Ballots & Bullets

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:…

Image by World Economic Forum

When doing qualitative research, people are sometimes willing to talk to you or to show you material but only on a background basis; that is, that it can inform what you write, but you cannot quote from it.  Amongst the many documents that Dennis Kavanagh and I were shown when writing our book on 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. …

Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie outline possible consequences of the Liberal Democrats voting down the proposed new Parliamentary constituencies

On Monday, 6 August, the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, announced that because the Prime Minister could not deliver Conservative party backbench support for the coalition’s House of Lords Reform Bill, it was being withdrawn. Mr Clegg interpreted this as …

Jeremy Hunt, the UK’s Culture Secretary, remains under fire for his handling of his ‘quasi-judicial’ role in deciding whether News Corp, Rupert Murdoch’s media company, could take full ownership of the broadcaster BSkyB. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, insists that the Leveson inquiry is the appropriate venue to determine the facts of the case, and no decision will be taken …

Today, David Cameron celebrates his 6^th anniversary as Tory leader. Even before reaching this milestone, Cameron had already surpassed half his predecessors since 1945 (Anthony Eden, Alec Douglas-Home, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard). This time next year, he will have overtaken two more (John Major and Harold Macmillan).

A more telling comparison, perhaps, given the revival …

Much of the comment on the sale of Northern Rock to Virgin Money has so far focused on whether the deal represents good value for money for the Treasury. The sale, worth an initial £747m, has left the government facing a loss of approximately £400m, and has been criticised for selling taxpayers short.

This criticism was also levelled at …

In reacting to the recent riots, David Cameron claimed that they reflected a widespread ‘moral collapse’ afflicting society. What is needed, according to the Prime Minister, is to rebuild our broken society. This is a recurring theme in Cameron’s rhetoric over recent years and it lies at the heart of his much-hyped ‘Big Society’ project, something designed to underpin the …

David Cameron responded to the concerns of his defence chiefs about the capacities of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force while fighting a war in Afghanistan and intervening in Libya by telling them: ‘You do the fighting, I’ll do the talking’.

Is this an appropriate division of labour at time of war? And if not, what should the Prime …

The Independent’s Steve Richards recently highlighted the existence of an ‘informal alliance’ between David Cameron and Tony Blair. Richards suggested that this ‘alliance’ is based on a policy agenda embraced by many of those who worked closest with Blair in government as well as some of Cameron’s most trusted Cabinet colleagues.

I reflected on the significance of this ‘alliance’ for …