The text below is a letter from me to the Financial Times, published on 17 August 2016 . Sir, Henry Mance, in “Labour’s leadership battle exposes civil war for soul of party” (August 12) observes that moderate Labour MPs can take heart from the example of the 1980s — when, …
An updated version of this piece can be found on the PolicyBristol blog. What have we learned in the eight days since Britain voted to leave the EU by a margin of 3.8 percentage points? The country has jettisoned the foreign policy followed by all governments since 1961 yet the …
Brexit requires radical change in the UK political system Read More »
The Labour Party is presently considering its future policy on the renewal of the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system. If anyone is interested, I have submitted my thoughts on this to the party’s International Policy Commission. In that submission I explore the history of Labour Party policy on nuclear weapons and …
Replacing Trident: some lessons of history for Labour Read More »
What do the Labour Party’s elections for leader and deputy leader tell us about ideological divisions within the party? Certainly the process has turned out to be much more newsworthy and more politically divisive than anybody expected. With my University of Bristol colleague Mark Wickham-Jones I have been analysing developments and …
The Factionalisation of Labour’s Parliamentary Party Read More »
Does geography play any part within a political party’s internal elections? As they build their Parliamentary careers, do potential party leaders develop a support base among other MPs representing the same region? In an LSE blog post with Ron Johnston, David Manley, Charles Pattie, Hugh Pemberton and Mark Wickham-Jones we map where …
‘Friends and neighbours’ effects in the 2010 Labour leadership contest Read More »