All university admissions tutors know about single-termers. They are those students – some badly advised and intellectually bewildered, others more devious – who decide around mid-November that they want…
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…
The UK is having what might be called a constitutional moment. In the wake of the Scottish referendum and after nearly five years of coalition government, the fundamental rules of the political game are…
Labour MP Jim Hood is under scrutiny for making allegations about former home secretary Leon Brittan in the House of Commons. He was able to do so under what is known as parliamentary privilege. The British…
The least surprising part of Douglas Carswell’s defection to UKIP was surely his decision to resign his Clacton seat and seek re-election in a by-election. Quite apart from any satisfaction at the anxiety…
As the Chief Officer of the House of Commons, the speaker is well used to being in the spotlight. But in recent weeks, John Bercow has dominated the airwaves more than at any point since his election in…
MPs from all parties have called in recent weeks for parliament to be reconvened to enable them to debate the ongoing crisis in Iraq. They have met with unbending opposition. But David Cameron’s decision…
When we talk about “gender quotas”, what we really mean is quotas for women. We see the under-representation of women as the problem that needs fixing. So we try to explain why there aren’t more women…
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee’s new report on policy towards Iran contains no surprises – startling new departures aren’t in the nature of such documents – but does help crystallise a…
“Meaningless”, “a stitch-up”, “a breathtakingly cynical attempt to convey an impression of democratic reform” – this was how Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith reacted to his own government’s announcement in…
With the political fallout from the local and European elections fresh in the memory, the electoral circus has moved on to Newark. At stake is the seat vacated by MP Patrick Mercer, who resigned over a…
The Queen’s Speech marks the start of the fourth and final session of the 2010 Parliament. Final sessions are usually relatively uncontroversial. An approaching general election has traditionally calmed…
It didn’t feature in the last Queen’s Speech and the chances are it won’t feature in the next one, but this government has a chance to complete the process of democratising the House of Lords that started…
So we have a new Culture Secretary. I wonder how he rates Daenerys Targaryen’s chances of snagging the most coveted seat of all, the Iron Throne. And whether he thinks Darren Aronofsky has succeeded in…
The former culture secretary, Maria Miller, is the latest in a series of MPs to have been caught up in an expenses controversy. The issue of what parliamentarians do with their allowances has now embarrassed…
The news that Maria Miller decided to resign as culture secretary was not really much of a surprise. The only real surprise was the way that she had seemed to be toughing out the media feeding frenzy and…
Maria Miller has resigned as Culture secretary. Until today, she was one of the most powerful women in the Conservative Party; she has been described as “efficient and low-key”, and rapidly climbed the…
The British public was treated to two political set-pieces on Wednesday: the weekly exchange between David Cameron and Ed Miliband at prime minister’s questions and the second EU debate between Nick Clegg…
March 2015 could see a Washington-style impasse in the UK parliament over the government’s final budget proposals. The advent of coalition government, fixed terms in office, and a general resurgence of…
The news that Peter Chester and George McGeoch have had their Supreme Court appeal against the ban on prison inmates voting dismissed will cause few people on the outside to lose much sleep - in fact the…