New Speaker Announced: Peter Hennessy

Photograph courtesy of Flickr user su-lin
Clare Politics is proud to announce that the third speaker for Lent Term 2008 will be leading British political historian Peter Hennessy.
Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary, University of London and Fellow of British Academy. Starting his career as a journalist he covered British [...]

£60 billion isn’t that much

Remember September, when Northern Rock nearly collapsed? Savers withdrew around £2bn in savings, prompting the government to guarantee customers’ money up to a total of £100 000 per person. Estimates at the time suggested the taxpayer was crediting Northern Rock to the tune of about £20bn. But Northern Rock (naturally) lends out far more than [...]

Spot the difference: where have all the ideas gone?

Compare:
“So, making education for skilled work our first priority, we need to provide new incentives and new obligations to train; we need to transfer resources from welfare to education and move claimants from passive recipients of welfare benefit to active job and skill seekers; far-reaching reforms of our welfare state and education system to put [...]

For Fantasists and Fanatics: Direct Democracy is a Fraud

It is in the ‘national interest’, Mr. Brown thundered as he addressed the House of Commons over his decision not to hold a referendum on the new EU treaty. As the Conservatives waved their arms and cried high treason, Brown prudently shuffled out of the chamber and quietly headed back to Number Ten.
How could [...]

Wilf Stevenson Discussion

Thank you to everyone who left their Guy Fawkes Night celebrations to attend Wilf Stevenson’s address to the society yesterday evening. The occasion drew a wide range of undergraduates, graduates, fellows and others from Cambridge and featured a particularly excellent question and answer session.
Feel free to use the comment section of this post to discuss [...]

The success of the succession

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 [...]

Master of Ceremonies

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 [...]

What history looks like

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 [...]

Miliband on New Labour’s failings

In recent posts I’ve been sceptical about an anyone-but-Gordon succession for Labour after Blair. However, this book review by David Miliband on Anthony Gidden’s new book is well worth reading.
I’m very impressed by Miliband’s diagnosis of New Labour’s failings. My concern about Miliband has been that I couldn’t see what he had to offer [...]

The Sun shines on Gordon

Wednesday’s Budget represented a fascinating test case for media feeling about Gordon Brown. The Chancellor’s plans could quite plausibly be represented in a range of very different ways. The Telegraph, the Mail and the Express predictably spoke of a “tax con” and relished the excuse to savage Brown for both his record and his personality. [...]