On procedure and politics

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined

Report on 2010 elections for positions in the House

The UK House of Commons Procedure Committee released a report on 31 October 2011, which reviewed the elections held, for the first time, in most cases, to fill various positions in the House. It is an interesting report as it provides more detailed information into how exactly these elections proceeded. In the dying months of [...]

Leaders in search of parties

Liberal Democrat party leader Nick Clegg held a Q&A session during his party’s fall conference. At times, Clegg seemed almost impatient with some of the questions party members were asking, even lecturing one of them for not listening to the answer being provided. As noted in the Guardian: The Nick Clegg 2011 model is not [...]

Strange parallels: the threat of Tory hegemony?

A recent blog article in the New Statesman warns of a looming Tory hegemony with Labour relegated to permanent opposition. I think many Canadians might see some parallels with current trends in Canada. The author, George Eaton, identifies the following three factors that would lead to such a scenario: constituency boundary changes Scottish independence from [...]

Political perceptions

As I have frequently written on this blog, I read a variety of British media, left and right. I tend to avoid the tabloid press unless some other source directly links to an article that appeared in one of them, and so my daily reading includes the BBC, Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, New Statesmen, the Spectator [...]

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 [...]

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