On procedure and politics

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined

Party conferences: UK vs Canada

Party conferences seem to be a Big Deal in the UK. I mean, it’s actually called “Conference season” and parliament even shuts down for 3 weeks while the three main parties hold their annual conferences one after the other. I don’t know if this year’s schedule is typical, if the parties coordinate these things with [...]

More on the Labour leadership vote

A rather innocuous story in The Independent today caught my eye.  Ten percent of the ballots cast in the leadership vote were declared spoiled, the bulk of them being votes cast by members of the trade unions. That in itself was marginally interesting. What was far more interesting was learning that of the 375,000 total [...]

Labour leadership: follow-up

I was able to watch the results of the Labour Party’s leadership race thanks to the BBC livestreaming it on their website. Here are a few observations. When the candidates were introduced prior to the voting results being revealed, I thought David Miliband had won, given the hugely satisfied smile he wore. Ed Miliband, however, [...]

Obligatory post on the Labour leadership race

Tomorrow, we’ll find out who will be the new leader of the Labour party. The only real suspense is which Miliband brother will walk away with the top spot, David or Ed. I will admit that I’ve not been following the race that closely, for a couple of reasons. First, I’m not British, but even [...]

Observing question period

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend in person a session of Question Period at one of Canada’s provincial legislatures. I have watched television coverage of this legislature’s proceedings, including Question Period, and knew that it could be rather raucous at times. I was informed afterward that this had been a relatively quiet day, which [...]

Clegg’s Conference Speech

Caveat: I’ve never listened to a speech delivered by Nick Clegg to the party faithful before. I have listened to a couple of speeches he’s done as Deputy Prime Minister, but never one delivered in his capacity as leader of the Liberal Democrats. I did watch Clegg’s keynote speech delivered earlier today at the Lib [...]

Book review: The Best Laid Plans

WARNING: Slight spoilers below. The Best Laid Plans is a novel by Terry Fallis which won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 2008. The premise of the novel is quite simple. The main character, Daniel Addison, leaves Ottawa after several years working for the Liberal Party, most recently as head speechwriter for the leader [...]

Don’t worry about polls

“Don’t worry about polls, but if you do, don’t admit it.” (Rosalynn Carter) Opinion polls taken outside of an election campaign might provide a snapshot of current public opinion regarding political parties, but most of the time, the findings should be taken with a grain of salt. The way the media reports on such polls [...]

Rethinking fixed-term parliaments

I have discussed the issue of fixed-term parliaments previously (see this post and this post), mostly in the context of the legislation under consideration in the UK, however, it is an issue I’d written about on a previous blog (now defunct), when various Canadian provinces and the Canadian federal government were considering adopting fixed-term parliaments. [...]

Why the Tea Party won’t work in Canada or the UK

Alex Massie wrote an interesting, albeit brief, blog post on why there couldn’t be a “Tea Party” movement in the UK. The points he makes apply equally to Canada. As Massie points out: The establishment party controls who is put on the ballot even in the so-called open primaries and, generally speaking, the party isn’t [...]

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