Ballots & Bullets

BNP talking to voters. Image by Matthew Barrett.

This post originally appeared on British Politics and Policy at LSE.

Among academics who study elections and political parties, most accept that the way a party campaigns can have important effects on its overall performance. As scholars such as Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie have argued (and shown), amidst the decline of partisanship, …

It is now more than four years since Gordon Brown decided not to have an election in late-2007. No election in post-war history has come so close to being called, only then not to happen.  Having allowed speculation about a possible contest to get out of hand, Brown baulked at the final hurdle, once shown the results of Labour’s opinion …

‘We campaign in poetry, but when we’re elected we’re forced to govern in prose’. So said then-New York Governor Mario Cuomo in 1985.

As someone interested in political fiction of different kinds – films, novels, television dramas and plays – I have shied away from poetry. However, I know it’s out there. Spike Milligan for example wrote a …

Despite our politicians’ constant clamour for novelty and their wish to appear as pretty modern kind of guys, nothing is truly new in politics.

I am currently researching the history of party posters since the Liberal landslide of 1906 and my analysis of their role in the 2010 campaign has just been published in the latest account of the election, …