Category: Blog

Blog

Labour’s turmoil, the business of opposition and parliamentary democracy

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date August 8, 2016

By Jake Watts

Ralph Miliband’s Parliamentary Socialism celebrates its 55^th anniversary this year. A key historical work, it examined the relationship between the Labour Party and the UK Parliament. From a Marxist perspective, it argued that the failure of the British Left to achieve radical strides towards unadulterated socialism could be in substantial part attributed to the acquiescence of the Labour Party to the rules and norms of the United Kingdom’s parliamentary democracy. In putting forth such an argument, Miliband struck at the heart of a debate about the relationship between Labour and Parliament that underpins the disunity that now threatens the party’s efficacy as Her Majesty’s Opposition.

Tags British politics, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Official Opposition

Blog

Reflections from the PSA/House of Commons Placement at the Petitions Committee

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date August 5, 2016

By Tom Caygill

Last year I was one of the lucky two applicants to be offered one of the PSA/House of Commons Committee Office placements. The placement was a great opportunity: to utilise the skills I use in my PhD in a different context, while developing new ones; to better understand the ethos of select committees; and to discuss my doctoral research with parliamentary staff, which has gone on to help shape my final research design.

Tags House of Commons, parliamentary scrutiny, Petitions Committee, placement scheme, Political Studies Association, post-legislative scrutiny, PSA, public engagement

Blog

The Good Parliament: it is about more than breastfeeding and trans-toilets

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date August 1, 2016

By Sarah Childs

Lots of people have to plenty to say about what is wrong with the UK parliament. Many do so at some distance from the Palace of Westminster. The Good Parliament report, launched on 20 July, is the culmination of a year working intimately with members and with House officials: its 43 recommendations are guided by this experience and expertise and offer a ‘menu of reforms’ that when implemented would meet the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s gender sensitive parliament status. Indeed, the report goes beyond this approach in developing and setting out proposals to deliver a diversity sensitive parliament.

Tags diversity, gender, inclusion, UK Parliament

Blog

Parliamentary Select Committees: Are elected chairs the key to their success?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date July 5, 2016

By Mark Goodwin, Stephen Bates and Steve McKay

In the past two months, two of Britain’s richest men have been forced by Parliament to admit to, and apologise for, serious failings in their business practices that could end up costing them millions in compensation. Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley admitted to the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee that, despite being Britain’s 22nd richest person with an estimated fortune of £3.5bn, he had not been paying staff in the company’s main warehouse the minimum wage. A few weeks later, the same committee witnessed what many saw as a bizarre performance from another British billionaire, Sir Philip Green, as his failings in the sale of British Home Stores were exposed in between complaints about excessive staring from the committee members. These are just the latest in a string of high profile inquiries by parliamentary select committees over the past six years that have also seen Rupert Murdoch attacked with a custard pie, Michael Gove alleging a ‘Trot conspiracy’ in English schools and a vice president of Google being informed that “you do evil”.

Tags committee chairs, executive-legislative relations, House of Commons, leadership, Mike Ashley, parliamentary scrutiny, select committees, Sir Philip Green

Blog

Do MPs need more support in understanding and writing legislation?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date July 1, 2016

By Louise Thompson

The scrutiny of legislation is key to the role of MPs. It sounds relatively simple – asking lots of questions about what the government is planning to do and probing elements of bills to make sure that they will work properly, but the task facing them is a formidable one. Not only is the quantity of legislation increasing (particularly from delegated legislation), but the parliamentary timetable is busier than ever. Bills are also becoming much more complex, using terminology which can be tricky to understand. The language used facilitates the interpretation and implementation of the legislation. It is not written with Members of Parliament or the general public in mind. Yet, as this weekend’s discussions about whether the Scotland Act 2016 means that the Scottish Parliament can veto the UK’s decision to leave the EU show, the precise wording of legislation is important.

Tags expertise, MPs, public law, representation, role theory, scientific advice

Blog

Parliamentary sovereignty and the Human Rights Act 1998

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date June 20, 2016

By Matthew Burton

In a recent post on this blog, Chris Kirkland highlights the problematic nature of the concept of sovereignty in relation to the Brexit debate and the forthcoming referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union. On the one hand, Brexit campaigners argue that the UK has already lost its sovereignty to the European Union. A legally precise argument in this vein would point to the EU doctrines of supremacy and direct effect, which allow nationals of Member States of the EU to enforce EU law within the courts of the Member States, and requires EU law to take priority whenever it conflicts with a principle of domestic law. On the other hand, as the referendum demonstrates, the Westminster Parliament is free to legislate to withdraw from the EU whenever it wishes, and from a legal perspective at least, could do so without the need for any kind of referendum or national vote.

Tags European Court of Human Rights, House of Commons, human rights, Human Rights Act 1998, parliamentary scrutiny, parliamentary sovereignty, scrutiny

Blog

The Consequences of Anti-Politics

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date June 17, 2016

Please note that this blog piece was originally published on the Crick Centre blog, and is available here. This piece has been re-published with permission from the author.

By Marc Geddes

The killing of Jo Cox on Thursday was a horrific attack on British democracy, which happened in the context of an increasingly bitter and hostile referendum campaign on UK membership of the European Union. Today, this attack overshadows every aspect of British politics, but more broadly it is arguably the extreme tip of an ‘anti-politics’ iceberg that is extending across the western world.

Tags antipolitics, British politics, mental health, political violence, public engagement, public opinion, representative democracy

Blog

How Twitter conversations highlight the different purposes of petitioning

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date June 15, 2016

By Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Viktoria Spaiser

Hashtag conversations over Twitter are common place. They are used to comment on TV programmes, conferences, general themes and now petitions. The new Petitions Committee of the House of Commons has been using hashtags to support the development of discussions associated with the themes of the petitions being debated in parliament. Are these discussions on Twitter just a lot of hot air, come and gone, or can they help us understand the different purposes of petitioning? In this blog piece, we find that, instead of just noise, these Twitter discussions help to identify themes linked to petitions, different levels of sentiment associated to petitions, varying levels of polarisation, but also those petitions that despite achieving very high numbers of signatures, actually have little traction.

Tags House of Commons, petitions, Petitions Committee, public engagement, Twitter, UK Parliament

Blog

The backgrounds of MSPs and MPs: it’s about the parties, not the culture

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date June 9, 2016

By Paul Cairney and Phil Cowley

There is an interesting set of stories, by David Leask and colleagues in the Herald, about the background of MSPs. We take an interest as part of a team of scholars comparing backgrounds in Westminster and devolved assemblies and examining how parties decide between many sources of representation, from sex and race to employment and locality.

In this post we examine the latest data on education as a proxy for class. It suggests that there would be little difference between Holyrood and Westminster if they had the same balance between parties.

Tags Scotland

Blog

Swapping Sides: Role reversal for parliaments in Dublin and Belfast

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date May 27, 2016

Please note that this was originally published on QPol on 27 May 2016, and is available here. It is re-posted here with the permission of the author and editors.

Recent election results either side of the Irish border have resulted in significant structural changes to the parliaments in Dublin and Belfast.

In the Republic of Ireland, following protracted negotiations between the main parties and independent member groupings in the aftermath of the unprecedented (though not entirely unexpected) result of the Irish general election, outgoing Taoiseach Enda Kenny just about managed to hold onto office. In so doing he becomes the first leader in the 83-year history of his Fine Gael party to be in government for successive terms. But it comes at the price of considerably diminished authority and a number of Ministerial seats being granted to independent TDs as part of deal to ensure their support. His party was 30 seats short of a majority after the election, and securing executive office required a) the support of several independent members, and b) the consent of traditional opponent Fianna Fáil, to govern on a ‘confidence and supply’ basis for three years.