Smithwick’s or Guinness?
Large-scale electoral meltdowns are relatively rare. In Italy in 1994 the Christian Democrats went from having been the biggest party in every election since the late 1940s to virtual wipe-out. In...
View ArticleAfter Barnsley
In 1972, the former Home Office minister Dick Taverne was deselected by the Lincoln Constituency Labour Party for being too pro-European. (The party had been out of office since June 1970, and parts of...
View ArticleWould you rather…?
Mid-April, and Britain attends to the 5 May referendum on the Alternative Vote with all the rapture of a gutted cod. Voters will be asked: ‘At present, the UK uses the “first past the post” system to...
View ArticleFinancial Overkill
The almost certain victory in the referendum of Conservative self-interest through financial overkill should not be the end of the matter. The retention of First Past the Post has been won by rich men...
View ArticleConstitutional Non-Moment
A.J.P. Taylor memorably remarks in The Course of German History, written to mark the centenary of the failed 1848-49 revolution, that with the Frankfurt Parliament, ‘German history reached its...
View Article
