Julien Warnand/EPA
Nieves Perez-Solorzano, University of Bristol
As the December European Council drew to an end, EU leaders must have felt that they were living their own Brexit Groundhog Day. As has become the norm since the Brexit negotiations began in March 2017, the European Union is faced with a British government in crisis. Continue reading
Phil Syrpis, University of Bristol
After a bitter battle in which ministers were found to be in contempt of parliament, the UK’s attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, has published his legal advice to the government on Brexit. Continue reading
Image Credit: STEM4Brit
A day in Parliament: Kate Oliver, STEM Finalist 2018
On the 12th of March I went to Parliament, for the second time in my life, this time accompanied by a rolled up piece of A1 paper. I was going to ‘the major event bringing early career researchers and parliamentarians together’, STEM for Britain*.
This poster session, now in its 21st year following its founding by Eric Wharton MP, invites around 50 exhibitors in each of Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Engineering and Biological sciences to explain their work to the employees of Parliament and a panel of expert judges. Five of us from Bristol had been selected to present – around a third of applications are successful – all in different categories, and we had been preparing our two-minute pitches for a few weeks, with the help of our supervisors, university support staff, and patient friends. Continue reading
Ron Johnston, Professor of Geography, University of Bristol
The British prime minister Theresa May called a snap general election in the expectation that it will deliver her a substantially increased parliamentary majority. This in turn would give her the “strong and stable government” she hopes for as she enters the crucial Brexit negotiations.
So far, opinion polls suggest that the Conservatives have a large lead over Labour. But in order to attain the desired majority, they need to win a substantial number of seats from Labour. There were, however, fewer marginal seats following the 2015 general election than after any previous election since World War II – just 42, for example, where Labour won by a majority of less than ten percentage points over the Conservatives.
If the Conservatives were to win all of them, they would have 374 MPs in the new parliament compared to Labour’s 195 and a majority over all parties of 98.
So how winnable are those 42 seats? The likelihood of many Labour voters from 2015 switching to the Conservatives in 2017 is small, so the Conservatives will have to gain most of the extra votes from other sources. One likely source is those who last time voted for UKIP. Continue reading