Public Affairs

Television debates! What are they good for? Absolutely… well, it depends

The general election campaign is entering its final stages. On Friday, the two main party leaders, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, will for the second time this week go head-to-head in a televised stand-off. People will write angry things on the internet. Mrs May will say “strong and stable”. The nation will engage soberly with serious matters of policy.

A Tale of Two Parties: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”

In the last fortnight, two very different party conferences have occurred; Labour’s in Liverpool and the Conservative’s in Birmingham. For the most part, Conservative attendees – finding themselves in a majority government, with an exit from the EU in the offing and a Prime Minister channelling a bit of their heroine, Mrs Thatcher – were by far the happier.

The Queen’s Speech: a round-up

Pomp and ceremony outweighed legislative substance even more than usual in this year’s speech, which was deliberately light on new policies because of the upcoming EU referendum. However, underneath all the wigs and pageantry there was a subtle message from the government: let us finish the job. Many of the announcements made today depend on…

Does political news coverage affect opinion polls? Well, it’s complicated…

Protestors lined up outside the Conservative party conference in autumn 2015 to hurl abuse, among other things, at delegates. And the media were just as likely to be on the receiving end as politicians. Channel 4’s Michael Crick, a journalist who’s no stranger to this sort of thing, later said he hadn’t witnessed such hostility…

Who says that politics has become predictable?

At the beginning of 2015 who would have guessed that the Conservatives would secure a general election victory, the obscure backbencher Jeremy Corbyn would win the Labour leadership contest…