ways that might have been expected to assist the Labour Party, most obviously with the decline of the Liberal Party, the dominant progressive political force until the First World War, which had slipped behind Labour in the 1922 election.

Sep 13, 2023 | onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Malcolm Petrie

Introduction AS THE TWENTY-FIFTH anniversary of the establishment of the devolved Scottish Parliament approaches, it can seem self-evident that the programme of constitutional reform pursued by the Labour government in the late 1990s has stoked support for independence and occasioned a historic political realignment in Scotland.

May 10, 2023 | lrb.co.uk | Malcolm Petrie |Rory Scothorne

‘My only country​/is six feet high,’ Norman MacCaig wrote in 1973; ‘and whether I love it or not/I’ll die/for its independence.’ This sort of muscular individualism, teetering on the edge of satire, is now unfashionable in MacCaig’s country. Scotland styles itself instead as a place of co-operation and the commonweal.