The media caravan has already moved on, but for the record here are five more observations about the boundaries vote, in increasing order of importance.
1. Not that it … Read the rest
Month: January 2013
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
In his novel Desert the noble prize winning French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio describes the two waves of destruction to which nomad cultures in the … Read the rest
Yesterday’s Commons vote on the electoral boundaries was a headache for the Conservative Party. The vote – an attempt to over-turn an amendment made in the House of Lords – … Read the rest
Like every socialist French government of the post-Cold War era, President François Hollande had pledged to set an end to French interference in African affairs, to end “la Françafrique”. As … Read the rest
Since the 1970s it has been widely accepted that incumbent legislators in a number of countries representing single member districts have enjoyed an advantage in their bids for re-election. In … Read the rest
As a third-year PhD student in Political Science at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, I had the opportunity last semester to join the Centre for the Study … Read the rest
Hugh Gaitskell by Judy Cassab
It’s now exactly fifty years since Hugh Gaitskell, Leader of the Labour Party from 1955 to 1963, died of a mysterious illness.
The Labour Party … Read the rest
If you read a particular kind of newspaper, notably the Guardian, listen to Radio 4 or follow a certain kind of journalist or politician on … Read the rest
The Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies is now an institutional columnist for the Global Policy Journal. The second post in the series comes from Caryl Thompson and looks at … Read the rest
“The crisis of youth unemployment risks creating a generation that is disengaged…a generation that believes they have no stake in the country”, Michael Dugher, Labour party vice-chairman, recently told the Yorkshire Post. He calls for giving 16 and 17 year olds the vote so that they have “a tangible way of expressing their views”, and that this is “just what the country needs to engage young people in politics”. He suggests that a commitment to lower the voting age to 16 could be included in Labour’s 2015 manifesto.
Andrew Adonis – member of the House of Lords and a minister in the last Labour Government – agrees, and argues that schools need to play a key role in re-engaging young people with British democracy. To that end, he suggests that polling stations should be located in every secondary school, to encourage newly enfranchised 16 and 17 year olds to vote.
So would a Labour government in 2015 lead to our secondary schools being full of eager 16 and 17 year old voters in time for the 2020 General Election?