Gordomania?
There’s a short report in the Evening Standard tonight about Gordon Brown giving his stamp of authority to proposals the Labour Party is considering which are designed to usher in a new era of party politics. With party membership in long term decline (although there has been a slight blip upwards for the Tories since David Cameron became leader) parties are considering new ways of connecting to supporters who may help out with campaigning.
A new Lib-Lab pact?
Students quite often give me quizzical looks when they see me ploughing through newspapers, scissors at the ready. Quite simply I am looking for those nuggets of information that will hopefully find their way into a new first past the post article, or one of the tutor2u revision guides. Here are details of one I filed this morning, which is a corker. Vernon Bogdanor, one of the most respected authorities on British politics penned an article in The Times last week postulating the idea of a new coalition between a Brown led Labour Party and Lib-Dem rump led by Nick Clegg. Fantasy politics?
Reclaiming liberties?
The pick of the weekend’s press coverage of the latest developments in British politics has to be the focus on rights and liberties. The current government has shown something of a split personality when it comes to civil rights. On the one hand it has passed the Human Rights Act, but on the other has passed a raft of legislation that has been used to (deliberately or not) severely curtail liberties. Of course, the Tories before them were not exactly guilt free. Here we could think of death on the rock, union bans at GCHQ, Spycatcher, banning illegal raves (identified as events where “music with a repetitive beat” is played). But people from across the political spectrum (except Labour ministers) have expressed grave concerns about erosion of rights and liberties that took years of effort to establish have been swept away by government since 1997. This weekend a series of events launched by the Convention on Modern Liberty took place throughout the UK. According to the Observer, the event was the biggest convention on civil liberties ever held in Britain. Is this a sign that people are no longer satisfied to watch us sleepwalking towards a police state?
read more...»Pick of the papers
I would draw the attention of blog readers to two excellent comment pieces on the current state of the Conservative Party as in the eyes of many it moves closer to government. The first is by Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer. The second by former Cabinet minister Michael Portillo in the Sunday Times. Both provide the kind of context and analysis that Politics students should be exposing themselves to.
Taking liberties
According to the Independent website:
‘The full extent of state powers to detain people without charge, cover up Government errors, hold the DNA of the innocent and share personal data between public bodies has been revealed in a devastating analysis of the erosion of civil liberties in Britain over the past decade.’
read more...»Posher than John Lewis?
New research suggests that Labour have failed in opening access to higher education and have done little in their attempt to improve social mobility. Say the Guardian:
‘Attempts to increase the proportion of university students from low-income families and ethnic minorities have been at the heart of Labour’s higher education policies. They are linked to the government’s target to have 50% of young people in university by next year.
Universities such as Bristol have tried to shake off their reputation for elitism, with initiatives to encourage under-represented groups to apply. But the research shows that at Bristol University 3% of students come from the poorest quarter of homes, while 54% are from the richest quarter.’
read more...»Why no Lords reform
Sometimes there is little to report from the weekend’s press in terms of must read British Politics stories, but this weekend is the polar opposite.
There is an excellent article by Nick Cohen about how reform is driven by short term political expedeincy rather than long term thinking about the rational basis of change.
One to cut out and keep for when covering this topic.
Devolution disaster?
To what extent does the current budget crisis strengthen or weaken the argument for devolution?
If you are behind the curve on this, the SNP government’s £33b budget for the next fiscal year was voted down by a coalition of Labour, Lib Dem and Green MSPs. Now the Lib Dems have committed a volte face and are apparently back in negotiations with the SNP about overcoming the impasse. The main Lib Dem sticking point was a 2p income tax cut the party wanted that the SNP would not agree to. The Lib Dems may now be prepared to drop that as part of the deal.
If the budget fails a second time, then the government is expected to resign and fresh elections called.
As one of the blogger pointed out on the BBC website, Scotland has gone from a coalition government, to minority government, and now small parties are determining who governs. Is this what the Scots wanted in a devolution settlement? Something else to consider is whether this is the kind of shenanigans we would want in the Westminster Parliament - after all this is what a post PR world would probably look like.
Cleggover puts his foot in it (again)
Sometimes I get asked by students whether there will be a relaignment of the parties, and if the Liberal Democrats have a chance of supplanting the current big two. Some Lib Dems believe that if they can break through the 100 MP barrier in the Commons then this will be a tipping point. But without a system of proportional representation this looks unlikely.
As for my penny’s worth I just don’t think that the media and the electorate consider them a serious party. Some studies suggest that many of the voters who have cast ballots in their favour have done so as a protest vote and probably would reconsider voting for them if they had a realistic chance of forming the government. Partly it is also because it is hard for us, and them, to say what they are for. Lastly, I don’t want to write anything libellous here. But type the following word combinations into any search engine:
“Paddy Ashdown adultery”
“Mark Oaten rent boy”
“Charles Kennedy alcohol”
“Lembit Opik Cheeky Girls”
So part of their problem is of their own making. Their current leader, Nick Clegg, had some explaining to do to this week after a journalist apparently overheard him laying into his front bench team. The Indy reports some of what he said:
‘...he had damning words for three of his most high-profile frontbenchers as he travelled on a 90-minute flight from London to Inverness with his chief of staff, Danny Alexander. With reporter Adam Lee-Potter eavesdropping, he reportedly said of Steve Webb, his energy and climate change spokesman: “He’s a problem. I can’t stand the man. We need a new spokesman. We have to move him. We need someone with good ideas. At the moment, they just don’t add up.” But he added: “We need to keep him in the cabinet. As a backbencher, he’d be a pain in the arse, a voice for the left. And we can’t move him before the spring.”’
Read the rest of the report here.
Wipeout!
Today’s pick of the papers is a feature in the Observer reporting on a poll conducted by PoliticsHome.com predicting that the number of Labour MPs could be cut by half at the next election
read more...»The Lib Dems. What are they for?
I bet you have been as glued to the BBC Parliament coverage of the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth as I have. Yes, I haven’t watched a minute. And why would I?
read more...»Stoking the fire of the Scottish independence movement
I would hope that the Politics blog stimulates readers sufficiently to think about politics beyond being only an A level, and that there is some consideration of the significance of current events in shaping the way we are governed. Today’s Guardian contains an article suggesting that the devolution plans that Labour introduced for purely political reasons have backfired on them. But does this sort of comment really add much to the debate over our constitutional future?
read more...»Political parties: Lib Dems veer to the right
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, announced a major policy shift recently. In ‘Make it Happen’ he ditched many of the policies that put the party to the left of Labour. But can the ‘Cleggover’ pull it off?
read more...»Politics and two veg: short term and long term, who has the answers?
I discussed yesterday in my blog post that David Cameron seems to have the upper hand over Gordon Brown when it comes to who looks better placed to provide solutions to the nation’s problems, and that the knife crime debate could be used as the prism through which we could view this battle. Here I suggest that traditional politics is too narrow in outlook and that other areas, such as the latest thinking in economics (gulp!) may provide more fertile ground
read more...»Oh lord. Will we ever see an elected upper house?
Another plan for Lords reform has been published. But yet again there appears to be little political will behind the idea
read more...»
