It’s easy to be seduced by the prospect of change and fairness. After all, who wouldn’t say “Yes to Fairer Votes”, as supporters of the Alternative Vote arrogantly exhort us to do? Are we really expected to believe that all supporters of First Past the Post are deliberately resisting greater fairness? Fairness, of course, depends [...]
Filed under: constitution, democracy, electoralreform, ukpolitics on May 4th, 2011 | No Comments »
Apparently it is all over. The leadership contest that never was, never will be. Leaving aside Gordon Brown’s qualities as leader (which will be the source of endless speculation until the handover and beyond) I thought I’d better write something about the accusations that all of this is somehow undemocratic, stemming from Sir Ming [...]
Filed under: constitution, democracy, gordonbrown, labour, ukpolitics on May 17th, 2007 | No Comments »
This is absolutely brilliant. Not because I feel the country is necessarily crying out for a constitution, nor because I feel it would be particularly beneficial, but because the hand-over programme appears to finally be unfolding with consummate political skill. A discrete day for the retrospectives of Blair’s term in office (which are generally far [...]
Filed under: constitution, davidcameron, democracy, gordonbrown, labour, ukpolitics on May 12th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Having spent a great deal of time (probably not enough) subsidised by the British taxpayer looking back over the history of 20th century Britain and trying to get some of it to stick in my mind, I feel that it might be worth speculating about the views of historians on the Blair governments. I’m sure [...]
Filed under: constitution, foreignpolicy, gambling, gordonbrown, history, tonyblair, ukpolitics on May 5th, 2007 | 2 Comments »
This is almost a seamless transition from the discussion of Britishness we see above, into a questioning of the proposed changes to the House of Lords as outlined by Jack Straw. The House of Lords is that old cliché, peculiarly British. Its role has been relatively unclear since at least 1867, though I’m not going [...]
Filed under: constitution, electoralreform, history, labour, ukpolitics on February 10th, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Reading Will’s post on constitutional reform, I can’t help but disagree with almost all of it (hello by the way, my name is Owen, the final member of the Clare politics. Like Patrick and Will, I’m a history student, a point which may become apparent in the course of this post…)
The Union is a bizarre [...]
Filed under: constitution, scotland, ukpolitics on January 19th, 2007 | 6 Comments »
Reaching near saturation with the current political debate on the U.K and its apparent imminent disintegration, I have been left asking why we have let ourselves get into such a constitutional mess? Since labour’s introduction of devolution, we have been trying to set up regional governments to represent the four nations, which make up this [...]
Filed under: constitution, scotland, ukpolitics on January 19th, 2007 | No Comments »
