It has been reported that former Liberal Democrat peer Matthew Oakeshott has donated £600,000 to left-leaning parliamentary hopefuls in the quest to stave off a Conservative victory in the election. Oakeshott…
The UK’s broadcast regulator Ofcom recently released a draft ruling that the Green party lacks sufficient support to qualify as a major party. This could give mainstream media the excuse they were searching…
Labor’s support is at its highest for nine months in the latest Newspoll and Bill Shorten is ahead of Tony Abbott as better prime minister. In two-party terms, the opposition leads the government by 55-45…
Before the 2013 election, Tony Abbott gave us fair warning that he would turn the clock back on the environment. As promised, his government has devoted itself to short-term economics and the sort of hardline…
On science and technology, the Abbott government is somewhat of a paradox. On one hand, the government passionately believes that deregulating the university sector is essential. By taking caps off fees…
On June 24, a group of Liberal Democrats gathered in central London to mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of a book that very few voters have probably even heard of – but whose effect on British…
It was early and still quiet as I meandered around the recent Academies Show in London. Jars of promotional pens and key chains were lined up, while two young people in smocks painted the words “innovation…
The ticking clocks and “year to go to the election” brain dumps have made the final lap of the coalition government hard to miss: there appears to be universal agreement the general election will be held…
The government’s free school policy, which allows local communities to set up new schools that are funded by the state, has come under attack in recent days by MPs and sparked a row within the coalition…
If a week is a long time in politics, as Harold Wilson famously claimed, then it would seem like a hopeless task to try to predict now what might happen at the general election of May 2015. But we know…
There has been much written in the media over the last year about the legacy of Thatcherism and the ways in which it reshaped the British political landscape. However, in new empirical research published…
Mark Harper MP was a junior minister making a name for himself. He oversaw the publication of the government’s controversial “Life in the United Kingdom” citizenship test – likened to “a bad pub quiz…
Nick Clegg “is for in”. In for Europe, in for the economic benefits, and in for better student access to European finances. His argument is that Britain being in Europe will help the UK economy prosper…
Should British nationals suspected of terrorist offences or other serious international crimes be stripped of their citizenship? The British government thinks so. Over the past ten years, UK governments…
In a new report, Working For The Few, Oxfam warns that the fight against poverty cannot be won until wealth inequality has been tackled. The wealth of the richest 1% in the world amounts to $110 trillion…
How happy do you feel today? How satisfied are you with your life? Do you think your life has any worth? These are the kind of questions increasingly put to survey respondents as academics and politicians…
For every opposition, the prospect of taking office – attaining politics’ ultimate prize, often after years of hard grind – can be relied upon to drown out the little noises of self-doubt and self-criticism…
Socrates once observed that no-one could be a statesman if they were entirely ignorant of the problem of wheat. Once again wheat – or, more precisely, grain handling and the sale of GrainCorp – is drawing…
Is Tony Abbott really trying to gag his ministers when, under the Howard government, he and his ministerial colleagues enjoyed relative freedom to handle media interviews and issue press releases? This…
Senior Lecturer in Political Science: Research Fellow at the Cairns Institute; Research Associate for Centre for Policy Futures, University of Queensland, James Cook University