Dispatches
An excellent Channel 4 Dispatches documentary last night on Cameron’s government. Lots of good stuff here for both Politics and Economics students, for example discussing the proposed “Office for Budget Responsibility” to introduce more independence into Treasury forecasts. There’s been lots of talk about fiscal tightening in recent months, but this program asks where exactly do the Tories want to start fiscal tightening - and the non-committal answers will have you laughing/crying*, with no Shadow Minister agreeing to a cut in their department; and the Conservative party not wanting to admit to future tax rises just before the election. It also discusses the issue of the Conservatives and their stance on Europe.
*delete as appropriate
Beefing up the Commons
During discussion on reforming the constitution, usually little attention is paid to reforming the powers and responsibilities of MPs. But creating a less executive dominated lower chamber would, it can be argued, lead to more effective legislation.
Late last year a new parliamentary committee was set up on Commons reform, chaired by Tony Wright MP. They came up with a series of recommendations, a summary of which can be found here.
According to the Guardian the main reforms are as follows: “The first is that the chairs of select committees should be elected by secret ballot of the house, and that committee members should be elected by secret ballot from within party groups. The second is that backbenchers should wrest a significant portion of the government’s power over the scheduling of business in the Commons. The third is that the public should be actively assisted to play a real part, including through the use of e-petitions, in setting the agenda for debate in parliament. All of these changes would weaken the power of the whips.”
And Henry Porter in today’s Observer reports on the arcane, but significant political battle on Standing Order 14.
Prospects for electoral reform, and a changed electoral landscape?
A little while back I penned an article for t2u’s digital politics magazine outlining the steps that would need to be taken for electoral reform to become a reality for Westminster. In summary, these were: a possible hung parliament; a PM committed to change; a majority of Cabinet; MP support; safe passage through the Lords; and at some stage in all of this a plebiscite of the people.
Like an alignment of the stars, this seems to be taking shape.
Yesterday’s vote on a vote in the Commons on AV brings us closer to moving from simple plurality than at any stage in recent history.
The BBC has some great graphics on how a remodelled election would have played out over the past three decades. Useful stuff for considering the merits of change. From a personal perspective, this move by Labour continues the British tradition of tinkering with the constitution for reasons of short term political expediency. In other words, Brown is trying to cuddle up to the Lib Dems—a horrible image for all sorts of reasons.
A simple guide to electoral reform
From the BBC website.
A useful Q&A on electoral reform explaining the AV debate and providing an overview of the operation of the various systems used in the UK in plain English.
I’ll file this away for use when doing Unit 1 revision later in the year.
More mayors
One of the constitutional reforms that gets little attention is directly elected mayors. A report from the New Local Government Network (NLGN) champions the idea for city regions.
Student Challenge - make their own Cameron poster
A terrific interactive resource here. Students have the chance to make their own version of the infamous David Cameron airbrushed, presidential campaign poster from the early weeks of Jan 2010. Simply type in the message, the strap line and off they go.
Launch Make Your Own David Cameron Poster
Judges and civil liberties
The question asking about the extent to which judges protect civil liberties resurfaced this week as the European Court in Strasbourg (which is, of course, a non EU body) when judges ruled that the government’s s44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 was illegal.
How adversarial is British Politics? Not very - according to this data
A fascinating piece of analysis by Phil Cowley and Mark Stuart over at revolts.co.uk. It suggests that, when it comes to the Conservative’s voting record on bills in the House of Commons, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have enjoyed the support of a very loyal opposition…
read more...»Schools: did things only get better?
Sometimes when looking for information relating to education policy with a view to route A for edexcel it’s a case of what to ignore rather than what to read. This is a good overview from a Guardian editorial, covering the pros and cons of Labour reform post 1997.
From a personal perspective I just can’t see how massive investment in education can’t have a positive long term supply side effect. Perhaps it will only be visible in five or ten years when the earliest cohort to benefit from the spending increases works through.
Pressure Groups & the NHS
As we approach the 2010 General Election, we can expect increasing media exposure of a variety of pressure groups hoping to shape and influence the political debate. A good example of a pressure group which has probably been beneath most people’s radar - until now - is in the Telegraph today. Nurses for Reform, a right-of-centre pressure group, are reported as having had a private meeting with David Cameron. The NHS is touchy subject for the Conservatives, as evidenced by the media storm whipped up by Daniel Hannan’s comments recently. So a meeting with a pressure group advocating full-scale privatisation of the NHS might shake things up again…
The heat is on
There are a raft of useful articles on party politics in the papers at the minute, and great as a basis for any media lessons.
In the Times yesterday they focused on the forthcoming Queen’s speech and the likelihood that it will kick off a massive political tussle over the coming months.
See the features here and here.
Polly Toynbee in the Guardian at the weekend penned an article calling for Labour MPs to do the honorable thing and force GB to step aside. There is a strong feeling in the Labour Party that the election may not be winnable with a new leader but the party is likely to suffer a crushing defeat if he remains in power. Toynbee suggests that it’s still all to play for if a new person gets in. See the article here.
Personally I have accepted that barring disaster David Cameron will be PM from May 2010 onwards, and that Labour should start preparing for life in opposition. At the moment there is no sense of what will happen next and the worry is that the party will lose direction. It’s happened before. Think Labour after 1979, or the Tories after 1997.
The New Conservative Policy on Europe - What Really Happened
Iain Martin has an exclusive over at the Wall Street Journal. He has been been handed a dodgy dossier which details the Conservative leadership’s fraught decision making process as they attempted to come up with the new policy. It is based on minutes of top secret meetings held in recent months and for historians offers a rare glimpse of the inner workings of the Tory high command.
Useful Politics online resources on the BBC
The BBC has launched a new online service that should make tracking politics on film easier.
There’s also a very useful section on the various governing institutions, what powers they have, and so forth.
I also came across a section on the online archives on Mrs Thatcher. Lots of clips and Panorama interviews that I once stored on VHS tapes.
Lectures on the constitution
I receieved an email today reminding me of a couple of lectures from UCL’s Constitution Unit.
Tories: defining times?
The Sun may have switched its support this week by backing the Conservatives, but another of the News International stable is far from convinced that the Tories offer a definig vision of what they would do in government.
It is an old truism that oppositions do not win elections, governments lose them, but voters need to be given a clearer idea about how the Tories would have governed differently from Labour and what direction a Conservative government would take. If this choice is not made clear, starting this week at the Tory conference in Manchester, we could see the gap between the two main parties close as the election battle gets more intense.
See the leading article in the Times here.
Labour: a summary of old and new Labour policies
Gordon Brown, in a rather desperate last ditch bid to regain some ground on the Tories, announced a blizzard of specific policy announcements at conference this week.
The Guardian on Wednesday provided a summary. I am going to use this list to update my notes on whether Labour has abandoned its traditional principles.
read more...»Labour pains
Unsurprisingly the papers have been dominated by reports linked to Labour’s conference in Brighton. For many activists and journos 2009 carries echoes of the Tories circa 1997 or Labour 1979 (though in both cases, no-one knew how bad it was to become) as the current government stare down the barrel of defeat and quite possibly years out of power that will be measured in double digits.
The Lib Dems: a failure to fly?
Grandiose debates about a potential realignment in British politics seem out of place after a shoddy conference by the Liberal Democrats.
Pick of the papers
On the UK front the papers seem to be dominated by analysis of the party political debate on tax and spending. For instance the Observer carries a front page story suggesting that the Tory attacks on Labour spending plans may backfire.
Here a Sunday Times editorial welcomes the development of a more open debate on the issue.
When it comes to American politics, coverage of the debate about Obama and racism dominates with acres of newsprint given over to this story.
Here Paul Harris reports from South Carolina, a state at the heart of the race row.
Keith Richburg, in an editorial piece, argues that Obama’s election victory is not proof of a post racial America.
Andrew Sullivan takes an in depth look at the race debate and outlines its significance for the Republicans.
Let battle commence
Steve Richards, writing in today’s Independent, suggests that it’s possibly too late in the political cycle for the main parties to change their leaders or their policies. It’s a nice preview of how the months between now and the election will pan out. For instance, Richards predicts that Brown will go to the country in May—the implication of this, of course, is that many blog readers could be voting in their first general election sooner than they think.
The battle over spending
What caught my eye in the papers this morning was a very useful feature in the Indy outlining Labour and Tory policy, as well as possible changes, on public services.
Sunday roundup
The most informative articles from the weekend’s papers concern Gordon Brown.
What’s the BNP got to do with it?
I think that at this stage of teaching and learning in the British Politics course it is a case of looking for matches between what’s in the news and what the syllabus focuses on. It is unlikely there will be a question on the significance of the BNP in UK parliamentary politics, but we shouldn’t miss the opportunity to see the news that Labour have abandoned its boycott of the far right by agreeing to appear on Question Time alongside the BNP as directly relevant to certain aspects of the course.
Labour and electoral reform
I’ve noted on another posting that due to the challenges facing Barack Obama as President, it is an exciting time to be studying American Politics. Likewise on this side of the Atlantic given that we are due a General Election before the end of this academic year.
Many are predicting electoral wipe-out for the current government on the scale Labour faced in 1983 and the Tories on a similar scale in 1997. But a report in today’s Observer suggests that Gordon Brown may seriously consider promising a poll on electoral reform on the same day as the election as a means of minimising collateral electoral damage.
read more...»Mandy at the LSE
I’ve just received news of an exciting opportunity to hear the deputy PM in all but name speak on the electoral challenges facing his government. Given that it’s this following Monday, It’s probably too short notice for our classes to make the trip into town given all the health and safety compliance that would need to be done. But one would hope that readers of the blog will be able to make it.
Read on for further details.
read more...»A level Politics on the up?
Details of national A level figures in today’s Telegraph suggest a recent surge of interest in study of Politics.
Heard the one about police fighting two year old terrorists?
Should powers designed to fight terrorism in the wake of 9/11 be used on people as young as two years old?
read more...»Tory triangulation
Further evidence of Conservative Party modernisation came this week in a speech from George Osborne.
read more...»Are we open to open primaries?
The selection of the Tory candidate for Totnes has caused a bit of a stir since she was chosen by a novel system, an open ballot of all voters in the constituency. It has been argued that the American election process is more open and democratic since candidates are chosen away from smoke filled rooms by party bosses, and instead by a vote by registered voters.
Quite a few candidates at AS level have suggested this system as a means of improving UK democracy, but I have always been a bit sceptical since in UK parliamentary elections we vote for a party rather than candidate. Moreover, academic research suggests that people don’t want more involvement in politics. Ok, some do, but the majority are content to cast their ballot every few years so long as politicians can be trusted to work for the interests of the country rather than personal/professional gain.
So Sarah Wollaston’s victory has got political commentators quite excited and an editorial in the Times is enthusiastic about extending peoplr power in this way.
Peter Riddell is on board as well, and adds intelligent comment in his column.
Perhaps it is time to move away from formal, membership based parties to a system where people can register as supporters. This alongside extension of the primaries idea might be a shot in the arm for democracy at a time when trust in politicians is at its lowest possible ebb. And if it doesn’t work, e.g. if turns out that the novelty wears off for voters after a couple of ballots and the usual party hardcore wrestle back control, then at least there was an attempt to do something.
Ditto for the idea of televised debates by the party leaders, and the same goes for economics, and even home affairs.
Brown v Cameron
If you want to keep up with the latest phoney election war ins and outs, then Simon Carr in today’s Indpendent makes it relatively painless.
