Nick Pearce is professor of public policy & director of the Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath, and former director of the Institute for Public Policy Research.
The pandemic has shown the pitfalls of centralised power, and also the willingness of local people to participate through mutual aid. Greater participatory democracy and a standing citizens’ assembly chosen by sortition, are a way forward for local government, argues a new report.
Can Jeremy Corbyn once again pull off that rare trick in politics, of being a winner in defeat? Yes, say the pundits. The ‘fundamental asymmetry of this election is that
Labour’s attitudes to nationalism, Britain’s changing role in the global economy: myths of left and right are punctured in David Edgerton’s magnificent The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth Century History.
Brexiteers’ apparent willingness to cut loose the Northern Irish peace process reflects a historic world view that hasn’t advanced much since the English Civil War.
Increased security at Calais might prevent migrants risking life and limb to get to the UK, but it will not deal with the migrants currently living rough in the Pas de Calais, nor the wider problem of refugee and migrant flows into the EU.
Britain’s political future will be determined by which parties can turn the crisis of the established party system into an opportunity for realignment, just as they did 100 years ago.
The announcement of the unique devolution deal for the city represents the opening of a major new front in the English devolution debate, and a model that other areas will certainly want to follow.
As Britain approaches the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, and an election year, A new Magna Carta? tests the arguments for and against a written constitution.
We now have a benefit sanctions regime that is bureaucratised, depersonalised and excessive, causing widespread unnecessary suffering. Human relations have been stripped out of public administration.
