Author Archives: Ben Stephenson

Opinion: Why are we campaigning for AV?

We have never really been able to call the UK a true democracy. We have an unelected second chamber, made up of Lords Spiritual (Bishops), Lords Temporal (those granted hereditary peerages and selected by unelected party leaders) and Lords Surprising (Messrs Sugar and Prescott). The electorate in this country is allowed to vote for a change in government, so far, only at times that suit the government of the day and we have no codified constitution that outlines, irrevocably, a list of rights and freedoms.

The most obvious and fundamental issue with our democracy, however, is obviously the extent to which …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 48 Comments

Opinion: A Letter to Nick Clegg

Dear Nick,

Don’t give away the family silver. Since the formation of the Liberal Party all those years ago, we’ve campaigned for massive overhaul and clear change to the way in which are governments are appointed. Throughout a raft of changes in policy on education, defence, welfare and the economy, the one steadfast within the party has always been that with a quarter of the votes returning ten percent of the seats, the election system in our country simply does not work.

To discuss the notion of a coalition government with the Conservative Party, a party at whose core lies the belief …

Posted in Op-eds | 76 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Caron LindsayCaron Lindsay
    Thank you, Tom!...
  • Meg Thomas
    I agree with Sam it is a much wider and insidious problem than cannot be solved by superb services and policies alone. It goes back to how we educate young peop...
  • Peter Davies
    @Simon "The costs of HS2 are indeed outgrageous – but as a few minutes ressearch would show , have little to do with fraud and a lot to do with the utter madn...
  • Judy Abel
    @Hywel fair point although second class letters are so slow that I would prefer the French model!...
  • Judy Abel
    @Ynys I stand corrected but at least I got the right playwright and the right play!...