That the UK is in the midst of an ongoing constitutional crisis can no longer be doubted, with question marks hanging over Scotland’s membership of the union, as well as the UK’s membership of the European Union. Sean Swan looks at the parallels with a previous constitutional crisis, and makes the case for rethinking the […]
On Their Watch: Mass Violence and State Apathy in India examines official records and shows how state apathy in the wake of violence thwarted attempts to rehabilitate survivors and punish perpetrators. Using the Right to Information Act, the editors set out to address the lack of knowledge and transparent reporting around recent tragedies and in doing […]
The Labour Party in the UK has a traditionally complicated relationship with European integration, with the party having difficulty in reconciling itself with the pro-federalist vision that its sister parties have adopted. Dr Dionyssis G. Dimitrakopoulos traces the evolution of Labour’s current position on the issue, and argues that the drift has been towards seeing EU membership […]
Conventional wisdom has it that rank outsiders do not become leaders of ‘mainstream’ British parties, yet Jeremy Corbyn now presides over the Labour Party. Pete Dorey and Andrew Denham reflect on the criteria which have fed into leadership selection before now and argue it was changes to the selection rules and the offer of a […]
On the evening of February 22nd 2012, there was a fracas in the Strangers’ Bar in the House of Commons involving Falkirk MP Eric Joyce, who was suspended by the Labour party and announced that he would be standing down at the 2015 General Election. The subsequent Labour selection process was dogged with accusations of […]
Scotland’s referendum on independence took place just over a year ago, with a narrow majority endorsing the proposition that the UK should remain in the United Kingdom. Another referendum may be on the horizon, however, with a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU providing a potential opportunity for the pro-independence SNP government to justify […]
The UK has the widest gap in voter participation between older and younger citizens in the OECD. Many argue, that despite this, millennials and young people in general are not alienated from politics, but that they are engaged to an extent, but not necessarily in traditional ways. Stuart Fox argues that in order to get […]
The Government’s devolution agenda has centred around the “Northern Powerhouse”, which is seeing Greater Manchester take the lead in enjoying a greater degree of autonomy from central government. Here, Paul Lakin reacts to Jeremy Corbyn’s take on the Northern Powerhouse, which he has termed a ‘cruel deception’. Lakin argues that Corbyn should set out an […]
Under the 1998 Data Protection Act, citizens have the right to access CCTV images of themselves. One researcher, Keith Spiller, sought to test out how easy it actually is to gain access to the footage, and sought to deliberately stand in site of CCTV cameras for two minutes at a time. He found it far […]
To what extent has there been a shift in attitudes toward asylum seekers in the UK during the refugee crisis? Bridget Anderson writes that in the wave of support for welcoming refugees there has been a surprising silence about the situation of asylum seekers already in the UK. She argues that if we are to […]
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