Centre for Policy Studies

It is fair to say that the Conservative Party (and here I mean the backbenchers and the rank and file members) have been less thanenthusiastic about the prospects of introducing some sort of voting reform. Wouldn't voting reform just lead to a perpetual Labour majority or at the very least a so-called ‘progressive coalition'? And wouldn't a reform of the electoral system effectively block any prospects of radical reform, such as the ones that were...

Read more: PR and Conservatives: Lessons from abroad

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" , observed Lord Acton a little more than a century ago. The great Victorian historian was the most formidable constitutionalist of his era. He was not a Tory, but it is fair to speculate that the noble Lord would have supported David Cameron rather than Comrade Brown or Nick Clegg had he lived today.

Why? Because the Conservative party - after some hesitation- has...

Read more: The right initiative

So David Cameron has decided that the "cast iron" guarantee for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty he was careless enough to issue was rather lethargic. That, to quote Karl Marx, "all that was solid melted into air".

Having - rightly - castigated Gordon Brown for his unwillingness to let the British people decide on the latest transfer of powers to Brussels, the Conservatives unceremoniously called off the referendum.

From the point of view...

Read more: The Lisbon Treaty: Harold Wilson revisited

The BNP - like the Danish People' Party, Vlaams Belang in Belgium and the Freedom Party in the Netherlands- benefitted from Proportional Representation and were elected to the European Parliament. 

And yet, surprisingly, several government ministers are still advocating PR for Westminster. They should study the former Labour chairman Harold Laski's arguments against PR - and change their minds.When people, including Conservative politicians, toyed with the idea of introducing PR in the late 1940s Harold Laski...

Read more: Lessons from Laski

So here we are again. Just like last year, speculation running amok. Will Brown survive? And more generally: when do Prime Ministers resign? When do they throw in the proverbial towel? When are they forced out?

On one hand, the immediate speculations of commentators add up to little more than educated guesses based on anonymous (and self-interested) briefings. On the other hand, most political scientists only publish...

Read more: When do party leaders go?