Surprisingly, one of the critical issues leading to Starmer’s resignation was a disagreement within the cabinet about the defence budget and strategy. I have persistently argued that Labour’s defence party strategy was aimed at defending labour’s right against his left rather than the country against any threats. The government has now published what they call…
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I am trying to draft an NPF reference back on Immigration.
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A number of Green led councils are having problems fulfilling their promises, on housing, and disinvestment. Lewisham Greens manifesto is published here, and I have made a mirror. It is also available on the wayback machine, as is the its landing page. The final line on the manifesto web page is, Lewisham already has everything…
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One of the issues I rarely consider when looking at democratic reform is term limits, although I am in favour of them for Mayors. I found this paper, Term limits in parliamentary mandates – Democratic renewal or disruption? published by the European Parliament. I note that they are more common in Presidential republics, as in…
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The key responsibilities in Government for IT delivery, and AI have moved, swapped even; regulation remains at DDCMS.
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I am trying to write something on the undesirability of unitary presidents, or over-powerful first amongst equals within collective executives.
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I have looked for this a couple of times, but found it last night. From Labour’s Rules, “The Labour Party does not tolerate electoral fraud”
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Andy Burnham, the likely next leader of the Labour Party made a speech on Monday 29th June, from the People’s History Museum in Salford. I have linked to the Sky News video of the speech. I have captured the transcript and post it below/overleaf. This may differ from the speech due to inaccuracies in youtube’s…
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The CJEU has been weakening “carrier immunity” also known as “safe harbour”, firstly in a case called X vs Russmedia but its come to light in my feeds recently, I am not sure why, important people have just noticed it. Here are some links …
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AI was discussed at Congress 26, both in the Hall and in London’s Fringe. The CEC published a special report, which I used Adobe’s AI tool to summarise and then put it through Chat GPT to remove duplicates. I spoke on the CEC report at Congress. AI made summary Click to toggle Content After removing…
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I came across “Aspiring for Change: A Theory of Middle Class Activism” and wanted to clear the physical version out from my cupboard and so made this note. Others may find it interesting.
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I was pulled to return democraciness by some comments on the UK and the Copenhagen Criteria. I replied in this blog article, where I returned to Economist Intelligence Unit’s index and gave a nod to https://www.v-dem.net/ and Polity IV. See also https://davelevy.info/how-democratic-is-the-uk/ 2018. On quora I was pointed at some further indices that I had…
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Despite claiming to be an expert, I had not heard of the Maastricht Convergence Criteria which define a readiness to join the Euro. I asked google gemini to summarise its role. These include Price stability, Sound public finances, to ensure they are sustainable, Exchange-rate stability, to demonstrate that a Member State can manage its economy…
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James Schneider writes on defence in the ‘Statesman in an article entitled in the magazine, The Great British defence con, but within the URL as “britains defence budget must get more bang for its buck”, and interesting metaphor given that one of the criticisms of the current SDR is the amount of dollars it proposes…
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The Government has announced it plans to introduce a Bill to allow the Government to “dynamically align” with the European Union‘s single market. This comes at the end of a series of events over the last four and half months, since I wrote, https://davelevy.info/wiki/brexit-reset-winter-2025-26/ I comment on these at https://davelevy.info/labours-brexit-tanker-is-turning/, since then What’s disappointing is…
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