Tag: Andrew Crines
What has the EU ever done for us? Peace, togetherness, investment, and prosperity
The EU referendum is taking place today, with millions flocking to polling stations in order to register a vote for either remaining, or leaving, the EU. Here, Andrew Crines argues that the vote is an opportunity for us to examine what kind of country we want to be, and that EU membership has given us […]
Jeremy Corbyn’s rhetoric is effective because his style of engagement contrasts so markedly with the other candidates
Jeremy Corbyn, the veteran left-wing MP for Islington North, has shaken up the Labour leadership race, and now enjoys frontrunner status despite holding a rather different political outlook from the majority of his colleagues on the Labour benches in Parliament. But what lies behind his success? Rhetorical expert Andrew Crines argues that Corbyn’s success is […]
The best of Democratic Audit’s 2014 coverage of Parliamentary reform
The UK’s archaic Parliamentary system remains in dire need of reform and renewal. Recent events resulting from the Scottish independence referendum – particularly the Prime Minister’s plans to exclude Scottish MPs from voting in English domestic legislation – threaten to elevate our constitutional incoherence to hitherto unprecedented levels. The Democratic Audit blog has kept a close eye […]
Parliamentary language should be updated, but the modernisation of our political institutions mustn’t stop there
John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, recently suggested that the old-fashioned language in use in Parliament may further reinforce the public’s sense of distance with democracy. Assessing his claims, Andrew Scott Crines argues that language is a problem, but that it would be a mistake to stop there, with the physical shape […]
If they want to prove to voters that they are ‘just like us’, politicians must embrace their flaws
UKIP’s victory at the Clacton by-election underlined the growing distance between mainstream politicians and a cynical and distrustful electorate. In the first of our post-party conference blogs on political and democratic reform, Andrew S. Crines from the University of Leeds argues that politicians need to rediscover the classic art of political rhetoric. Similar PostsThe Coalition […]
The Coalition Government’s rhetoric promotes individualism and seeks to reduce the role of the state
In democracies, governments shape and manipulate public opinion to further their various political and policy agendas. In a recently published article summarised here, Andrew Crines argues that the rhetoric of the current government revolves around austerity in economics, and remoralisation in social policy, which combine to represent an embrace of social and economic individualisation. Similar PostsIf […]
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