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Focuses on issues raised by the White Paper on the future of higher education from the perspective of the post-92 universities, established by the Act of parliament in 1992 in Great Britain. Failure of the White Paper in recognizing realities of shape and structure of educational system; Vision of future of higher education offered by the White Paper.

This article considers the levelling‐up agenda in the UK, examining the Johnson government's original proposals to tackle regional and local inequality and its continuation under new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak following the short‐lived premiership of Liz Truss. The 2022 Levelling Up in the United Kingdom White Paper is notable for the frank and wholesale critique it provides of previous governments'—both Tory and Labour—efforts to address the pressing issue of geographic inequality. The assessment was that a pattern of ad hoc and incoherent reforms needed to be replaced by a stable, long term and system‐wide approach to change. Yet, under Johnson, Truss and now Sunak, policy churn is continuing, with an approach that falls short in following the lessons set out in the White Paper. We provide a detailed analysis of the government's critique of past reforms, the lessons it has set out and why its reform programme is likely to repeat past failings. Crucially, the approach leaves the structure of central government almost untouched, with substantive reforms instead focussed at the local governance level. We argue the government's programme perpetuates the 'power‐hoarding' tendencies of the Westminster model, a key bulwark against meaningfully addressing the UK's spatial inequality problem. We conclude that the levelling‐up agenda, missions and targets are unlikely to be met under Rishi Sunak, reflecting the endemic nature of short‐termism and centralisation of power in the UK's public policy approach. We then consider the approach of Starmer's Labour Party to levelling up and the issues it needs to confront if it forms the next government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its first years in office, the Labour Government set out a wide-ranging and ambitious set of policies aimed at reducing poverty, inequality and social exclusion. A decade on, with the party facing probable catastrophic defeat in the next general election, how far can these ambitions be said to have been met? This article summarises the evidence. It also examines the most recent government White Paper on social mobility, New Opportunities: Fair Chances for the Future, published in January 2009, and asks whether this paper represents a serious last attempt to renew the equal opportunities agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considers some of the key and potentially radical policy principles in the British Labor Government's Rural White Paper published in November 2000. New 'rural regional agenda' under New Labor; Goal of increasing investment in market towns; Role of market towns as hubs for information technology, public transport, business and public services for the surrounding hinterlands.

In this article the author discusses military policy in Great Britain. At issue is an examination of a British government report on military matters released during a period of continuing developments in national security. The author urges an expansion of Great Britain's strategic forces and considers aspects of deterrence and coercion in place of more traditional military actions. The article asserts that there is a need for a clear understanding of the motivation of Great Britain's potential adversaries.

Looks at the White Paper on Fairness at Work report, a package of legislative proposals aimed at extending employee and trade union rights in Great Britain. Objective of the White Paper; Proposal of the White Paper on individual worker rights; Reference to chapter four of the White Paper on trade unions; Assessment of the impact of the White Paper on employment security.

Focuses on the debate surrounding welfare reform in Great Britain, highlighting Great Britain's Green Paper on welfare reform. Argues that the Green Paper draws upon three different formulations of the role and purpose of welfare; Identification of the three different formulations; Reference to a declaration made by Great Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, at a conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Examines the British government's plans and visions on pensions and social security. Implications of the issuance of Green Paper on pensions; Support for a funding mechanism which shares responsibility between the government and the individual; Recommendations for redistribution of incomes.

Presents an assessment of the White Paper on higher education in the Great Britain. Existence of problems in Higher education in the Great Britain; Proposal by the White Paper for higher education fund; Objectives of the White Paper in analyzing the importance of higher education in the Great Britain.

Discusses the effects of the White Paper on Communications Reform on the British media industry. Overview of British media industries; Media ownership rules and the absence of a British global media company; Distribution of digital services.

Focuses on the provisions of the British government's report regarding government information entitled `White Paper.' Proposal for the accessibility of governmental information to public scrutiny; Support for transparency in international relations; Report's ambiguity on exemptions; Possible amendment of the Data Protection Act.

Levelling up and the everyday economy are two crucial concepts for understanding the direction of policy making in the UK, but the relationship between them has not yet been fully explored. Moreover, the UK's industrial and regional policies are woefully underdeveloped. This article suggests how levelling up and the everyday economy concepts could contribute to Labour's emerging industrial and regional policies. It argues that Labour is right to pursue an economic growth agenda, but must make growth work for communities and workers, and the everyday economy can help. The everyday economy can contribute to, and benefit from, local productivity growth, but regions still need companies that export or are at the technological frontier to raise demand, productivity and pay. Labour should work with the government's Levelling Up White Paper, but this was overly focussed on cities and knowledge intensive business services: there is an economic case for including towns and manufacturing too, and they should prioritise connecting places and sectors, building on the diverse strengths which different places can offer, and setting a long‐term direction of travel. Over time, Labour should try to ensure that cities, towns and smaller communities are better connected, better coordinated and more specialised within larger regions. Labour should, therefore, set out an industrial and regional strategy; work up an economic development toolkit; and devolve economic powers to Mayoral Combined Authorities and councils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Anthony King was, among other things, an outstandingly acute public intellectual. His work on overload and policy fiasco exemplifies this. His original diagnosis in his famous paper of 1975 was deeply pessimistic in character, but subsequent adaptations by government solved many of the original problems arising from dependency relations. These adaptations amounted to the creation of a Madisonian system of regulation that insulated policy makers from democratic pressures. But these adaptations in turn created new difficulties that lie at the root of the analysis in King and Crewe's The Blunders of our Governments, published nearly four decades after King's original classic paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2018, a coalition of UK trade unions and civil society organisations called a strike across the UK's fast food sector in support of a living wage, union recognition and the end to zero‐hour contracts in the sector. This paper takes the day of action—labelled the McStrike—as a starting point for an account of the place of the EU and Brexit in the campaign for fast food rights, as well as the contrasting political standpoints adopted by the different trade unions involved in the action. Brexit is used as a prism through which to analyse aspects of Britain's contemporary food politics, especially those pertaining to freedom of movement, workplace organisation, and the role of EU legislation in protecting workers' rights. In exploring the international dimensions of union organisation among the UK's fast food workers, other, more conceptual considerations regarding the changing nature of public and private food consumption and the incorporation of food‐to‐go into the gig economy are also broached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enfranchisement of non‐resident citizens has always been controversial in the UK, where for historical reasons, voting rights are not as closely associated with citizenship as elsewhere. The introduction of 'overseas' voting in the 1980s by the Conservatives was contested by Labour as a form of 'international gerrymandering' since expatriates were widely assumed to be disproportionately wealthy and therefore more likely to vote Tory. Expatriate campaigners have been increasingly vocal in denouncing the 'electoral injustice' of the 'fifteen‐year rule' which disenfranchises them after fifteen years abroad, and the exclusion of so many from the EU referendum highlighted their cause. A recent private member's bill proposing 'votes for life' for UK expatriates aimed to meet their demands to abolish the time restriction, now considered anachronistic. But their arguments were hijacked by historically embedded attitudes and disputes driven by party politics, ending in a dramatic and bewildering filibuster which this paper elucidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the UK's official position is that it neither uses nor condones torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (CIDT), it is now a matter of public and parliamentary record that UK security services and military personnel colluded in rendition, torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, both as part of the CIA's Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) programme, at military detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, and through involvement in the detention and interrogation of prisoners by allied security forces. This paper will explain why the government is falling short of its obligations under international law, and why considerable risks remain that UK intelligence and security services will continue to collude in torture and CIDT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Department for Education is attempting to use lessons from economics to spur competition in higher education in the UK, in order to improve access and quality and reduce price. Laudable as these goals are, in this paper it is argued that there are aspects of higher education that are unlike other markets and which may make standard solutions to non‐competitive price behaviour ineffective. New insights into decision making from behavioural sciences, which challenge the notion of rationality in many students' higher education choices, are also discussed. Recent research has suggested some interventions that may nudge students towards decisions that help achieve the objectives for higher education set out by the Department for Education. It is argued that the Department for Education might be more successful in reaching its objectives if it focused more on these behavioural insights and interventions, and less on trying to make HE function like the competitive market that it is not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper critically examines recent responses by and interactions between stakeholders in negotiating the acceptability of aircraft noise standards in Australia in order to help inform debate in Britain. It investigates the interplay of the politics of noise with the broader land use planning context focusing on the role of government, airports, community interests, and the development sector. Different local environments inevitably frame diverse contexts, but the pervasive challenge is in securing the acceptable trade‐off between the economic dividends promised by airports and local quality of life. Discussion is structured around four main issues: an introduction to the Australian politics of airport noise, an historical timeline of key contextual events, identification of the major actors in the noise governance framework, and a focus on an issue of increasing political significance, namely the different positions of airports and developers in the increasing intensification of urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational media corporations now wield enormous power and influence. Never has this been displayed so starkly and so shockingly as in the revelations that emerged during the Leveson Inquiry into the culture and ethics of the press in the UK. This paper considers the implications of the relationship between media elites and political elites for democratic culture and media reform. The paper argues that the culture of press-politician mutual interest in which media executives and party leaders collude will continue as long as the solutions proffered focus on the ethical constraints of professional journalists rather than wider structural issues relating to plurality of ownership and control and funding of news in the public interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the problem of declining turnout and proposes as a solution a system whereby each elector would be legally obliged to vote in the first election for which they were eligible. Popular attitudes toward first-time compulsory voting are measured and probed by means of UK data. The main findings of the paper are that first-time compulsory voting is a politically and administratively feasible proposal that appears tentatively to command popular support and has the potential to help address a number of the problems associated with declining turnout, and in particular low rates of electoral participation among younger citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parties in coalition governments must address the 'unity/distinctiveness' dilemma: how to maintain governing cohesion, while sustaining individual identities. Within the Cameron-Clegg government this is a challenge for both parties, but it is more so for the Liberal Democrats as the junior partner. This paper considers how the Liberal Democrats negotiated this dilemma in relation to ministerial portfolio allocations. While the Liberal Democrat strategy of placing ministers in almost all departments has served the Coalition well in terms of governing unity, it has limited the extent to which they have been able to assert their distinctive contribution to Coalition policy-making. This is demonstrated through an examination of the Liberal Democrats' influence on Coalition welfare policy. A lack of clear policy contributions is potentially highly damaging to the Liberal Democrats electorally, as it suggests that they have made little substantive contribution to the Coalition beyond propping up their Conservative partners. Accordingly, the paper reflects on lessons for junior partners in future UK coalition governments, suggesting that concentrating ministers within one or two departments may provide a more viable means of carving out a distinctive governing legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Anthony King thought and wrote a great deal about British prime ministers and political leadership more generally. But in contrast to the way in which single papers embodied his contribution to our understanding of ‘government overload’, ‘executive‐legislative relations’ and ‘career politicians’, his contribution to our understanding of the prime ministership was defined by a body of work. This essay explores that body of work and identifies some of the themes that characterised it. It then relates King's work to claims about the ‘presidentialisation’ of the office, as well as the importance of the expectations surrounding contemporary prime ministers. As Britain grapples with the challenge of Brexit, we should all take note of his counsel against expecting too much in the way of ‘strong’ prime ministerial leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition placed a moratorium on airport expansion in the south-east of England. In office, however, it has faced a sustained political campaign from supporters of the aviation industry and expansion, leading to the appointment in September 2012 of the Davies Commission on airport capacity. This paper critically evaluates this nascent policy reversal in aviation policy, analysing the political backlash in favour of expansion and the political mediation of such demands by the Coalition. It argues that while the shifting political context has placed new pressures on the coalition, its current difficulties cannot be divorced from the continued resonance of the logic of aviation expansion embedded in British institutions at the end of the Second World War. The paper concludes with an assessment of the challenges facing the Davies Commission, the coalition and campaigners, when set against the continued 'grip' of aviation on our collective consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts out from a puzzle. During the past thirty years, incomes have grown more unequal, a small group at the top has captured a much greater share of resources and poverty has increased. Despite this, most people are markedly less likely to want government to redistribute income or tackle poverty and are less sympathetic towards those without jobs. The greater insecurity of many people's lives in the current crisis renders the issue more perplexing. This paper describes trends in inequality, poverty and unemployment; presents new data on attitudes, media discussion and political platforms; discusses theoretical approaches from social psychologists, political scientists, sociologists and other commentators; and considers how a more generous welfare state might be pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently published research contends that concern about immigration is weakening the British political system by creating distrust in the elites and institutions in this system. Some may challenge this finding because the public opinion data used to illustrate this relationship is limited to the period of the recent Labour government, raising the possibility that it was an artefact of that era and thus may no longer hold. Using the most recent round of the European Social Survey (2010-11), this paper investigates whether this finding holds in the present era. The findings indicate that under the current Conservative-Liberal Democratic government, concern about immigration is still related to negative perceptions of the political system. This finding, along with those reported in previous research, points to potentially serious negative consequences for the functioning of the British political system, which are discussed in the concluding section of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the August 2011 riots, politicians and commentators offered a range of explanations for the social unrest and wanton violence. Drawing on survey and focus-group data, this paper investigates those explanations by analysing how socio-economic, normative and political factors shape contemporary attitudes towards law breaking in Britain. The paper finds that both economic deprivation and personal moral values help to explain attitudes toward illegal behaviour, but citizens' mistrust of political leaders and their disengagement from public affairs are also an important factor. The findings suggest that politicians who want to provide moral leadership need to do so through their actions as well as their words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2011, Britain's Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government published proposals for reform of the House of Lords. In a White Paper and draft bill they set out detailed plans for a largely or wholly elected second chamber. These marked the latest stage in a long-running debate on Lords reform. The government's proposals aim to change the composition of the second chamber, suggesting that there will be no change to its powers or the conventions governing relations with the House of Commons. But this expectation has been disputed. The House of Lords presently does not make full use of its powers, and many anticipate that it would if its members became elected. This paper reviews the composition of all second chambers internationally, showing that wholly directly elected chambers make up the minority, and that both mixed chambers and indirect election are common. It then reviews the formal powers of all largely and wholly elected chambers. This shows that amongst parliamentary systems the formal powers of the House of Lords are relatively great. But second chamber powers, as well as their composition, vary widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the voting motivations of Labour parliamentarians in the final parliamentary ballot of the Labour party leadership election of 1980. By constructing a data set of the voting behaviour of Labour parliamentarians and by determining the ideological disposition of the 1980 parliamentary Labour party (PLP) this paper examines the ideological disposition of the candidates' vis-à-vis their electorate, and offers a challenge to traditional interpretations of how and why Foot was elected. The traditional interpretation has sought for explanations as to how a right-wing dominated PLP elected a left-wing candidate. Whilst citing the traditional interpretations of the impact of the impending Electoral College, mandatory reselection and the assumed weaknesses of the Healey campaign, this paper argues that there was considerably more left-wing sentiment within the 1980 PLP in terms of economic management, defence and the Common Market, than previously considered. As such this paper suggests that, taken with the impact of the other factors, the victory of Foot should not be seen as that surprising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews two contrasting approaches governments use to engage the citizen to promote better public policy outcomes: nudging citizens using the insights of behavioural economics, as summarised by Thaler and Sunstein (2009) or giving citizens the space to think through and debate solutions, as indicated by proponents of deliberative democracy. The paper summarises each approach, giving examples; then it compares and contrast them, illustrating their relative strengths and weaknesses. The paper concludes by suggesting that the approaches share some common features and policy-makers could useful draw upon both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the voting motivations of Conservative parliamentarians in the final parliamentary ballot of the Conservative Party leadership election of 2005. By constructing a data set of the voting behaviour of Conservative parliamentarians in the final parliamentary party ballot, and by determining the ideological disposition of the 2005 PCP this paper examines the ideological disposition of the candidates' vis-à-vis their electorate. The paper identifies the increasing Thatcherite nature of the PCP across three dominant ideological divides of contemporary British Conservatism-economic, European, and social, sexual and moral policy. Through such an analysis the paper demonstrates how the modernising David Cameron, who came first in the final parliamentary ballot and then won the membership ballot, transcended the traditional ideological voting motivations of candidates' vis-à-vis their electorate. Most significantly, the paper demonstrates that the European ideological policy divide was not a factor in the succession contest, unlike the succession contests of 1990, 1997 and 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, the UK's New Labour government has been at the forefront of efforts internationally to modernise electoral procedures, promising to deliver ‘an e-enabled, multi-channel general election by 2006’. This paper considers the origins and the impacts of reforms to UK electoral procedures with a particular focus on the adoption of postal voting on demand and pilots of electronic voting and counting since 2000. The paper concludes that the principal legacy of the modernisation agenda to date is likely to have been a negative impact on public confidence in the electoral process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the far right in Britain has received increased support in local, national, and European elections. Examining these results researchers have pointed toward a wider potential support base for parties such as the BNP. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with the BNP leadership, strategists, and organisers this paper argues that both the party's environment and the party itself must be incorporated if we are to provide a satisfactory account of recent success. Through cross-national co-operation and influence from far right parties elsewhere the BNP has embarked upon a concerted attempt to build political legitimacy. This paper examines this process whilst also highlighting some general policy implications emerging from recent BNP gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduced in the late 1990s, tax credits grew under successive Labour governments to become a cornerstone of UK social policy. Distinguished from traditional welfare policies by their target group and their mode of administration, and with goals that appeared capable of commanding support across the ideological spectrum, tax credits until recently seemed to hold the key to tackling poverty in a politically popular manner. But since 2010 the tax credit system has been systematically dismantled, initially qualitatively and latterly also quantitatively. This paper discusses the multiple factors that help to explain the rapid fall from grace in the UK of this liberal approach to supporting the incomes of poor working households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his recent memoir, William Waldegrave wrote that no country run by John Major and Robin Butler was likely to be in much danger of systemic corruption. The fact remains that a quarter of a century ago, John Major, with the guidance and support of his cabinet secretary, decided to establish the Committee on Standards in Public Life under the chairmanship of Lord Nolan. The apparent prevalence of 'sleaze' issues in public life-most notably the 'cash for questions' scandals involving Tory MPs-provoked the decision. Lord Nolan's committee immediately enunciated seven principles of public life: honesty, accountability, integrity, selflessness, openness, opportunity and leadership. Over the years, many of the Committee's recommendations have been accepted. There is today vastly greater transparency. The principles have been widely accepted; it is clear the public expects that they should be observed by public servants, including, perhaps especially, MPs. Yet it is equally clear that there is a widespread and still deepening mood of public cynicism on standards matters. The Committee is determined to defend the Nolan principles, but without more help from the political class it will be like Mrs Nupkins in The Pickwick Papers: inculcating moral lessons of great importance and generally ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the British government's framework for a national childcare strategy, while describing the Green Paper `Meeting the Childcare Challenge.' Areas which are covered in the proposals for improving the quality of childcare; How the childcare strategy should be delivered; Stipulations of the Green Paper. INSET: Meeting the Childcare Challenge.

The failure of the Coalition government's attempt to reform the House of Lords has by no means taken further reform off the political agenda. The commitment to installing an elected upper chamber is still widely shared across the political spectrum, on the basis of perceptions that the House of Lords lacks democratic legitimacy. Against this view, this article considers recent literature upon non-electoral representation, deliberative democracy and bicameralism, which together highlight the possibility of an unelected second chamber playing a legitimate role within a wider (democratic) system of government. The article then considers the House of Lords from this perspective, reflecting on changes in the upper chamber since the 1999 reforms and evaluating its role within the wider political system. The paper concludes by suggesting that political debate should focus upon small-scale reforms to ensure that the Lords becomes more effective, representative and legitimate, within the constraints of its present role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a speech given to the University of London's Constitution Unit and Judicial Institute on 3 December 2014, the Rt Hon Dominic Grieve QC MP challenged Conservatives to think carefully about the party's proposal to break the link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Grieve recalled why the United Kingdom signed the Convention in the first place and, although recognising that the Court's approach has been on occasion properly criticised and may present difficulties, argued that the reforms embodied in the Brighton Declaration 2012 are bearing fruit. He provided a critical exposition of the Conservative paper 'Protecting Human Rights in the UK: the Conservatives' Proposals for changing Britain's Human Rights Laws' (October 2014) and concluded that Conservatives should want to remain within the jurisdiction of the ECHR to maintain and ensure the Court's effectiveness and continued viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes as its starting point the attack on the late Ralph Miliband, the left-wing intellectual and father of the current Labour leader Ed Miliband, by the Daily Mail in late 2013. It argues that this attack was a response by the Mail to its failed campaign to dub the Labour leader 'Red Ed'. The article demonstrates that ever since Miliband won the Labour leadership in 2009, the Mail has sought to 'other' him by presenting him as 'alien'-this by constant references to his Jewish background, his upbringing in a wealthy North London intellectual milieu, his supposed extreme left-wing views and his ineffable 'oddness'-at least, an oddness as characterised by the newspaper. The paper will conclude by asking why the Daily Mail's 'Red Ed' moniker failed to catch on, while noting that their 'Odd Ed' moniker seems to have had more resonance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK the rules governing caretaker situations have historically been underspecified. The UK's constitutional traditions, such as prime ministerial discretion to time elections and its two-party system, have in the past limited the frequency and duration of caretaker periods. However, the recently lengthened election timetable, new constraints on the executive introduced by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (2011), and a decline in the dominance of the two largest parties are raising the risk that the UK will experience caretaker periods more often and for longer stretches of time. In this paper, we offer an analysis of the UK's current caretaker provisions and conclude that the existing conventions are insufficiently detailed and can render such periods problematic and controversy-prone. Important lessons, we suggest, can be learned from reforms in other Westminster systems, and from the caretaker rules of other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Electoral Reform Society has recently published two reports putting the case for electoral reform in local government. These suggest acceptance, in the wake of defeat in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, that the group's ultimate goal of change to the Westminster electoral system is unlikely to be fulfilled soon and that a more gradual strategy is therefore needed. This paper examines this shift by asking three questions. First, is Westminster electoral reform really a dead letter? Second, is local electoral reform more likely-and, if so, just how much more likely? Third, would local electoral reform matter in itself? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A persistent theme in the British and international debates about immigration and diversity is the controversial claim that living in diverse areas has negative consequences for intergroup attitudes and community relations. In the present paper we test this claim by investigating the impact of neighbourhood diversity and self-reported intergroup contact on orientations (outgroup attitudes and social distance) toward one religious outgroup: Muslims. Respondents were both White British majority (N=867) and non-Muslim ethnic minority (N=567) residents of neighbourhoods in England which varied in their proportion of ethnic minority residents. We tested both direct and indirect (via intergroup contact) effects of diversity on outgroup orientations toward Muslims. Results show that individuals living in more ethnically diverse areas-regardless of whether they are White British members of the majority or non-Muslim members of ethnic minorities-have more positive contact with Muslims, with positive consequences for intergroup relations with Muslims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that the definition of the white working class, as an ethnic majority, is fluid and shifting, in contrast to its conventional portrayal as a fixed and static group. They are more than simply voiceless and 'left behind', especially with regard to views of multiculturalism, immigration and social change. Using data from two recent studies, we see a range of views expressed by white working class communities, which underlines the need for care to be taken when attempting to describe common-sense views on these polemical subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act significantly reduces the powers of the Prime Minister to manage the risk of government termination and to time elections to his or her party's advantage. In this paper we ask how the Act is likely to change the way in which governments terminate, their durability and opportunities for planning in government and departments. In answering these questions we draw on quantitative comparative evidence from other European countries that operate with fixed-term parliaments. Our analysis suggests that fixing the parliamentary term can be expected to convert some opportunistically called elections into regular elections and to stabilise governments toward the end of the parliamentary term. But the Act is also likely to have unanticipated consequences in increasing governments' vulnerability to failure before they reach the final sessions of Parliament. We explore these unanticipated consequences and outline their implications for governing style and Civil Service planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From September 2012 most home undergraduates at English universities are being charged fees of £9,000 per annum. These are funded by a government loan, which attracts interest from the moment they start their course; after three years their accumulated debt exceeds £30,000. They can also borrow to cover their living costs, on the same terms, so that those studying in London can graduate with a debt of more than £50,000-although those from low-income families can obtain grants and universities are encouraged to provide bursaries and other support to students from underrepresented groups. Graduates start repaying their debts once their annual income exceeds £21,000-at a rate of 9% of the difference between their income and that figure: until the debt is fully repaid it continues to attract interest, by as much as three percentage points above the current inflation rate. Using data from a calculator on a government website, this paper shows that the highest-paid graduates pay back less than those on middle incomes: the 'squeezed middle' pays back more not only than those on low incomes but also the better-paid and those whose incomes increase more rapidly. This has differential effects according to occupation-and sex; and middle-income groups also contribute more to the costs of widening participation programmes, which all universities charging more than £6,000 per annum are required to fund. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In February 2011 the UK Parliament passed an Act that both reduced the number of MPs to be elected to the House of Commons and significantly altered the rules for the definition of Parliamentary constituencies. After six redistributions in which organic criteria-MPs representing places with a community of interest-dominated the redrawing of constituency boundaries, the new rules gave precedence to an arithmetic criterion: all constituencies must have electorates within 5 per cent of the national quota (average). Seven months later the Boundary Commission published its initial proposals for a new set of 502 constituencies implementing these new rules. This paper evaluates the amount of change to the country's electoral map that this involves, identifies the main features of the new constituency configurations, and assesses their likely impact on UK political life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses progress on the coalition government's ambitious agenda for decentralisation and localism against six actions set out in the government's own guide to decentralisation. It critically examines the government's case that the previous government's centralised approach failed. The six actions cover reducing bureaucracy, community empowerment, more local control of public funding, provider diversification, more public scrutiny and stronger local accountability. The paper concludes that accountability is the most challenging and that progress is hampered by tensions between the actions and between government departments. It argues that the government needs a clearer, shared vision for localism going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British general election on 10 May 2010 delivered Britain's first hung Parliament since February 1974, and in the run-up, the Conservative party made much of the economic difficulties Britain faced in the second half of the 1970s in order to try and convince voters that anything other than a Tory vote would risk exposing the nation to the discipline of financial markets. The question of how well equipped an exceptional kind of British government is to deal with exceptional economic circumstances is therefore of paramount importance. This paper argues that the Conservative party made too much of the impact of the 1974 hung Parliament in precipitating subsequent economic crisis and suggests that as such, there is no reason to assume that the Conservative-Liberal coalition government is ill-equipped to manage British economic affairs in difficult circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour and New Labour alike have been the enemies of education. Consider the brutalism of Charles Clarke--'history for display purposes only'; statistics of achievement based on the soft marking of soft subjects to achieve soviet pig-iron statistics; fat inspection and thin curriculum; compulsory lesson plans and paper plagues; foreign languages as too difficult. Before all that, remember Anthony Crosland 'destroying their schools if it's the last fucking thing I do' and the consequent rise of the public schools as bought excellence. What to do : Follow Housman's dictum, 'Knowledge is happiness'; rescue good minds in bad places with state places in boarding schools; utilise the quiz nationally the as a pop method to stimulate the study habit; get back to French and German; take the educationalism out of education especially in training colleges; thin inspection down from terror to weather-eye mentoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The election of the Conservative-Liberal coalition in May 2010 provides the opportunity to start to map out the record of the Labour governments between 1997 and 2010. This paper deals with the specific question how the Brown/Blair governments performed on public expenditures when compared to the records of UK Labour governments since 1945. Did the public expenditure record of the 1997 represent a departure from that of previous Labour governments? This is important to ascertain since there are strongly held beliefs that New Labour was not committed to Labour's historic commitments of income redistribution and universal benefits. The analysis that follows is constructed around five major public expenditure programmes that reflect Labour's priorities. These include total expenditure, expenditure on health, education, housing and social security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate about the financing of devolved government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has acquired a new vigour since 2007, with commissions and reviews taking place in Scotland, Wales and at Westminster. Although of considerable constitutional as well as political importance, the technical detail has obscured many of the wider issues involved. This paper surveys the options now open to the UK government, as it prepares its response to the Welsh Holtham Commission, a bill implementing the Calman Commission's recommendations for Scotland, and looks at ways of altering corporation tax in Northern Ireland. It examines six options that in principle are open to the UK government, and argues that the range of options open to the UK government are narrower than they often appear, and that pressure for it to act is such that it will no longer be possible to avoid far-reaching action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]