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