On the devolved and local elections - why the two-party era of British politics is over, plus a note on why we’re not likely to see a Scottish independence referendum any time soon. icfs.org.uk/the-changing...

The Changing Face of British Democracy: Analysing the 2026 Devolved and Local Elections - International Centre for Sustainability

Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk, supported by Jack Browett, Research Intern On 7 May 2026, elections took place for local councils in England, and the devolved legislatures...

icfs.org.uk

“The boost that Reform enjoyed (from FPTP) was in some instances considerable. In those councils where the party won more than half the seats, Reform won just 36% of the vote on average. Yet this proved sufficient for them to secure as much as 67% of the seats” Curtice www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

How the winner-takes-all voting system has turned on Labour and the Tories

The first-past-the-post system favoured Reform in this English local elections

bbc.co.uk

Very well and closely read over the weekend from @gsoh31.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/5032...

Management consultants are ruining UK universities

Relentless off-the-peg commercial rewiring has undermined British higher education

ft.com

Read an extract from 'The Language of Comparative Constitutional Law' edited by Erika Arban, Maartje De Visser & Jeong-In Yun Addresses the epistemological and conceptual implications of English as the lingua franca 👉 https://bit.ly/4acbglR #ConstitutionalLaw #ComparativeLaw

New post out: "Who runs Britain?" Politicians complain they are unable to do anything because of the machinery of state. Yet they have more power than ever. What explains this "paradox of executive power" and how can it be fixed? (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/w...

Who runs Britain?

The paradox of executive power

open.substack.com

A lot of familiar tunes here for longtime followers/sufferers of Welsh #devolution. Of course, as previous First Ministers have experienced, there remains the equally familiar challenge of persuading the UK Govt to even entertain such reforms... #Senedd

NationCymru@nation.cymru · 7mo ago

Wales needs a 'new chapter for devolution' underpinned by fairer funding and stronger powers, the First Minister will say today (22 January) as she sets out an agenda for constitutional reform

Big news in the citizen participation and deliberation space, with 3 committee-driven events on immigration coming up. A couple of thoughts, based on some recent research. 🧵1/7 committees.parliament.uk/work/9550/yo...

Home affairs select committee to hold “citizen-assembly style” events on immigration - Committees - UK Parliament

Citizens with different views on immigration will be asked to come together to debate the trade-offs between legal migration and economic growth in a series of events being planned by the Home Affairs...

committees.parliament.uk

NEW REPORT: the gov’s proposals for judge-only trials will deliver only marginal savings and distract from the real route out of this crisis: reversing recent falls in court productivity.

Trial and error?: The impact of restricting jury trials on court demand | Institute for Government

The government’s reforms will unlock only relatively modest reductions in demand.

instituteforgovernment.org.uk

The latest episode of ‘what sort of a mandate is enough of a mandate for opening independence negotiations’. Some brief thoughts 🧵 1/6 www.ft.com/content/3136...

SNP seeks to exploit unionist rift with fresh independence pitch

John Swinney to set out plans for second referendum at party conference as Reform splits Scottish pro-union vote

ft.com

I‘m giving a public talk at UCL on Thurs 16 Oct. The title is “Bureaucracy and distrust: the civil service in the constitution” looking at the civil service’s constitutional foundations, and how it might respond to a populist govt. @sirJJkc.bsky.social will chair! www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/...

Hybrid | CLP - Bureaucracy and Distrust: The Civil Service in the Constitution

This lecture will be delivered by Dr Ben Yong, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2025-26

ucl.ac.uk

📢ICON GBIE, TRICON, QUB Webinar: Familiarity, Culture & Expertise: The Future of Referendums in Ireland & the UK Oct 17th 10:00-13:00 Online To register follow the link below: events.teams.microsoft.com/event/0d55a0... 1/3 👇

The news of Conor Gearty's death has just been announced and I'm not coping. He was a mentor and the pole star in my constitutional thinking. He was also a great friend and fantastic fun to be around. I'm heartbroken for Aoife and the children.

Very sad to hear this terrible news - Conor was not just an inspirational teacher whilst I was at the LSE and an exceptional scholar, but so warm and generous as LLM Director, remembering us years later. Thoughts go out to all his family.

Paolo Sandro@paolosandro.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Huge, huge loss for the UK legal and political community www.linkedin.com/posts/cherie...

Really interesting data on support for the major parties from last year to this year - and provides some colour to the 2025 local election results in England. 1/2 🧵

The British Election Study@britishelectionstudy.com · 11mo ago

Labour's next biggest losses are to left-liberal parties (Liberal Democrats and Greens). Reform's growth in support has mostly come from the Conservatives and non-voting (much less from Labour). These reflect patterns of party-bloc voting that we saw in the 2024 UK GE: tinyurl.com/y5pv7thw

Very interesting perspective on some of the ongoing grievances. Open question how England can better be represented politically, but it seems there’s a wider problem of identity to tackle irrespective of tinkering with devolution.

The Conversation UK@uk.theconversation.com · 11mo ago

The Conservatives and Labour have allowed resentment to fester in the biggest part of the UK – and the only region not to have its own parliament.

Considered and informative the thread on the history of parliamentary sovereignty, from Professor @robertsaunders.bsky.social

Robert Saunders@robertsaunders.bsky.social · 11mo ago

I'd add that what "unlimited parliamentary supremacy" means in practice has changed over time. The idea emerged in an era when there were two chambers with near-equal powers, party discipline was weak, the scope of legislation was less extensive & passing major legislation was genuinely hard. [...]

Some thoughts on the UK Govt’s recent ‘Votes at 16’ announcement - in short, we need much better citizenship education for voters (or all ages) that is practical as well as theoretical for this to be a success. icfs.org.uk/votes-at-16-...

One does not simply... rewrite the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. 😅😅😅😅😅...😭

I have a piece in the Times Higher Education today on the problems AI is causing for university assessments. www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/have-c...

Have chatbots killed the student essay?

This year’s marking season has confirmed for many academics that, less than three years since the launch of ChatGPT, AI use by students has become so rife that their submitted writing is no longer a r...

timeshighereducation.com

"Under first-past-the-post, because there are more people wanting Special Brew than cappuccino, lattes or flat whites respectively, you are all condemned to go out on the piss." Brilliant from @willhaycardiff.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Here is the single thing Labour can do to see off Reform and make British politics work | Will Hayward

Farage’s party could win 42% of Commons seats with only 26% of the vote. That’s not the way civilised countries do democracy, says Guardian columnist Will Hayward

theguardian.com

Happy publication day to me! Here’s a little celebratory thread🧵 to explain what the book is about: One of the everlasting questions in constituional theory and practice is what makes a constitution difficult to amend?

It’s quite possible to advocate for the reforms mentioned in this article - citizenship education, media literacy and more real-world skills - and not conclude that education should better equip children for the workplace. 1/5 🧵

The Observer@theobserveruk.bsky.social · last yr.

We need our children to leave school ready for life in the real world To ensure that young people embarking on a career have the skills and mindset employers are looking for, education must be linked more closely to the workplace, writes David Blunkett.

Worth reading this piece for the stats quoted as much as anything else - a shift in electoral system will happen once the party in govt is incentivised to do it. Lib Dem/Green gains from Lab being greater than potential Reform gains might well be what provides that.

George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · last yr.

By betraying his voters so comprehensively and so soon, Keir Starmer has done us a favour. He has given us 4 years to design the government we want. In this week's column I explain how it can be done. There's massive potential, but we need to start now. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A blog version of this article is now on the @politicalquarterly.bsky.social website. #LoughNeagh

Are the Rights of Nature the Only Way to Save Lough Neagh?

Would a ‘rights of nature’ approach protect Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, and aid the reversal of the damage to its ecology?

politicalquarterly.org.uk

Laurence Cooley@lpcooley.bsky.social · last yr.

I have a new article in @politicalquarterly.bsky.social, researched and written with my former student and research assistant, Elliott Hill, on the Lough Neagh ecological crisis, rights of nature and rights of future generations. #LoughNeagh #openaccess onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A core feature of the Trump regime is its embrace of "authoritarian democracy", as a battering ram with which to demolish any obstacle to its power. The very notion of "authoritarian democracy" can sound contradictory. But it's an old & dangerous idea, that needs to be better understood. [THREAD]

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · last yr.

Stephen Miller on the court order to release Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk: "There's a judicial coup in this country....This judicial coup by a handful of Marxist judges...can only be understood as an attack on democracy."

A complex switch of votes in various direction. Aggregate numbers suggest a limited number of direct Labour/Reform switchers In this contest, Reform consolidated the right-of-centre anti-Labour vote, while Labour lost voters to non-voting, and could not squeeze Greens as Reform did Tories

✍️I visited British Steel last week - just as workers were discovering that the plant's Chinese owners were effectively planning to starve the blast furnaces to death. It was a strange, unsettling experience. With deep ramifications. Some thoughts: edconway.substack.com/p/the-strang...

The Strange, Unsettling Story of British Steel

Why the fate of a blast furnace in Scunthorpe might have much deeper implications for this country

edconway.substack.com

Pleased to share my book review of Leah Trueblood’s Referendums as Representative Democracy, now published in Public Law Review. A short thread on some key points I make 🧵1/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....