Author Archives: Costigan Quist

Opinion: Time to drag our treatment of parties out of the 18th century

By Costigan Quist | Thu 16th July 2009 - 4:15 pm

Should councillors, MPs or MEPs elected under a party banner be able to defect to another party without facing re-election?

Is it acceptable to demand councillors pay a proportion of their allowance to their party – so-called tithing?

Can MPs’ £10,000 communications allowance really be used to leaflet constituents as long as it doesn’t promote a party?

Three questions, one common source of confusion: the role of parties in our political system.

Go back a couple of hundred years and the situation was clearer. Voters elected a gentleman to represent their interests in parliament with no party machine to speak of and little …

Posted in Op-eds | 15 Comments

Opinion: Replacing Labour in four easy steps

By Costigan Quist | Sun 14th June 2009 - 2:30 pm

A few days ago, a dashing young Liberal Democrat leader suggested that Britain’s third party could overtake Labour. Clegg (for it was he) affirmed his belief that “the Liberal Democrats can replace Labour as the progressive party in British politics”.

Nick talks of the Lib Dems as the dominant political party of urban Britain – debatable, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He speaks of the Lib Dems winning the battle of ideas across a range of areas, something most Lib Dems at least are likely to concur with, even if our opponents might not …