THE ire expressed in relation to the proposed European Football Super League is no doubt real but still naïve. However, as Leeds manager, Marcelo Bielsa has pointed out, “I am not surprised … in all walks of life the powerful always look after their own backs”. Looked at it this way, the proposal is no surprise, and is in some ways the completion of a project that began as far back as 1992 when the English Premier League was established by 20 clubs leaving the English Football League to be “administered” by the Football Association, just when television money was about to go through the roof.
PREMIUM
A new report says there is no place for private schools (such as Edinburgh s Fettes College, pictured) in a country which sees education as a public good . Scottish society should be moving towards a situation in which independent schools are “phased out” as a result of family choice, according to the authors of a major report. One said it had already started to happen in places such as Newton Mearns, near Glasgow, adding that the quality of local state secondaries was encouraging parents to enrol children at the likes of St Ninian’s and Williamwood High rather than “ferry them half-way across the city” to private sector rivals.
This may be the result of the Scottish Parliament elections on May 6.
The outcome of the 2019 general election, Brexit and the economic and social impact of the coronavirus crisis have added to this movement.
A majority Conservative government in Westminster, in the age of fixed-term parliaments, has seemingly closed off the option of a Britain-wide advance through a radical Labour Party and the smouldering ashes from the defeated independence referendum of 2014 have been reignited into red hot coals by the differing ways in which Holyrood and Westminster governments have responded to the pandemic.
Though politics is about much more than just constitutional options, it is becoming increasingly clear that the advancement of progressive politics in Scotland can only happen under a different constitutional settlement.