Artificial preferences
There continues to be interest among many Canadians in the Alternative Vote (AV). Most recently the Liberal Party of Canada adopted a resolution calling for the implementation of a preferential ballot for national elections. This blog attempted to redo the May 2011 election using AV, and other bloggers have produced similar posts. This blog continues to [...]
Alberta 2012 Political Party Platform Comparisons
As was the case during last year’s federal election in Canada, many people are now looking for a site comparing the platforms of the political parties contesting the upcoming Alberta provincial election (23 April 2012). This blog cannot engage in a discussion of the policies of political parties, either at the provincial or federal level. [...]
Australia’s Labor Party’s revolving door leadership
In June 2010, Australian Labor Party leader and Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was ousted by his caucus in a leadership challenge won by Rudd’s Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who then became both party leader and Prime Minister. Less than two years later, history appears to be repeating itself, with Rudd now challenging Gillard’s leadership [...]
On candidate selection
Recently, a Canadian Member of Parliament elected as a member of the New Democratic Party (NDP) from the province of Quebec announced that she was crossing the floor to join the Liberal Party. The MP, Ms. St-Denis, explained that she found herself increasingly disagreeing with the positions the NDP were espousing in the House of [...]
No backbench rebellions, please, we’re Canadians
There has been much media focus in the United Kingdom over the numerous government backbench rebellions among both Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs since May 2010. This is regularly monitored on the Revolts.co.uk website. By September 2011, the number of Coalition Commons rebellions so far this Parliament stood at 150, a rebellion rate of a [...]
Thoughts on “Saving the House of Commons”
Aaron Wherry of Canada’s Maclean’s magazine recently wrote a blog post proposing a series of reforms to “save” the House of Commons. Some I have previously discussed on this blog, such as changes to Question Period. Readers proposed other reforms and ideas the comments. I thought I would offer my own thoughts on some of [...]
On floor crossing
There was a debate in the UK House of Commons today on a ten minute rule bill which would require MPs who switch parties to resign their seat and fight a by-election to secure the approval of their voters, if they want to remain in Parliament. For Canadian (and other) readers who aren’t familiar with [...]
The LPC and “open” primaries
I have written a bit in the past on the idea of political parties in Canada adopting the concept of “open primaries”. I argued that this would help to empower backbench MPs and then commented on a proposal put forward by Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson that Canada’s federal Liberal Party consider open primaries [...]
Saskatchewan 2011 Political Party Platform comparisons
As was the case during the recent federal election here in Canada, many people are now looking for a site comparing the platforms of the political parties contesting the upcoming Saskatchewan election (7 November 2011). This blog cannot engage in a discussion of the policies of political parties, either at the provincial or federal level. [...]
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 [...]
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On procedure and politics by Radical Centrist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
