Recent Posts

UK Politics

Grillo or Eastleigh? Give me Grillo any day…

One election – in Italy – has just concluded. Another – the by election in Eastleigh – takes place on Thursday. Each in their own way shines a light on the deficiencies of modern representative politics, and there are some contrasts between the two votes that I would like to […]

UK Politics

ID requirements in the UK, and migration within the EU

So UK Immigration Minister Mark Harper has said that a mandatory ID card scheme is under consideration in the UK for “Romanians, Bulgarians and other Europeans” according to The Guardian. This immediately set alarm bells ringing in my mind, as EU citizens should be treated the same way as ‘locals’. […]

UK Politics

On post-democracy

Sorry if I am slow to the party, but academic Colin Crouch first coined the term post-democracy in 2004. I only encountered it a few weeks ago through this LSE blog post. Crouch’s words: A post-democratic society is one that continues to have and to use all the institutions of […]

UK Politics

On UKIP and legitimacy

Alex Andreou has had a go at UKIP on the New Statesman website. It’s a detailed, but relatively standard, attempt to critique the party – that they have no coherent, let alone costed, policies, and that many of the people in the party or associated with the party are either […]

EU Politics

Why Labour’s critique of migration within the EU must stop

While the columns in newspapers criticising Cameron’s referendum commitment continue to be written, I nevertheless have a nagging fear – that while Cameron’s strategy may be ill-advised, the main pro-EU party in the UK, Labour, has nothing really to say about the EU than to defend the status quo. This […]