A list of 45 new peerages was announced today. You can see the full list here. As it is a dissolution honours list, there is an emphasis on rewarding those who have undertaken political service. It is usual to offer peerages to those who have held Cabinet office, not least those who have held one…
“What Does Ukraine Think?” – published by European Council on Foreign Relations, edited by Andrew Wilson, Reader in Ukrainian studies at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European studies, University College, London, dated May 2015. 109 pages, plus brief details of the authors This booklet is divided into four sections, dealing with Politics and Identity…
I watched with alarm and shame the footage on the news last night of our Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs attending the reopening of the British Embassy in Iran. The portrait of the Queen displayed in the building still has “death to England” scrawled above it. Amnesty International recently calculated that there have been 700 executions in…
We know from survey data that many people do not know a great deal about Parliament. The latest Hansard Society Audit of Political Engagement found that, although 41% of those questioned claimed to know a ‘fair amount’ about Parliament, just over half knew not very much or nothing at all. There is a particular problem for…
This post is not strictly to do with life in the House of Lords, but readers may draw their own conclusions about planning law, the drive for retail growth, and the expansion of the numbers of students (not an unmitigated blessing) who need affordable housing at the university. The building of large blocks of graduate flats overlooking the…
The House of Lords has been the subject of much media attention over the past few days. You may think the reason for this is obvious. It isn’t. One peer engages in private conduct that attracts public opprobrium. As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is no reason to link private behaviour with institutional reform. …
The weeks of late July and August are often referred to in Westminster circles as “the silly season”, as newspapers look for all sorts of stories to fill their political pages while Parliament is in recess. And in recent days one errant Peer has provided a vivid cocktail of absurdity for them to do just…
Message to the European Transport Council – 4th Railway Package – Germany and France still trying to kill the PSO issues and keep their monopolies! Germany and France, whilst still opposing the 4th RP in the Council and Parliament, are already making sure it will have no effect in bringing competition to PSO contracts in…
The House of Lords is in the news, with much lamenting about the size of the House and the impending arrival of new entrants. Yet since the House remains unreformed, of course we need new blood. Otherwise we will simplify fossilise. The only democratic way to shed numbers must be for the electorate to decide who is…
