Political history
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The most influential text of late Victorian imperialism was J R Seeleys The Expansion of England
The most influential text of late Victorian imperialism was J. R. Seeley’s The Expansion of England. In it, Seeley, a Cambridge historian, argued that underneath the surface of British political history - the stories of the rise and fall of...
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Movements must be built from the bottom up
Before he became an Anglican priest in the late 18th century, and wrote the much-loved hymn Amazing Grace, John Newton was a slave trade sea captain. He bought and sold slaves, raping, torturing and killing them in the course of...
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What are the social forces and economic interests that make up the bases of support for remaining in the EU or leaving it?
Today sees the publication of the IPR's referendum policy brief, a document that brings together contributions from a number of academics with the purpose of informing readers about the issues at stake in the EU referendum. Many of these issues are not new, but the...
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Don't stop thinking about tomorrow: social democracy in the 2020s
I have a longish piece co-written with Gavin Kelly, over at the site of the journal Juncture (which I co-edit) on the challenges the 2020s will bring to Labour and social democratic parties, and how they might start thinking about...
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On Ministers and Mandarins
The accountability of senior civil servants, and how far they should be independent of politicians or responsible to them, has been a recurrent theme of recent British political history. During the Blair years, retired mandarins muttered darkly of sofa government...
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New Canada, New Labour: Trudeau takes a lesson in Blairite government
As the Labour Party wrestles over whether to honour or disown its New Labour past, Canada’s new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has been busy assembling the architecture of a Blairite central government. Trudeau’s youth, good looks and self-declared “sunny ways”...
