Ballots & Bullets

This is the twenty-fifth in a series of posts that report on the state of the parties as measured by opinion polls. By pooling together all the available polling evidence we can reduce the impact of the random variation each individual survey inevitably produces. Most of the short term advances and setbacks in party polling fortunes are nothing more than …

We’ve been producing end-of session reports on the behaviour of government MPs at Westminster for almost a decade. Last year’s was a record-breaker: Coalition MPs rebelling more often than MPs in any other session since 1945. This morning we’ve launched the report on the 2012-13 session. It tells a more nuanced story, but with plenty to concern the party whips:…

If you are a political scientist or a political historian or – like me – some hybrid of the two, you really should avoid predicting the future. That said, put a microphone and a camera close to our faces and most of us will do just that.

In the early days of the current coalition government I was asked by …

Image by Andreas Solberg

Not so long ago, I used this blog to raise the issue of whether the property-owning democracy – the vision of widespread home ownership that has long been the dream of Conservative politicians – was under threat.

At the time, speculation about declining levels of home ownership was exactly that – speculation. But courtesy of newly …

For anyone interested in Mrs Thatcher, there are few better sources than the wonderful website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.  It is a model of what you would want from a political archive.  Out of the thousands of documents available free-of-charge online, my favourite – and one I’ve used in teaching for several years – is the one remaining …

TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, GREETING!

AND WHEREAS most people on Monday were interested in press regulation, we were interested in Conservative rebellions on press regulation.

AND WHEREAS the vote would have been very tight anyway, the chances of a Conservative victory in the division lobbies had become impossible once a half-decent number of Conservative MPs declared …

Image by Euro Realist

European integration has long been a divisive issue in British politics, leading to differences within and between parties. Voters’ views on this tend to vary by party support but, in recent years at least, this subject has been some way down the list of issues that voters view as most salient. How do voters view the …

Image by Ben Fisher/GAVI Alliance

Conservatives clearly care an awful lot – some would say too much – about Europe. But most of them care even more about winning elections. Naturally the Tory EUphoria occasioned by David Cameron’s referendum pledge owes something to his appearing to promise better-off-outters a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put their case directly to the British people. …

This is the twenty-first in a series of posts that report on the state of the parties as measured by opinion polls. By pooling together all the available polling evidence we can reduce the impact of the random variation each individual survey inevitably produces. Most of the short term advances and setbacks in party polling fortunes are nothing more than …

It was clear even before the 2010 election that there was the potential for clashes between the Conservative leadership and their MPs on issues such as same-sex marriage.  An article published in 2009 noted that ‘David Cameron, and especially George Osborne are much more socially liberal than much of their parliamentary party, and that split will need to be handled …