As the year comes to an end, blog editor Dave Busfield-Birch offers a roundup of the 12 months just gone, as well as a look at the reach of the blog through the lens of its readership statistics.

As I sat down to write this introduction this time last year, I was able to reflect on a year in which we had three Prime Ministers and two monarchs, which I believe is unique in the UK’s modern constitutional history. Three different monarchs sat on the throne in 1936, but there was no change in Downing Street that year. From a quick look, 1830 appears to be the last calendar year when we had two monarchs and two Prime Ministers.

With that in mind, I was (foolishly) expecting 2023 to be a little calmer, constitutionally speaking. But it has not been absent of constitutional excitement. A former Prime Minister has returned to government, in which he will serve as Foreign Secretary despite not being an MP (neither of which has happened in my lifetime: Lord Carrington resigned six months before I made my first appearance). Another former Prime Minister has resigned as an MP due to findings of misconduct, preventing a recall petition being issued. And the recall process itself is a constitutional innovation that (once a novelty) is starting to feel commonplace. Resignations from parliament seem to be increasingly frequent, as well. And of course, we had the first coronation of a monarch in 70 years.

First Ministers in Scotland and Wales have also decided to make way for new blood, while in Northern Ireland the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement’s 25^th anniversary came and went with its devolved institutions in stasis.

Editor’s pick

Is confrontational questioning bad for parliaments and democratic politics?, by Ruxandra Serban.

Ruxandra returned to the Unit this year, and the blog is a better place for it. In this post she compares questioning procedures in the UK, Australia, Canada and Ireland, and discusses whether a confrontational style has negative consequences for parliaments and for democratic politics (spoiler alert: the answer is that the desirability of aggressive questioning is questionable).

Our most popular new blogs by month

January

Checks and balances: what are they, and why do they matter?, by Lisa James, Meg Russell and Alan Renwick.

Published as part of our Constitutional Principles and the Health of Democracy briefing series, this post explains the nature of the checks and balances in the UK constitutional system and argues that they play a vital role in maintaining public confidence in the political system.

February

The public wants parliament to have a central role in legislation, so why does the Retained EU Law Bill enhance the legislative power of ministers?, by Lisa James and Alan Renwick.

This post draws on the work of the Unit’s Democracy in the UK After Brexit project and surveys done of public opinion on constitutional matters as a part of that work. It argues that the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, which enhanced the ability of ministers to legislate through delegated legislation, was out of step with public opinion, as Unit surveys demonstrate that members of the public instinctively favour a central role for parliament in law making.

March

The Brown Commission’s proposals on the House of Lords, by Meg Russell.

Unit Director Meg Russell dissects the proposals of the Brown Commission for reform of the House of Lords, in the light of previous UK and international experience. She suggests that the Brown report leaves much detail unspecified, making ambitious Lords reform unlikely before the second or third year of a Labour government.

April

What role should the monarch have in a constitutional crisis?, by Robert Saunders.

Focus in April was understandably on the upcoming coronation, the first in the UK for over 70 years. The Unit published a series of posts on the monarchy in the lead up to the big event. The most popular (and my personal favourite) was this one, in which Robert Saunders argues that the UK cannot rely on a ceremonial monarchy that seeks to remain apart from politics to protect the constitution from attack in times of crisis. For that, he concludes that other instruments will be needed, without which both monarchy and the constitution will suffer.

May

The future of the monarchy after the King’s coronation, by Craig Prescott.

The last post in our series on the monarchy looked to the future. Craig Prescott  discusses whether the UK is willing to consider the major constitutional change of becoming a republic, and concludes that should such a change take place, it will need to coincide with an underlying change in political culture in order to be anything other than symbolic.

In addition to this post, I highly recommend Craig’s post on the Regency Acts and the role of Counsellors of State, written in response to the legislation that added Prince Edward and Princess Anne to the list of Counsellors of State, who can fulfil some royal functions should the monarch be absent or incapacitated.

June

Do the public really care about lying to parliament? Yes, they do, by Alan Renwick.

Another post from the Unit’s Democracy in the UK After Brexit project. Writing in the wake of the Privileges Committee report on Boris Johnson’s misleading statements to parliament, Alan Renwick draws on research conducted as part of his project showing that a public desire for honesty in politics is deep and enduring.

July

Rebuilding and renewing the constitution: options for reform, by Meg Russell, Hannah White and Lisa James.

With a general election expected sometime in 2024, political parties are increasingly planning their manifestos. This post summarises some of the key recommendations of a report published jointly by the Constitution Unit and Institute for Government. It offers a menu of options for constitutional reform, from ‘quick wins’ to much larger-scale changes.

August

The future of the electoral system, by John Pullinger.

John Pullinger, chair of the Electoral Commission and a guest speaker on the Unit’s summer conference panel on Elections and Electoral Reform, sets out four key areas where electoral law is in need of reform, arguing for improved access to registration, increased transparency when it comes to political donations, stronger and simpler electoral regulation, and a modernisation of electoral law.

September

Why the UK government must take a different approach to restoring devolution in Northern Ireland, by Alan Whysall.

Alan is a regular feature on the blog – his latest post on the deadlock in Northern Ireland was published on Wednesday – and in September, he wrote this post, in which he concludes that the responsibility for salvaging the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement settlement may now fall to the next British government. This post picks up themes his recent reports for the Unit, called Northern Ireland’s Political Future (NIPF) and The Agreement at 25.

October

MPs’ staff, the unsung heroes: an examination of who they are and what they do, by Rebecca McKee.

MPs’ staff have been termed the ‘unsung heroes’ of Westminster, but for a long time, their work – in Westminster and constituencies across the UK – has gone largely unrecognised outside parliament and is often misunderstood by outsiders. In October, the Unit published a report by Rebecca McKee, which sought to address this knowledge gap by combining original analysis of existing data with entirely new evidence from an original survey of MPs’ staff. Here Rebecca summarises some of the report’s findings.

The report itself was one of my highlights of my time at the Unit, and well worth a read. I would also recommend Rebecca’s other posts on the subject, which also appear on the Unit’s blog, and can be found on the relevant project page. The post on the evolution of staffing arrangements across the last 100 years is particularly fascinating.

November

What kind of democracy do people want, and how should policymakers respond?, by Alan Renwick, Meg Russell and Ben Lauderdale.

Written to mark the launch of the final report from the Unit’s three-year research project examining public attitudes to democracy in the UK, authors Alan Renwick, Meg Russell, and Ben Lauderdale summarise the report’s findings. The public care about democracy. They want high standards in public life, robust checks and balances, and better education and information about politics.

For those who are interested in a discussion of the themes of the report, the Unit held a webinar to launch the report, which is available in video and audio format.

December

Recall petitions: process, consequences and potential reforms, by Tom Fleming.

The outcome of the Wellingborough recall petition is now known: Peter Bone has been recalled following a six-week suspension from the Commons for bullying and sexual misconduct. A by-election will now follow. This was the fifth such petition in as many years. In a post written before the result was known, Tom Fleming outlines how the UK’s recall system works, summarises its effects to date, and outlines possible areas for reform.

The year in numbers

As of 21 December, our blog has been read 209,143 times this year (up from 206,595 in 2023), averaging out at almost 17,500 views per month. The majority of our readers are based in the UK, but the blog has been read by people in 218 countries and territories, including Haiti, Kazakhstan, Malta and Norfolk Island. Malaysia remains our third highest source of readers, with the Philippines also making our top 10. Of last year’s top 10, Ireland and Italy have dropped out, to be replaced by Pakistan and the Philippines. And a special thank you to Trinidad and Tobago, which provided over 600 readers despite having a population equivalent to that of Birmingham, UK.

And finally…

The blog would be nothing without its contributors. They are too great in number to list here, but I am very grateful for their expertise and their time. In addition, I am personally grateful for the support I have had from everyone at the Unit during my six years as editor of the blog and Monitor. Meg Russell and Alan Renwick, as well as our former Director, Robert Hazell, deserve a special mention on that front: the blog would not be what it is without them. They all had a hand in recruiting me, although any errors after that point remain mine. Our Impact Researcher Rowan Hall has also been a wonderful colleague to work with, as was his predecessor Sophie Andrews-McCarroll. My life this year would have been infinitely harder without them. And a final thankyou to Edd Rowe, for all of his help over the last six years.

We hope that you enjoyed our content this year and that you come back in 2024. It is impossible to predict the future, but it is reasonable to assume that this coming year will be just as interesting as the one just gone.

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About the author

Dave Busfield-Birch has been the editor of the Constitution Unit blog and Monitor since January 2018.