This report examines the potential impacts of the Elections Act 2022 and the introduction of the requirement to show ID to vote in Great Britain. The importance of electoral integrity became part of the debate surrounding UK elections following the … [Read more...] about An accident waiting to happen? Voter ID in the 2023 English local elections
On 30 May 2022, the Special Purpose Committee established to consider the prospect of a larger Senedd published its report. The report's proposals are bold, calling for a 96-Member Senedd elected via a more proportional electoral system. In this … [Read more...] about Senedd reform: progress (of a sort) by Hugh Rawlings
A year ago, The Constitution Society commissioned a large-scale poll investigating how the public would respond to a formal electoral pact between the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party. It predicted that at the height of the … [Read more...] about Electoral pacts and the UK constitution: an update one year on by Andrew Blick
The May elections have prompted increased interest in the idea of an electoral pact between Opposition parties, aimed at defeating the Conservatives. It seems likely that an agreed objective of this kind of a pact would be electoral reform, moving to … [Read more...] about Electoral pacts and the constitution by Andrew Blick
The UK’s debate on electoral reform is in need of historical perspective. Too often, the First-Past-the-Post electoral system (FPTP) used for Westminster elections is presented as a central part of a well-defined British democratic tradition … [Read more...] about Electoral Systems and Electoral Reform in Historical Perspective by David Klemperer
This report reconsiders the debate over electoral reform in light of recent developments in British politics. Looking beyond questions of ‘fairness’, it analyses the practical impact of the existing ‘First-Past-the-Post’ electoral system, and … [Read more...] about The Electoral System and British Politics by David Klemperer
The original article can be found on the Better Government Initiative website. THE CHILCOT REPORT: LESSONS FOR THE MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT A commentary by the Better Government Initiative Key Issues 1. The Chilcot report offers many lessons on … [Read more...] about Commentary by the Better Government Initiative: The Chilcot Report – Lessons for the Machinery of Government
This paper by Lewis Baston follows up on his previous Constitution Society pamphlet, Electoral Collision Course, published in 2014. The 2014 report dealt with the interaction between two apparently unrelated changes to electoral law. These were the … [Read more...] about Pushing The Boundaries of Democratic Practice: Individual Registration and Boundaries, Revisited
This pamphlet explores the arrangements for guardianship of the UK constitution and its values and the role of the House of Lords in particular. Effective constitutional guardianship is important in any liberal democracy. In most democracies the … [Read more...] about Constitutional Guardians: The House of Lords
The general election of 2015 answered conclusively, to the surprise of most commentators, the question, ‘Who governs Britain?’ by yielding a single-party government with an overall majority in the House of Commons. But it did not answer two of the … [Read more...] about The Crisis of The Constitution : 2nd Edition
The political commentariat comprehensively failed to predict either the Conservative victory in the May general election or the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn as the eventual victor of the Labour leadership contest. Following a perhaps inappropriately … [Read more...] about Labour and the electoral system: The myth of defeat and the chimera of victory
Repeal of the Human Rights Act, its replacement with a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, and withdrawal from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights are core parts of the constitutional programme of the newly-elected … [Read more...] about ‘Common Sense’ or Confusion? The Human Rights Act and the Conservative Party
