Tony Wright

Review: What’s In It For Me? Self-Interest and Political Difference, by Thomas Prosser

Tony WrightAugust 5, 2021

‘The premise of this book’, writes the author, ‘is that humans are self-interested and that this manifests itself politically’. In other words, because human b...

BrexitReviewsUK5 min read

Review: Our City: Migrants and the Making of Modern Birmingham, by Jon Bloomfield

Tony WrightDecember 10, 2019

In Jonathan Coe's recent novel Middle England, one of the characters offers this reflection: ‘A more cheering thought rose up: the realisation that here, on th...

ReviewsUKWelfare & Inequality6 min read

Politics has turned nasty. We need a return to civility

Tony WrightJune 12, 2019

Earlier this year, I gave evidence to the House of Commons Liaison Committee (alongside Professor Meg Russell, director of the Constitution Unit) on the topic ...

Other3 min read

Rethinking Democracy

Tony Wright and Andrew GambleMay 13, 2019

Last year was the centenary of the 1918 Act which introduced universal suffrage for all male citizens over twenty?one and all female citizens over thirty. Wome...

BrexitGovernmentLong ReadsUK11 min read

Remembering Tony King

Tony WrightFebruary 12, 2018

There is a table at the Tate Britain restaurant that the waiters there always referred to as ‘Professor King's table’. It is situated near the bar, a discreet d...

CommentGovernmentUK5 min read

After the Election: Where Now?

Tony WrightJune 19, 2015

We are now all being wise after the event. It seems so obvious that this was an election that the Conservatives were likely to win, a fact only obscured by thos...

CommentElections5 min read

The Mould Broken

Tony WrightFebruary 2, 2015

A long generation ago, in 1979, Roy Jenkins announced in his Dimbleby lecture that the time had come to break the mould of British politics. It has taken a long...

CommentScotland6 min read

Broken Politics?

Tony WrightAugust 6, 2014

It is a commonplace of commentary that the Westminster political system is broken. Here is the political journalist Gaby Hinsliff, recently reviewing a book on ...

CommentElectionsUK5 min read

Breaking Britain?

Tony WrightJanuary 21, 2014

It turns out that breaking up is not so very hard to do. It might have been thought that the prospect of the breaking of Britain, which would be the consequence...

CommentScotlandUK5 min read

After the Party?

Michael Jacobs and Tony WrightJuly 15, 2013

One of the central facts of recent British politics has been the decline of the political party. Fewer people are voting for them; memberships have collapsed; a...

CommentElectionsGovernmentUK5 min read

Whitehall at War?

Tony WrightJanuary 18, 2013

The recent exposure of serious tensions between ministers and civil servants has once again highlighted this most sensitive of constitutional relationships. It ...

CommentGovernment5 min read