On procedure and politics

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined

Some interesting links

This blog’s author is rather swamped at work these days, and so I will take this opportunity to share with you some recent links that have caught my attention. 1. Is the tide finally turning for Nick Clegg? Having gone from everyone’s darling after the first ever leaders’ debates last spring to the most despised [...]

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 [...]

Link sharing

I’d like to share a few links with readers. Everyone’s favourite elections expert from down under, Antony Green, is in the UK at the moment – in part to observe the ongoing referendum campaign, and in part for a vacation. He has a provided a very interesting contribution to the British Politics and Policy at [...]

Watch those open mics

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Prime Minister David Cameron were in Nottingham promoting the government’s budget. During a round of applause, Clegg was caught off mic saying to Cameron: “If we keep doing this we won’t find anything to bloody disagree on in a bloody TV debate.” You can hear it for yourself on [...]

Media agendas?

I can’t help but comment about one of the oddest examples of pointless editorial commentary I’ve ever come across. Yesterday, while perusing the Daily Telegraph website, I followed a link to this story, which is about David Cameron’s “gift for making the Government’s chosen course seem like the only natural thing”, at least according to [...]

Not the best, but somewhat trusted

I haven’t blogged about the myriad of opinion poll which appear pretty much weekly in the UK because I don’t think polls conducted between elections – particularly when no election is expected any time soon – really contribute much to the debate. The way the media has followed the (mostly downward) path of the Lib [...]

Fall Guy

In the slew of opinion pieces and analysis that followed the by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth, two in particular caught my eye, but not because of their analysis of the by-election results. In “What really won Oldham East and Saddleworth for Labour“, the Telegraph’s John McTernan notes: Nick Clegg may draw some crumbs of [...]

New progressives

I apologize for my prolonged absence from blogging. As sometimes happens, real life events intervened in such a way that I simply was not able to properly focus on things political, which was at times frustrating, because there were a few events that did catch my attention and on which I wanted to comment. One [...]

On truth in politics

According to American journalist Michael Kinsley, a gaffe is what happens when a politician accidentally tells the truth, or inadvertently says something publicly that they privately believe is true, but would ordinarily not say publicly because they believe it is politically harmful. There are ample examples of politicians caught in such situations. During the recent [...]

Yes Deputy Prime Minister, Part 2

In an earlier post, I looked at the position of Deputy Prime Minister, specifically in Canada and the UK, contrasting the tradtional role of DPM with the very high profile role assigned to Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, in the coalition government. This post simply updates the previous. On 3 June 2010, [...]

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