As the year comes to an end, blog editor Dave Busfield-Birch examines the blog’s content in 2025, and offers some insight into the reach of the blog through the lens of its readership statistics. The posts below cover a wide range of topics such as Prime Minister’s Questions in the French parliament, reform of the House of Lords, and the effects on the monarchy of the actions of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. We also take time to recommend that you read a tribute to our late colleague Bob Morris. Read on to find out in which German city the blog seems to have a cult following, and other statistics that raise many questions, including ‘is former President of the United States Joe Biden reading our blog on a daily basis and if not, why are we so popular in Wilmington, Delaware’?
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Government plans for electoral reform are a welcome start, but contain one surprising and serious error of judgement
Over the summer, ministers published plans for extensive electoral reforms. The headline proposal is the reduction of the voting age to 16. A raft of other measures will affect voter registration, campaign finance, election administration, and the role of the Electoral Commission. In this post, Alan Renwick argues that much of what the government proposes is good. But the newly appointed set of ministers responsible for elections policy will need to make further progress on some crucial matters.
Continue readingShould we be worried about the decline of parliamentary scrutiny?
Complaints about declining standards of government scrutiny by parliament have been commonplace in recent times – particularly during the troubled years of Brexit and Covid. But how can such claims be objectively assessed, and crucially, have scrutiny standards since recovered? Constitution Unit Director Meg Russell addressed these questions in a recently published journal article, summarised here. She concludes that there is significant cause for concern, and that standards actually worsened under Rishi Sunak, once the Brexit and Covid crises were over. To reverse the decline, both government and parliament need to act.
Continue readingThe Constitution Unit blog in 2023: a guide to the last 12 months of constitutional debate
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 25th 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).
Continue readingEighteen deals and counting: finding meanings in England’s devolution deals
Mark Sandford argues that devolution within England offers a means of improving policy outcomes with minimal additional cost, but notes that the detailed practicalities of it will have as much effect on its outcome as declarations regarding new powers. He therefore suggests that changes in governance practice should be a core focus of future research initiatives.
Alongside debates on Scotland and Wales, English devolution was described by Christopher Harvie in 1991 as ‘the dog that never barked’. At the end of 2023, it has very rapidly become everyone’s pet. Both Labour and the Conservatives favour more devolution to local areas in England. Think tank reports extolling its likely economic benefits abound. Hardly any voices can be found making the case for pausing or reversing the government’s drive towards devolving power.
Far less attention has been devoted to examining the practicalities of achieving this end. It is easy to assume that ‘more devolution’ can be legislated into existence, with legal powers regarded as the lodestone of ‘real change’. This post suggests that devolution – expanding the scope of local decision-making within England – depends less on legislative changes and more on a transformation of the machinery of government at a local level. In this regard, developments in 2023 give unexpected grounds for optimism (see a summary of developments in 2023 on the House of Commons Library website). New ideas and practices of government are beginning to percolate into the English devolution agenda – and these can erode tacit assumptions that underlie the centralising tendencies within the British state.
This blog highlights the makings of new machinery of government practices in two aspects of English devolution: central-local relations and the role and scope of devolved institutions. Encouraging alternative governing practices has long been amongst the core rationales for devolving power: not just localised government, but better government. However, this blog also highlights a third dimension of English devolution acknowledged by government publications: accountability and scrutiny, where more enduring conceptual obstacles have yet to be tackled.
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