On procedure and politics

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined

Collective ministerial responsibility and Coalition Government

There appears to be significant interest in the issue of collective ministerial responsibility during Coalition government. For what follows, I will be largely quoting or paraphrasing Vernon Bogdanor’s The Coalition and the Constitution. Following the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in May 2010, the Coalition issued its Programme for Government which outlined in detail [...]

Inside the New Zealand House of Representatives

Like its Australian counterpart, the New Zealand House of Representatives’ debating chamber is arranged in a horseshoe shape. The Chamber measures 19.3 by 13.12 metres, which is  smaller than the Canadian  and UK Houses of Commons. As in the other chambers, the Speaker sits at one end, on a dais, and the Clerk and other [...]

Some parliamentary reforms to look forward to in 2012

The BBC’s parliamentary correspondent, Mark D’Arcy, has an interesting look ahead  at what to expect at Westminster in 2012, with two items in particular worthy of special attention. The first will be a review of the Backbench Business Committee. I have written a number of posts about this new committee, and many readers have frequently [...]

Christina Blizzard doesn’t get coalition

I was hoping, in the wake of the formation of the UK Coalition government in 2010, that Canadian political journalists and columnists would perhaps follow events in the UK a bit more closely (or at all) and maybe even occasionally write about how the Coalition was getting along, if only to provide a contrast to [...]

Understanding government formation

There is some confusion in Canada (and elsewhere) as to how government formation occurs following a general election, particularly when an election results in a hung parliament. This post will attempt to provide a basic overview of the process. First, there are a couple of key concepts to understand and keep in mind. 1. In [...]

The Coalition Government’s working majority

Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart have prepared a very interesting analysis on the subject of the Coalition Government’s Commons’ majority. As stated in the blog post, the Coalition enjoys a 76 seat majority: 363 government MPs (306 Conservatives and 57 Liberal Democrats) out of 650, which leaves 287 non-government MPs. Of that 287, however, five seats are [...]

Minority assumptions

At the outset of the most recent Canadian federal election campaign in March of this year, I wrote a post addressing how the concept of coalition government had become almost toxic in Canada. This phenomenon didn’t start this year – it dates back, as the posts states, to events in 2008. The Canadian media has [...]

Coalition Works!

Media speculation in the UK over the health of the coalition began quite literally the day the agreement between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats was announced and hasn’t ever gone away. Indeed, as the referendum campaign on AV heated up and very public spats occurred between Conservative and Lib Dem ministers, many papers and columnists [...]

Nicked – the musical (revisited)

Back in February, I wrote about a musical being produced in the UK based on the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition. Entitled Nicked, it was staged in Suffolk on 30 April, as part of the HighTide Festival. You can read a review of it here. And even better, you can see a performance of one of the [...]

What’s what in Parliament: The Mace

If you’ve ever watched the proceedings in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom or Canada, any provincial legislature, or the Houses of Representatives of Australia or New Zealand, to name but a few legislative bodies, you may have noticed the ceremonial Mace resting on the Table, or perhaps being carried into or out [...]

keep looking »
  • Share |
Page 1 of 512345