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...
Yesterday is was David Cameron at the G8 summit, claiming that a US-EU trade deal (known as TTIP) could create 2 million jobs. The European Commission meanwhile has been using the figure of €545 per person benefit of a deal (quoted by TUC here, and mentioned by @SkaKeller at an...
Realising his speech in January did not go down too well in EU capitals, David Cameron is this week embarking on a charm offensive across Europe. He’s visiting Madrid, Paris and Berlin, among others, basically trying to sell to others his call for repatriation of powers, oops, no, sorry, that...
There are two common, and incorrect, justifications for not acting in politics. The first is that now is not the right time, because at the moment everything else is more important. That is the justification most often used by opponents of an In-Out EU referendum in the UK, and is...
NOTE: Speech has now been postponed. Will not be 18th January. New date tbc. David Cameron’s long awaited speech will take place Friday 18th January at Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. Here are some ideas to allow you to follow the speech. 1) Watch it live The speech starts at...
NOTE: Speech has now been postponed. Will not be 18th January. New date tbc. All entries below remain valid for take 2 of the speech. So Twitter (#TheSpeech) and the newspapers are full of analysis and gossip about David Cameron’s big EU speech, now to be given on Friday 18th...
I cannot remember a week with as much EU news in the UK as we have witnessed over the last 5 days. This is likely to continue in the lead up to David Cameron’s long awaited EU speech. So I’ve made a Storify of the main milestones of the preparation,...
If Shaun Woodward in today’s Guardian is to be believed, it seems some sort of plan is emerging in David Cameron’s mind with regard to an EU referendum in the UK. It – broadly – looks like this: Let the Eurozone sort out its problems, and let those crystallise into...
So David Cameron’s long-trailed EU speech is due to be held on 15th January. I cannot remember any speech by a UK Prime Minister being trailed so far in advance, prompting Cameron himself to say “This is a tantric approach to policy-making. It’ll be even better when it does eventually...
This is not a post about the politics of David Cameron. It is instead an analysis of what the Tories did wrong – in communications and web tech terms – with the launch of the @David_Cameron Twitter account that finally saw the light of day yesterday. Let’s not forget –...
Steve Bell’s Guardian cartoon has William Hague in the barrel of a tank’s cannon approaching the Embassy of Ecuador in London – reference to the robust wording of the British Embassy in Quito’s letter to the Ecuador government (excerpt here). The threat is that unless Ecuador hands over Julian Assange,...
The political debate around the legacy of the Olympic Games over the last few days has revolved around whether every kid in every British school should have to do two hours of compulsory sport every week. Cameron thinks not, while Boris Johnson and Kelly Holmes think they should. But as...