In the month of November, Boris Johnson’s government will most likely instate a committee review of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) with the ultimate goal of fully repealing it. This Act, introduced in 2011, was supposed to fix the date of the general election to be every five years. Its planned repeal is part of a number of sweeping constitutional reforms that would empower the British executive over Parliament, which the Conservative Party vowed to push for in its 2019 electoral manifesto. With the ongoing global pandemic and the protracted Brexit talks with Brussels, the Conservative’s plan to repeal the FTPA have largely flown under the public’s radar. Yet if a repeal goes through, it would have a significant …

Tomorrow the voters of Eastleigh go to the polls to select a new MP following the resignation of Chris Huhne. The eyes of observers of British politics are keenly trained on the outcome of the by-election because it might give us some early clues to some serious questions about the next election: How are voters going to respond when faced with two incumbent government parties? Is Liberal Democrat support going to evaporate? What is the effect of UKIP going to be?

On the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme this week, former Defence Secretary and darling of the Tory Right, Liam Fox, suggested that ‘it is a game for academics’ to discern as to whether a Cameron Government policy (i.e. without Liberal Democrat restraint) would be that different from a Coalition Government policy. I reckon it’s not just an ‘academic game’, but nevertheless I’ll give it a go. The central contention here is that a Tory majority Cameron Government would, mutatis mutandis, be no different to today’s Coalition Government in terms of ideology, public policy and behaviour. Some academics agree. Tim Bale and Robin Kolodny observed recently that Britain has a ‘Coalition government but one that, to all intents and purposes, looks, sounds and …