The current predictions for the 2015 election place Conservatives and Labour neck and neck with projections of around 280 seats each. The most likely outcome of the general election would seem to be another…
Until now, the policies of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) have been symbolic rather than substantive. Policy statements by the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, have been designed to build a populist support…
At the launch of Labour’s election campaign in Manchester, Ed Miliband accused the prime minister, David Cameron, of playing “risky and irresponsible games” with the EU. Exit, he argued, would be a “dramatic…
The horrific murder of four Jewish men in a Paris supermarket has understandably provoked a debate about levels of anti-Semitism throughout Europe, including, of course, the UK. According to some campaigning…
Don’t tell them this, but UKIP are the most European party out there. Britain’s democracy is increasingly diverse and complex, and with the growth of UKIP on the right and the Greens on the left its political…
The British press has been accused of many things in recent years, most of them bad, but how can we measure performance in coverage of a particular subject such as immigration, and how is this changing…
There is much to ponder about comedian Al Murray’s decision to run in the British general election. Murray – as his Pub Landlord character – will stand against UKIP’s Nigel Farage in the constituency of…
Eunice Goes, Richmond American International University
Psephologists have been warning for decades now that multi-party politics is on the rise in the UK, but for most of the time they have been ignored. Everything changed in 2014 though, and the old guard…
We’ve learnt this year that if an MP defects – particularly to UKIP – people pay attention. With their high-profile defections causing two by-elections, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless sparked both…
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…
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…
The education of children who speak more than one language is being used as part of a wider debate about immigration just months before the UK’s 2015 general election. But there is surprisingly little…
A proposal in Germany to make all migrants speak German in public and at home has ignited a heated debate about immigration and language. The proposals come from the German Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU…
As UKIP makes parliamentary gains at every turn, it no longer seems possible to dismiss the party as a group of anti-EU obsessives that has little in common with mainstream politics. The days of the swivel-eyed…
Eunice Goes, Richmond American International University
As prime minister David Cameron works on the finishing touches of his much-awaited speech on Europe and immigration he is under considerable pressure from his backbenchers and some frontbenchers to signal…
Robert Peston, business editor at BBC news recently declared that his employer is “completely obsessed” by the agenda set by newspapers. The broadcaster, he argued, is constantly taking the content of…
A UKIP victory was far from assured at the beginning of the Rochester and Strood by-election campaign, but by polling day it was as near to a political certainty as it’s possible to get in these volatile…
Even in our always-on, wired, information-fluid age, some countries, some companies, some sectors, persist in inefficient processes because “that’s the way it’s always been done”. While some businesses…
Much speculation has surrounded Ed Miliband’s position as Labour leader since word of a campaign against him has spread. But less attention has been focused on David Cameron’s position as Conservative…
As the Rochester and Strood by-election approaches, raising the chances of another UKIP politician entering parliament, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has warned against getting caught in an “arms…