Leon Brittan, who has died at the age of 75, was a fervent, and frequently effective, advocate of neo-liberal policies and institutional change. This reputation was earned first as a member of Margaret…
Winston Churchill is remembered as a highly successful politician, but his record at the ballot box was far more chequered than many might think. Churchill, in fact, failed to win a seat in five of the…
Britain is now in full general election countdown mode – and the polls indicate another hung parliament is the most likely outcome on May 7. Gus O’Donnell, the former cabinet secretary, recently reflected…
Alan Gamlen, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Ed Miliband has admitted that Labour is “on a journey” when it comes to immigration. He has promised that his party “will never again turn our backs on people who are worried about immigration” but also…
From their inception, austerity policies have been promoted as necessary for economic recovery. Throughout Europe, the demand to cut spending and deficits is presented not as a choice but a requirement…
Remember the Maastricht criteria? No, I didn’t think so. Nor apparently do Britain’s political leaders, based on their manifestos for tackling the UK’s deficit. The Maastricht Criteria were the convergence…
UKIP has not had a good week when it comes to women. Nigel Farage kicked things off by suggesting that mothers should think twice about breastfeeding in public, managing to offend a rather large proportion…
Feeding Britain, a new report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger and Food Poverty, has been greeted with some fanfare. It details the full extent of the UK’s food poverty crisis and urges…
Jeremy Thorpe, who has died aged 85, was tagged in the BBC radio reports of his death as “the Liberal leader tried for conspiracy to murder at the Old Bailey”. Old friends and current Liberal Democrat…
For British Labour leader Ed Miliband, defeat was yet again snatched from the jaws of victory. With the UK general election less than six months away, the recent Rochester and Strood by-election was a…
Tim Newburn, London School of Economics and Political Science
In his ruling on the libel claim brought to the high court by former Conservative whip Andrew Mitchell, Justice John Mitting has brought an end to one of the longest-running and least edifying disputes…
Gordon Brown will retire from the Commons viewed on the one hand as a giant of Scottish Labour who spent 13 years at the pinnacle of frontline UK politics as chancellor and prime minister: the son of the…
Another very bad week for Ed Miliband, which has ended with resignation of the shadow attorney-general, Emily Thornbury, over her “sneering” tweet during the Rochester and Strood by election, got off to…
Those of us that follow the mainstream media encounter information but few genuine insights. Recently one jumped off the page at me in a Financial Times piece. In an otherwise undistinguished endorsement…
The number of professional and middle-class managerial jobs has shrunk, according to a new study by researchers at Oxford University. This is bad news for Britain’s graduates and represents a worrying…
Paul Hayes, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
On all sides, our politicians and commentators seem convinced Britain’s drug policy has been a failure. Party conference season saw Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg rehash his old refrain that we’ve…
After decades of deepening globalisation and interconnection, movements championing national identity and power are sweeping the globe. Breakaway regions, independence referendums, and campaigns for stronger…
After one massive by-election win and another near miss, UKIP has been handed another leg-up into mainstream politics: an invitation to participate in one of the three party leaders’ debates scheduled…
The latest batch of data on political party membership in Great Britain do not make happy reading for the faithful. Membership of the major parties is at a historic low, with less than 1% of the electorate…
There is a party fighting for its political life, desperate to be noticed again and it is meeting this week in Glasgow. The Liberal Democrat conference so far has a very “after-the-lord-mayor’s-show” feel…