George Kerevan

George Kerevan is Associate Editor and Chief Leader Writer of the Scotsman and a columnist for Holyrood Magazine. He is also a regular broadcaster and commentator on the BBC and, as a documentary film-maker, he appears often on the History Channel and Discovery on both sides of the Atlantic. He is also assocated with the market fundamentalist think tank the Policy Institute which is based inside the offices of the Scotsman.^[1]

For a decade, he served on the management board of the Edinburgh International Festival and also founded the Edinburgh International Science Festival. He has served on the boards of many arts organisations, including the Traverse Theatre, the Lyceum, 7:84, Assembly Productions, Edinburgh Film House and the Edinburgh International Film Festival. For 12 years, he was an elected member of Edinburgh District Council. He is a former environment spokesperson for the SNP.^[2]

Kerevan used to be a leftist, but has since become a market fundamentalist. According to the Scottish Socialist Voice The move from a belief in Marxist-Leninism (or Trotskyism) to administering the capitalist system on behalf of the bosses isn't that far a political journey to travel... [but some], such as Scotsman economic guru, George Kerevan (IMG, 1972-77) have gone much further and bought into the free market system lock, stock and two smoking barrels of oil.'^[3]

Views

Pro war

It is always easy to be right in hindsight, especially when it comes to something as unpredictable as war. Yet many of those who opposed the war in Iraq got it spectacularly wrong, while Messrs Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld and Hoon were more correct than wrong-footed.^[4]

The anti war movement:

was the classic example of the political myth - driven by emotion rather than reason and surviving in isolation from the hard facts. The grim truth was that, in Iraq, war was the second worst option. April 2003^[5]

On Torture

a substantial comment piece by George Kerevan detailed the case of Wolfgang Daschner, deputy head of Frankfurt am Main police, who, in October 2002, threatened a kidnapper with torture unless he revealed where his victim was. Daschner was prosecuted for “aggravated coercion”, fined and put on probation.

“I have to admit I’d probably have done what [he] did in the circumstances – and accept the legal consequences as did Mr Daschner. So anyone who thinks the torture debate is an openand- shut moral case is being naïve. But that said, we can’t leave the torture question in some relativist limbo where the state – any state – can turn physical coercion in to a global industry” (Kerevan 2005)^[6]. ^[7]

On independence as a means of neoliberal reform

it came as a shock to many when Michael Fry—free marketeer and Hayekian libertarian—jumped ship to embrace the independence cause, especially as the SNP leans to the social democratic left. But when a nation decides to rewrite its history books wholesale, it is usually a prelude to reasserting its national autonomy.

For my part, having made the same journey as Fry a decade previously, I am just surprised that so few on the radical, free-market right understand why Scottish independence has become necessary. Devolution was essentially a defensive move by the old, conservative Scottish institutions that had escaped Thatcherite reform, allied to the old-Labour monopoly that controls civil and political society in Scotland.

The Scottish electorate and business community, looking over its shoulder at the Celtic tiger in Ireland, expected devolution to modernise the country and its lacklustre economy. Instead they got the ancien régime writ large. Over half of Scottish GDP is now in the state sector, productivity is dire and economic growth glacial. We have the highest per capita health spending in Europe and the worst health under a Stalinist, super-centralised Scottish NHS. Twenty per cent fewer young Scots finish high school (post-16 education) than the European average.

The only way to destroy this conservative, subsidy-driven culture is by cutting off its financial lifeline to England, which is there because Gordon Brown and other ambitious Scottish Westminster politicians such as John Reid are anxious to protect their domestic base. Fry sees this revolution in moral terms, forcing the Scots to return to their thrifty, self-improving, Presbyterian roots. He has a point, but I suspect 21st-century Scottish society will entail a radical reinvention of its traditional character as new political forces emerge. When the conservative shell is finally shattered, we will be more youthful, hedonistic and risk-taking. Scotland as a fun place for the English to visit? I have my hopes.^[8]

Notes

1. ^ George Kerevan and Gavin Don, The Voyages of the Starship “Scottish Enterprise” Policy Institute, Series: Economy No. 5 December 2003.
2. ^ George Kerevan biogra[phical note on the Holyrod Magazine Website.
3. ^ From left to right Scottish Socialist Voice, Issue 176, p. 4.
4. ^FRASER NELSON and GEORGE KEREVAN Only one winner in war of words The Scotsman, April 26, 2003.
5. ^ Nelson and Kerevan, Ibid.
6. ^ Kerevan, George (2005) When torture becomes an intelligence tool, Scotsman, 9 December, cited in Tulloch as below.
7. ^ John Tulloch, Normalising the unthinkable – the British press, torture, and the human rights of terrorist suspects, Ethical Space, Vol 2, No. 4. 2006.
8. ^ George Kerevan Reinventing Scotland, Prospect, Issue 129, December 2006.