Tag Archives: vernon bogdanor

Cameron needs to stop the BS, remember his studies and behave like a statesman/person

It’s ten o’clock and the polls have just closed all over the country. From St Agnes island hall in the south to North Unst Public Hall in the north, the presiding officers have just locked the doors and are preparing the ballot boxes for transportation to the local counting centre. I can now say what I like!

There has been much dangerous talk in the election campaign. David Cameron has implied that a government with the tacit support of Scottish MPs would somehow be illegitimate. He has accused Ed Miliband of preparing a “con trick” to enter Downing Street with the support of the SNP. Even Nick Clegg has joined in by referring to a “coalition of the losers” – being a possible bloc of MPs led by the leader of the second largest party.

All this sort of talk must now stop.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 2 Comments

Predicting the future: we didn’t turn Japanese

Shortly after the Conservative Party won its fourth general election in a row in 1992, a symposium met to consider the question of whether Britain – formerly a country with regularly rotating government between the two main parties – was turning into a political version of Japan, where the same party had been in power for nearly forty years.

Even between the event occurring and the publication of a book based on it, Turning Japanese? Britain with a Permanent Party of Government (eds. Helen Margretts and Gareth Smyth), political events in both countries had taken a dramatic turn. In Japan the LDP lost power, starting a period of much greater political fluidity with even subsequent LDP Prime Ministers struggling to restore their party’s previous dominance. Meanwhile in Britain the collapse of the Conservative Party’s economic policies following Britain’s enforced exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) quickly made the government appear very vulnerable, even if debates in Labour continued on whether, as John Smith preferred, one more heave was all that was needed or whether, as Tony Blair insisted on after John Smith’s death, a more radical reshaping of the party was required to win the next election.

Posted in Books and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , , , and | 5 Comments

LibLink: Vernon Bogdanor – Change the voting system, change the UK

Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at the University of Oxford, and David Cameron’s tutor at Brasenose College, looks at the alternative vote referendum in an article in today’s Financial Times, and suggests it could have far-reaching consequences. But first he points out the Alice in Wonderland politics of the referendum:

The Lib Dems, who favour true proportional representation, now back a system that can yield even more disproportional outcomes than first-past-the-post. Labour, the only party to propose a referendum on AV in its manifesto, will oppose the bill providing for it. The Conservatives will oppose change, but in muted fashion, since

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 11 Comments
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