“Party strategists must be scratching their heads […] after the latest debacle” writes David Shariatmadari in The Guardian, examining the story of the British Conservative Party using a Photoshopped picture of a road near Weimar, Thüringen, Germany to illustrate their latest election poster. Shariatmadari’s piece goes on to list the...
I’ve lost track of the number of times people have defended the British First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system with the argument that because the system generally produces a clear winner (a majority for one party), the system hence avoids the need for the complicated coalition negotiations and trade-offs necessary...
Two separate conversations in Brussels this week, both with Brits, but with people of very different political persuasions, led me to the odd conclusion summed up by the title of this blog entry – Britain leaving the EU is more likely if Labour wins the UK general election in 2015...
Today’s good news: Roger Helmer is standing down as a Member of the European Parliament. He says its because he disagrees with nine-tenths of Tory policy, and his statements have become more and more shrill and reactionary over the years. In the list-based election system used in the UK, it’s...
I suppose drafting polemics takes time, or perhaps there is another reason for his deficiency. For Daniel Hannan MEP, European poster boy for the Tory right, seems increasingly to be neglecting the very work he is supposed to be doing – representing his constituents from South East England in the...
So David Cameron is finally starting to make good his pledge to take the Conservatives out of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament, as covered by the FT Brussels blog, Richard Corbett and Iain Dale. There’s of course a lot of bluster about the whole thing, and plenty...