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).

2021 has been a fascinating time to be writing about the UK constitution, its institutions and those involved in working within them. The government, despite the pandemic, has proposed a raft of policies with constitutional implications, including a restriction of judicial review, changes to the right to protest, human rights reform and an online safety bill shorn of a previous commitment to safeguard democracy from online harms. As the year comes to an end, blog editor Dave Busfield-Birch offers a roundup of the year just gone, as well as a look at the reach of the blog through the lens of its readership statistics. 

2019 was a year of constitutional flux and tension, with a new Prime Minister, a new Brexit deal and a new parliament. In 2020, COVID-19 upset the political calculus and posed challenges aplenty for the constitution and its watchdogs. 2021 saw the country seeking to find its way as COVID-19 conditions became the new normal, within a context of a government that has persistently broken rules and violated norms (and not always to its advantage). Below are our most popular blogs from the past year, preceded by a personal selection by me, at the end of my fourth year as blog editor.

Editor’s picks

A woman’s place is in the House: reclaiming civility, tolerance and respect in political life, by Dame Laura Cox.

If I have a constitutional niche, it is parliamentary standards of conduct and the slow evolution of the standards regime at Westminster. Outside of the Unit, I provide free employment law advice to members of the public, with an emphasis on discrimination. This post was therefore always going to be included on this list.

Dame Laura, who produced a seminal report on the bullying and harassment of parliamentary staff, argues with eloquence and passion that the behaviour of too many parliamentarians is misogynistic and a cause of capable women leaving parliament, or having to accept behaviour that would not be permitted in any other workplace. She says that this is in part an institutional problem, and calls for a more open, tolerant, respectful and conciliatory politics.

‘Our travel difficulties haven’t been well-understood by the Government’: life as an MP from the smaller opposition parties during the pandemic, by Louise Thompson and Alexandra Meakin.

One of the country’s foremost experts on small parties and (in my opinion), the go-to source for analysis of Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster, team up here to fantastic effect. They outline how smaller parties have been disproportionately affected by government choices about how parliament should operate during the pandemic. They offer a warning that this might have long-term and unintended consequences: failure to enable the voices of MPs from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to be heard may lead to constituents in these nations feeling voiceless in an institution that no longer represents them.

The post is one of a long-running series on the impact of COVID-19 on our constitution and its institutions.