Category: AP Britain

Political Parties in Britain: Then & Now

Leading constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor tells Laurie Taylor that the age of the mass political party is over, but it still rules in our system of government.

Mass political parties started in the 1870s as a response to the advent of mass suffrage. 50 years ago, nearly one in ten people belonged to a party; it has now declined to one in 88, yet they still have a huge role in administering power in our democracy. It is that anomaly which constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor claims lies behind the frustration and disillusionment that so many people feel towards our political system. He discusses his book, The New British Constitution, with Laurie.

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Warning over 'surveillance state'

The proliferation of CCTV cameras and the growth of the DNA database were two examples of threats to privacy, the Lords constitution committee said.

Those subject to unlawful surveillance should be compensated while the policy of DNA retention should be rethought.

The government said CCTV and DNA were “essential crime fighting tools”.

Surveillance State?

The beginning of the end of Labour?

Gordon Brown is set to lead Labour into an election bloodbath so crushing it could take his party a decade to recover, according to the largest ever poll of marginal seats which predicts a landslide victory for David Cameron.

Eight cabinet ministers, including the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary, would be swept away in the rout as the Tories marched into Downing Street with a majority of 146, says the poll, conducted for PoliticsHome.com and exclusively revealed to The Observer. Seats that have been Labour since the First World War would fall.

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Britannia Redux: The Economist's Special Report

The birthplace of globalisation in the 19th century is coping well with the latest round, writes Merril Stevenson. But can it keep it up?

To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine:
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.

Rule Britannia, Britain‘s unofficial national anthem dating from 1740, celebrated not only Britain‘s military might but its commercial prowess as well. A century later Britain had fully risen to the advance praise. This was the high-water mark of its influence in the world, which coincided with the last great wave of globalisation. The first country to industrialise, Britain was soon turning out more than half the world’s coal, pig-iron and cotton textiles. In 1880 its exports of manufactured goods accounted for 40% of the global total, and by 1890 it owned more shipping tonnage than the rest of the world put together.

Less than a century on from those glory days Britain had become the “sick man of Europe”, infamous for wild swings in inflation and growth and for confrontational trade unions. Shorn of its empire and a late and reluctant arrival in the European Community, Britain was grappling with the prospect of irreversible decline.

Now its fortunes are looking up again. Steady economic expansion for the past 14 years has pushed its GDP per head above that of France and Germany. Its jobless figures are the second-lowest in the European Union. Inflation has been modest, and sterling, the Achilles heel of governments from Clement Attlee’s to John Major’s, is if anything too strong for Britain‘s good.

Read the rest of the report here

On the House of Lords

The cure of admiring the Lords is to go and look at it. (Walter Bagehot)

The House of Lords is like a glass of champagne that has stood for five days (Clement Atlee)

A Brief History of the Lords

On the Wakeham Report

On the White Paper

Implications on Democracy

Response Sheet for Lords Readings (using the four readings above)

——More on the Lords…

Blair’s Vacillating Stance(s)

ummm…the other House of Lords (I can’t say which is more nauseating)

If that is not disturbing enough, you can watch the real House of Lords here