How a party leader is actually chosen
Conservative MPs whittle candidates to a final two for a member ballot, Labour gates entry with a 20% MP nomination threshold, and both…
Sarah Mitchell
446 reading now
Politics
Policy, power and elections — non-partisan coverage of how decisions get made.
188 stories
The Privy Council: what this ancient body still does
The Privy Council still makes binding law through orders in council, supervises hundreds of chartered bodies, and its Judicial Committee…
Sarah Mitchell
420 reading now
Why so many English councils are running out of money
Council bankruptcy notices have moved from scandal to pattern, driven by a decade of funding cuts colliding with legally unavoidable social…
Sarah Mitchell
385 reading now
How boundary reviews redraw the political map
Four independent Boundary Commissions redraw Westminster constituencies every eight years to equalise electorates within five percent of a…
Sarah Mitchell
346 reading now
Devolution: who actually runs what in the UK
Health, schools and much else are run from Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, and a growing layer of English mayors, which makes half the UK…
Sarah Mitchell
384 reading now
Select committees: the most effective part of Parliament nobody votes for
Cross-party select committees compel evidence, embarrass the powerful and change policy without passing anything, and their strength is…
Sarah Mitchell
411 reading now
Prime Minister's Questions: what it is actually for
PMQs looks like weekly theatre, but the half-hour session forces Number 10 to brief across every department, and its real audience is the…
Sarah Mitchell
323 reading now
How a bill becomes law in the UK: the parts the diagram leaves out
The civics diagram of readings and royal assent is accurate and misleading at once, because the real shaping of law happens in committee…
Sarah Mitchell
442 reading now
How the whips actually keep MPs in line
Party discipline in the Commons rests less on blackmail folklore than on the whips' control of careers, attendance bargains and…
Sarah Mitchell
393 reading now