Tagged: UK politics
by Simon Coll · Published August 24, 2017 · Last modified September 7, 2017
The Best Leaders We've Never Had? A Review of 'Prime Minister Corbyn'
As we have discussed on this site before, counterfactual history is a very useful, yet undervalued tool of historical analysis. When taken seriously, it offers a unique instrument for measuring the impact of particular events, decisions or personalities, by enabling historians to construct realities in which they did not exist or...
by Alice Whitehead · Published April 13, 2017 · Last modified April 20, 2017
The 1784 Election: Masculinity in Crisis?
The 1784 election contest for the constituency of Westminster was one of the most hotly contested in history, 'forty days of riot, forty days of confusion' in the words of Pitt the Younger . Aged only 24, Prime Minister Pitt tried to snatch Westminster from the hands of self-proclaimed 'man...
by Tiia Sahrakorpi · Published November 22, 2016
What exactly is populism?
In the past six months the political status quo has been questioned in both the UK and the US. Many in the US were shocked that Trump, a populist rightwinger, won the electoral college vote. In the UK, Remainers were incredulous over Leavers winning the Brexit vote, which illustrated how...
by Simon Coll · Published August 4, 2016 · Last modified August 5, 2016
'I think people in this country have had enough of experts', proclaimed prominent Leave campaigner Michael Gove in a live Q&A session during the recent Brexit debate in the UK. This statement became the most notorious example of what Dominic Shellard, Vice-Chancellor of De Montfort University, criticized as the 'pernicious...
by Sarah Hertz · Published July 12, 2016
The Day Human Character Changed
On or about June 2016, human character changed, and I finally understood the meaning of postmodernism. When I emerged from the Underground at Tottenham Court Road, navigating the sea of black umbrellas towards the British Museum, I felt it. There was a hush, a heightened British reserve, as the men...
by Richard Hall · Published September 14, 2015 · Last modified September 15, 2015
Before the drama of this weekend unfolded, an article in the Independent commented on the emotional politics of the Labour leadership campaign. Written by a psychiatrist, it cautioned that the characterisation of Jeremy Corbyn's Leftist ideals as "emotional", and his opponents' centrist proposals as "rational", wilfully fails to acknowledge the...