People fear the extreme and demand their governments be tough on security, but in truth our safety comes largely through control of the mundane. Matt Wood and Rita Hordósy write that the current Brexit debates links security to concerns about immigration and the danger of a terrorist attack. However, if we see long-term economic and social stability as related […]
For the first time since the 1960’s, the entire of the UK will vote in an election other than a referendum or General Election, with Scotland, London, Wales, and Northern Ireland going to the polls. Here, Dr Kenneth Bunker, from the Democratic Dashboard team, examines recent results in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and looks […]
From a Welsh perspective there’s a sense of having been watching the EU referendum from the sidelines until now. But now campaigning for both the Assembly and referendum votes have launched in earnest, the confusion of concerns and agendas will be hard to escape, writes Jo Hunt. Similar PostsHidden dragon: why is Wales ignored in London and […]
Since 2011 David Cameron has been pushing for a public ‘Beneficial Ownership’ list to increase transparency around assets and business interests. In this post, Ben Worthy considers how effective such a register will be at opening up tax havens or tackling avoidance of the kind seen in the Panama papers leak. He writes that – […]
The government’s decision to impose a ‘sugar tax’, announced in the 2016 Budget, should have come as no surprise, writes Dimitrinka Atanasova. Rather it was anticipated based on longer term trends in obesity news reporting – reporting on what has (even) been called a ‘national emergency’. Similar PostsThe Danish effect: when citizens agree with public […]
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party has seen him crowdsource questions for his weekly parliamentary question time with David Cameron, with many praising both this and his other attempts to democratise the Labour Party’s operations. Here, Yvette Peters looks at the impact of direct democracy on party membership, finding that political parties which operate […]
For many advocates of a Brexit, the principle of ‘returning powers to Westminster’ is sacrosanct. They point out that parliamentary debate subjects legislation to proper domestic scrutiny in a way that is impossible in Brussels and Strasbourg. Yet, argues Thomas Winzen, Britain’s opt-outs and the considerable parliamentary time already devoted to EU-related questions suggest that the Commons […]
The United States is the place to go for conspiracy theories, with older controversies surrounding the assasination of John F. Kennedy and the mood landing giving way to the ‘9/11 was an inside job’ tendency and more recently the supposed deception around Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Here, Joseph Uscinski takes a look at ‘partisan’ conspiracy […]
While ‘realpolitik’ has often been understood negatively, associated primarily with Henry Kissinger and used to denote cynical approaches to foreign policy, this new book by John Bew, Realpolitik: A History, offers a more nuanced history of the term by tracing its development from its initial conception in mid-nineteenth-century Germany to the present day. Robert Ledger applauds […]
Ireland just held a General Election using an electoral system which, unlike the UK’s, has a proportional element. Here, Chris Terry argues that the Irish election provided strong evidence that candidate-centred (rather than list-centred) proportional representation using the Single Transferable Vote, and localised politics with a constituency link, can go hand-in-hand. Similar PostsLocal elections: diverse […]
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