Update on e-petitions
The UK House of Commons Procedure Committee recently released its report on the Government’s e-petitions scheme. It is well known that there is significant confusion regarding how many signatures an e-petition requires in order for it to be debated in the House of Commons. Indeed, this blog regularly gets hits from people searching for information [...]
Some interesting links: rebel MPs, e-petitions, hung parliaments, and political disengagement
1. Rebels of the Chamber Isabel Hardman has a fascinating piece looking at some of the most rebellious backbench MPs in the UK House of Commons: Once an MP starts down the route of the serial rebel, it seems easier for the whips to leave them be. Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, is one such [...]
Coalition Street or Parliament Hill Street Blues?
There is an interesting article on the BBC website discussing the dearth of British political dramas on television. Inspired by the airing of a Danish political drama, Borgen, on BBC Four, the writer, Terry Stiastny, wonders why there have been no British equivalents since the excellent House of Cards which aired in the 1990s. Borgen is [...]
The debate on Scotland indepedence heats up
Debate on the issue of independence for Scotland has heated up again this past week in the United Kingdom. On Tuesday (10 January), the Government launched its consultation on “facilitating a legal, fair and decisive referendum on whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom”, which you can download here. The “legal” bit seems to be [...]
Recall of MPs draft bill: some concerns
The UK Coalition government has presented to Parliament a draft bill on the recall of MPs. As I have previously written, there is currently only one Commonwealth jurisdiction which has recall legislation in place, and that is the Canadian province of British Columbia. You can read about BC’s recall legislation in this post. The UK [...]
Some Interesting Links
Blogging has been and will continue to be rather light over the next few weeks due to other pressing demands that arise during the holiday season. However, I do want to share a few interesting links with readers. 1. Codifying the UK Constitution Last year, the UK House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee [...]
Procedure Committee looks at e-petitions
The UK House of Commons Procedure Committee heard from Leader of the House of Commons, the Rt. Hon. Sir George Young, and from MP Natascha Engel, chair of the Backbench Business Committee (BBC) on the matter of e-petitions. You can watch the meeting here, but I will summarise below some of the key issues raised. [...]
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 [...]
The Speaker’s Seat
In an earlier post, I wrote about some aspects of the UK House of Commons Procedure Committee’s report reviewing the election process for certain positions in the House of Commons. One part of the report which I did not comment on concerned the brief discussion of creating a “Speaker’s Seat”. As I have previously mentioned [...]
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 [...]
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On procedure and politics by Radical Centrist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
