A blog about politics in the UK and the US designed for students of Edexcel Government and Politics Units 1, 2, 3C & 4C.
Updated irregularly by teachers of History and Politics.
Various news outlets have articles on the recent Supreme Court decision US vs Stevens (2010) which overturned a law which made videos of cruelty to animals illegal. The rationale for this is the First Amendment guarantees free speech (eg the videos) even if that speech is distasteful. In this case, cruelty to animals is illegal, but the depiction of that no longer is.
For different views on this case with different emphasis, see the right-leaning Fox News the centrist Washington Post and the left-leaning Huffington Post.
The main difference is the emphasis on the First Amendment and it's importance. HP's take is that the First Amendment prevents this law from banning distasteful images (thanks to what it calls "hypothetical argument"), while Fox News emphasises the victory of the first Amendment:
....the benefits of its restrictions on the Government outweigh the costs.
Worth saving that one. Good for any essay on the Supreme Court and the overturning of government law (although it is likely that the US government will come up with a more specific, and better-written law). For a recent example of what the various branches of the government does next see my earlier post on Kelo vs New London.
See Wikipedia's Supreme Court entry (paragraph 11& 12) for a handy cut-out-and-keep guide to recent US Supreme Court Cases and what areas they cover. It's worth quoting paragraph 12 in full, although paragraph 11 on the Rehnquist court is useful too:
The Roberts Court (2005–present) began with the confirmation and swearing in of Chief Justice John G. Roberts on September 29, 2005, and is the current presiding court. The Roberts Court is seen as more conservative than the previous court. Some of the major rulings so far have been in the areas of abortion (Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, Gonzales v. Carhart); anti-trust legislation (Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc.); the death penalty (Baze v. Rees, Kennedy v. Louisiana); the Fourth Amendment (Hudson v. Michigan); free speech of government employees and of high school students (Garcetti v. Ceballos, Morse v. Frederick); military detainees (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Boumediene v. Bush); school desegregation (Parents v. Seattle); voting rights (Crawford v. Marion County Election Board); the Second Amendment (District of Columbia v. Heller), and campaign finance (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission).
US political blog The Daily Beast has posted three very useful pages detailing the top 25 high-profile journalists and bloggers from across the three main parts of the US political spectrum. They're worth going through to help with any essay question which requires political opinion of the topic (that is, all of them).
The Left's list is here, the Right's list is here and the Centrist list is here.
I'm going to have a very quick scamper through the main ones, specifically with a view to finding articles on the course key topics I've taught. What I find won't be exhaustive, or complete, but hopefully may lead to other pages to help your research. Some, like the right-leaning Drudge Report, are well-known on the Internet, but I must admit I found the web-site hard to navigate, so I'll merely link to it here.
Right-leaning places to look & people to read: Andrew Breitbart, Laura Ingraham, the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News The Right on:
The general consensus is that Nick Clegg had a very good debate with Brown and Cameron for example, here and here - there is a debate to be had about how expectations can lead to a result (expectations of Clegg were by and large low so when he had a better debate than Cameron, who has been perceived as a great orator and debator, then he is the winner), or how the debate itself was hampered by a highly restrictive set of rules.
Overall, I think Clegg played the "I'm not the same as the other guys" line well. Cameron was good, but was hindered by over-cautiousness (being so concerned about making sure that he did not make a blunder that he lost most of his spontaneity and verve). Brown couldn't stop fidgeting, sounded too much like a bureacrat, and did not make eye-contact with the audience or the viewer. Better than expected then - as a result, he has been seen in some quarters as having a very good evening.
The key reason for bringing this all up is that it is unclear what impact these debates will have on the election. There is the possibility that a swing to the Lib-Dems (assuming nothing changes between now and the election - a very unlikely scenario) will impact key marginal constituencies which are Lib-Tory, but will have an uncertain effect on Lab-Lib marginals. Everything else being equal, left-leaning pro-LibDem voters will put their tick in the box of whichever party will keep out the Tories.
Brown's shameless wooing of Clegg on prime-time TV shows how concerned he is by the prospect of a hung parliament to encourage LibDem voters to help Labour by ganging up on the Conservatives. It also reminds us of how close the two parties are in many ways given their history, and recent policies (see my previous post for links).
In terms of G&P students, all useful stuff for any question asking about how minor parties can increase their support / vote / profile (go on the TV in prime-time debating with the leaders of the two biggest parties and do well).
Don't forget, of course, there are the other national TV debates too, in which the multi-party systems of the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament get to face up against eachother. Again, more publicity and coverage (not to mention equal billing) for smaller and minor parties.
Nor should I ignore the BNP's invitation to appear on Question Time earlier in the year - as a result of a seat in the European elections they have become a party representing a constituency so their ideas should be tested in a public forum. Again - a minor party gains a seat that in turn helps to increase their profile, which may lead to more votes.
That's not to ignore the very serious possibility that the BNP benefited in the European elections from an anti-politics mood among voters in the UK. In this election this mood is likely to benefit UKIP too, that is if Nick Clegg can't be the anti-politician politician.
A very interesting piece here about a 2005 SC decision which so annoyed most of the US that State legislatures passed laws which specifically went against that verdict.
Useful for A2 G&P students when answering anything involving checks on the SC's power; in this case, Kelo v. City of New London in 2005 the SC decided that the government had the power under the Fifth Amendment to decide arbitrarily that property can be seized by compulsory purchase (or in the jargon "eminent domain") and passed to a third party for reasons of economic development; the public would ultimately benefit because the seizure of land to build a shopping mall would benefit the new owners and as a by-product create jobs. State legislatures subsequently passed laws and constitutional amendments which curbed the impact of the SC decision.
The checks and balances in this instance worked because the original case was opposed by most Americans and their political parties. The "excesses of the Supreme Court" was limited (at least in the view of the Economist Magazine's "Lexington" Column) by the new laws and State constitutional amendments.
Not the promised blog about the Conservatives yet, but a quick note that the first Leaders' debates are happening Tomorrow (Thursday). It could be very interesting, or very dull if they spend their time sticking to pre-prepared scripts and not engaging with eachother.
Bagehot in the Economist has an interesting take on Nick Clegg, given that the Lib Dem manifesto is out. Robert Peston and Stephanie Flanders have some good analysis of it. I won't go much further, given that there is unlikely to be a question in the exam about the Lib Dems directly. In short, they have some interesting ideas, but there are significant problems with their fiscal plans. Peston highlights that in some ways the promises in the manifesto are more traditionally left than Labour (and that Labour's manifesto is the most redistributive for years).
Nick Clegg has a great opportunity to engage with the public and get his message across in the debate. We'll see what he can achieve and what the impact on the election will be.
While I remember, I'll link to this; Labour is creating a standalone Pressure Group which focuses on saving "SureStart" the government policy which supports young families. Although it looks like a Pressure Group it has links to the Labour Party. The idea is to encourage families who would not have voted Labour to get involved in the Labour campaign other ways. Not only is there a web-site, but there is also a Facebook page.
Useful for any question which asks about why Pressure Groups and parties are sometimes difficult to distinguish.
MumsNet has got lots of attention recently especially from politicians like David Cameron. The BBC's coverage of the event is here, and the transcript of his interview is here. Gordon Brown's praise of MumsNet, where he shows it has a significant political clout, can be found here, and his interview with MumsNet can be found here.
Not a Spanish dish, but finally the parties' manifestos are out; the Labour one here, and the Conservative one here. Stephanie Flanders has a very interesting post analysing the financial implication of the promises, and works out (amongst other things) that the difference between Labour and Conservative pledges on financial matters are £7bn by 2015-16, which amounts to 1% of GDP. Essentially neither party are being open about their plans for government spending and taxation after the election. Flanders makes the very obvious point that an opposition without access to the government machinery would not be expected to give the answer the party sitting in power with access to the full resources of the Treasury won't give.
Bagehot in the Economist compares the two main parties' manifestos here.
Either way, the difference between the two on this matter is more style than substance - until fairly recently, Brown's attack on the Conservatives has been that they were going to "cut" while Labour "invested". Now Brown's approach is to say that the Conservatives would hurt the recovery, while Labour would protect it (he doesn't say how he'd do this). Conservatives have been claiming that Brown has served Britain badly in the recession (funny how politicians claim that an economy in a boom is all thanks to them, while an economy in recession is someone else's fault, guv. I seem to remember that Norman Lamont, a previous Tory chancellor, saying the same thing during the recession of the early 90s).
Any answer to the AS questions about political parties (there is likely to be a "b" and "c" question about the Labour party and its traditions vs "new" Labour, and one about the Conservative party and Thatcher vs Cameron) should mention the election and some of the current strands. I would consider it highly unlikely to achieve a high mark without mentioning this crucial event.
I cannot claim that the following will be an exhaustive account of the competing ideas of the parties. In no particular order, the Labour party is a left of centre political party, with traditions of socialism, although it is moderate and has moved away from the extreme ideas evidenced with the 1983 Manifesto ("the longest suicide note in History"), and in the "Militant" tendency of the Labour-dominated Liverpool council of the 1980s. See here for a short news item about Labour expelling militant from its ranks in 1985. I can't find the extraordinary clip of Neil Kinnock speaking at that year's conference, but if I do I'll post a link:
Labour moved away from the 1970s policies of high taxation and high government spending (see for example the policies of the Labour Chancellor Denis Healey). High taxation and the calling in of the International Monetary Fund to save the country from bankruptcy lead to Labour's critics for years portraying them as unable to run the economy well. The traditional Conservative Party criticism for years was that Labour was the party of "Tax and Spend".
New Labour under Blair and Brown benefited from the collapse of trust in the Conservative Party's stewardship of the British economy thanks to the exit from the ERM. In addition, they both attracted the support of business (as mentioned in this post by the BBC's Robert Peston), and promised at successive elections not to increase Income Tax. In addition, "new" Labour promised to increase spending on Public services starved of funds under previous Conservative administrations, while using market mechanisms to promote efficiency.
Health care policy has changed in recent years too - under Blair, spending was increased and targets were introduced. A certain amount of market-orientated reform was introduced. Current policy on health is to increase central control by introducing Rights to the NHS which give patients the right to a certain degree of service.
However, it is still a moderate, left-of-centre party who are trying to appeal to middle-class swing voters who supported them in droves in 1997. Plenty of detail here for any relevant question, hopefully, and that's without mentioning "education, education, education", "tough of crime, tough on the causes of crime" and the change to Clause 4.
More soon on the Conservatives in a similar vein. Let me know if I have missed anything significant.
More on the implications of this can be found at the articles above and here - a blog about the Supreme Court written from a neutral perspective by lawyers.
For G&P students, this is all useful stuff for the Supreme Court section of the course - both in terms of the impact this significant change may (or may not) have on the rulings of the court, but also for President Obama's power and influence given his success with the health-care bill. Will he be able to carry the Senate in getting through his chosen candidate, especially given the November mid-terms and the likelihood that they will become a referendum on the reform of health?
Gordon Brown has finally called the date of the General Election, and unusually its not clear who the winner will be because there is a significant possibility that neither of the big parties will have enough seats in Westminster to win an overall majority. I'm not going to be doing a blow-by-blow account of the political arguments as this is not that sort of blog, and besides to use Jon Pienaar's description in a recent podcast, the news-cycle is not 24-hour marathon but a 30-minute sprint; interested parties rebutt each-others' claims rapidly during the day, so that a story changes very rapidly as the hours go by.
This election is useful for G&P students in many ways (obviously), and highlights the important power that the Prime Minister has in deciding when to call the election. Generally, PMs choose the time which they believe would be most likely to produce a favourable result. In Brown's case he was on the verge of calling an election in October 2007 because it was felt he would benefit from being a fresh face. The fact he didn't because of unfavourable polling data has been, and will continue to be, debated at some length (for example here in the Right-leaning Spectator and here in the left-leaning Guardian. Ultimately he decided not go for an election in 2007 (2 1/2 years before he needed to) because he was worried about the result, with a hope that the future would improve the situation for him and his party.
A big story in this election has been the state of the government finances and the arguments about what each party would do (the BBC's Stephanie Flanders has a very interesting piece here); there has to be a mandate from the people based on a manifesto commitment empowering the winning party to cut government spending (amongst other things) in order to reduce the massive budget deficit which exists. In an interview in October 2009 with the Today Programme, George Osborne mentioned just this very point (click the button below to hear a short audio clip):
Useful in any question about elections, the manifesto, or mandate. Each party is trying to say that they would have a mandate from the people to govern and improve the public finances, but the other parties wouldn't because they are not being honest.
First thing first. I know that Gordon Brown has finally called the general election and that May 6th has been the obvious date for months, but before I get onto that I'll just post information about the AS and A2 courses which I teach and which will be the focus (for now at least) of this blog.
Edexcel Advanced Subsidiary GCE in Government and Politics - AKA AS G&P - Code: 8GP01. Unit 1: People and Politics
Edexcel Advanced GCE in Government and Politics - AKA A2 G&P - Code: 9GP01 Unit 3C: Representative Processes in the USA Unit 4C: Governming the USA
Various useful documents such as the specification and sample assessment materials can be found here at the Edexcel web-site. I do have to include a health-warning:
The specification had been changed in 2008 for the AS 2009 summer exam and the 2010 A2 summer exam. Older exam papers you may find elsewhere on the site won't have the same structure as we will be expecting in the exams in the summer, but they may be helpful in terms of the sort of questions they are asking.
This is an experiment. Let's see if it'll be worthwhile!
The intention is that this will be a collection of posts, links to articles and suchlike for Government and Politics students at the school I teach at in SW London.
I'll be covering US and UK politics, with a particular focus on the Edexcel AS and A2 course.
Occasionally I'll post my own thoughts too, although I'll try not to editorialise whenever possible.
There are other more knowledgeable blogs out there, but I'll do what I can to highlight key strands of thought and link them to issues on the course.
