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Westminster bubble
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As it becomes clear that a hung parliament is the most likely outcome of the May 7 UK general election, Liberal Democrat MPs are going into preparation mode. The party may end up with the worst electoral…
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The UK’s smaller political parties have been showered with attention of late. We’ve seen Green Party leader Natalie Bennett interviewed on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show – one of the most coveted media platforms…
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Ed Miliband’s promise to hold four million doorstep chats with voters during this year’s electoral campaign was met with derision by some commentators. The Guardian mockingly calculated that the Labour…
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Psephologists have been warning for decades now that multi-party politics is on the rise in the UK, but for most of the time they have been ignored. Everything changed in 2014 though, and the old guard…
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As prime minister David Cameron works on the finishing touches of his much-awaited speech on Europe and immigration he is under considerable pressure from his backbenchers and some frontbenchers to signal…
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If we’ve learned anything from Labour backbenchers over the past four-and-a-half years it’s that being in opposition can seriously damage your cognitive abilities. At least, that appears to be the only…
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David Cameron’s rage at being told he has to pay the European Union an extra £1.7 billion this year seems genuine enough, but this mini-crisis has also offered him a brilliant opportunity to unite his…
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It is still too early to say whether the leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage, will manage to deliver the earthquake to British politics that he has promised. But judging by the panic gripping the Labour front…
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In recent days the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party seems to have renounced its suicidal tactics. It took three defections to UKIP – those of Eurosceptic agitators-in-chief in the Commons, Douglas…
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For years, Westminster politicians justified their neglect of constitutional issues by saying there are no votes in the constitution. In other words, voters are not really that interested in knowing how…