Values

Value

The Law, Politics and Morality

The Law, Politics and Moralit

'This is what democracy looks like' : New Labour's blind spot and peripheral vision

New Labour in government since 1997 has been roundly criticized for not possessing a clear, coherent and consistent democratic vision. The absence of such a grand vision has resulted, from this critical perspective, in an absence of 'joined-up' thinking about democracy in an evolving multi-level state. Tensions have been all too apparent between the government's desire to exert central direction - manifested in its most pathological form as 'control freakery' - and its democratising initiatives derived from 'third-way' obsessions with 'decentralising', 'empowering' and 'enabling'. The purpose of this article is to examine why New Labour displayed such apparently impaired democratic vision and why it appeared incapable of conceiving of democratic reform 'in the round'. This article seeks to explain these apparent paradoxes, however, through utilising the notion of 'macular degeneration'. In this analysis, the perceived democratic blind spot of New Labour at Westminster is connected to a democratic peripheral vision, which has envisaged innovative participatory and decentred initiatives in governance beyond Westminster

Democracy and judicial Independence

One of the pillars of British liberal democracy is the independence of the judiciary; but the problem is how to reconcile judicial independence with efficiency in the administration of justice and with public accountability. The former question, though of immense importance, has received ameliorative attention only in the last few years. The latter question has been resolved largely through the consistent, apolitical appointment of persons of high ability to the Bench. One useful mechanism to promote the continued smooth functioning of the judicial system in the U.K. might be the establishment of a Department of State concerned entirely with the administration of justice and judiciary

Tales of the unexpected: the selection of British party leaders since 1963

Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Leader of the Labour Party in 2015 stunned observers and practitioners of British politics alike. In this article, we first outline a theoretical framework that purports to explain why political parties operating in parliamentary systems choose the leaders they do. We then examine 32 leadership successions involving five major British parties since 1963, and note that many of these were unexpected, in that they were triggered by unforeseen circumstances, such as the sudden death or resignation of the incumbent. Examining each party in turn, we briefly explain why the winners won and identify at least eight cases (a quarter of our sample) where a candidate widely expected to prevail at the outset was ultimately defeated by a ‘dark horse’, ‘second favourite’ or even ‘rank outsider’. Of these, Corbyn’s election in 2015 was the most unexpected and, consistent with the findings of studies of party leadership conventions in other parliamentary systems, namely Canada and Spain, suggests that ideological and policy concerns are sometimes more important than considerations of party unity and electability, especially when a leadership contest is dominated by party activists

The Independence of the Judicial Process

I first visited Jerusalem in 1941. I was looking forward to an agreeable sick leave after a small flesh wound in the desert. Unfortunately as the train moved slowly up from Lydda, I felt more and more ill and finally I collapsed on the platform of Jerusalem station and was removed on a stretcher to a requisitioned Italian hospital. A ridiculous small insect had infected me with a tiresome small disease.My visit was less disagreeable than its unfavourable beginning would seem. I soon recovered from my sandfly fever, but as they had carelessly placed me in a bed next to a patient suffering from diphtheria, I was incarcerated in the hospital, or so they supposed, in quarantine for another fortnight. This was not quite so aggravating as one might think. The Italian hospital was furnished with an outside staircase just opposite my bed, and after my temperature had been taken in the morning I escaped by it for most of the day. If I was missed, no one informed me, and, as I suppose it is now too late to court martial me, I can explain that with the fortnight's quarantine and the effective sick leave which followed (I spent it at Amdursky's Central Hotel in Ben Yehuda Street) I visited most of the sacred spots without either a professional guide or a Baedeker, except my grandmother's grounding in the Bible. It was not a bad way to see the holy city since, in the middle of the war, there was not much commercialisation, and no one paid much attention to a slightly bandaged lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade wandering about the city and its neighbourhood.</jats:p