Earlier this year, during one of my regular door knocks, I called at a house and the door was opened by an elderly woman in her late 70s. She was dishevelled, distressed and clearly confused. She had an empty bubble...
Search results
This essay was first published on January 21 2016. There’s often scepticism about whether promises of localism made in opposition will be delivered once in power. This time, it turns out the Conservatives really meant it. Following the announcement of the...
A notable feature of the 2015 general election campaign was the degree of apparent unanimity across all parties that Britain has an overcentralized governmental structure, which is ripe for devolution. In the wake of the Scottish independence referendum, and the...
A priority for the Labour party should be the transformation of the localist agenda that has assumed pride of place in the government’s plans for devolution in England. Concentrated heavily on metropolitan areas—‘city-regions’—particularly in the north of England, this agenda lacks...
The Welsh NHS goes into the assembly elections in good heart.
It does so despite the very real stresses and strains it faces, a result of cuts imposed by the UK government. It does so despite the sustained campaign of vilification...
So the House of Lords did the job that the Commons could not. Without our undemocratic, unelected friends in ermine, the Conservatives would have succeeded in their stated aim to rip up the statutory commitment to end child poverty within...