EPISODE SUMMARY
This week we ask: What does the process of Brexit tell us about the role of the UK’s parliament and whether it needs reform?
EPISODE NOTES
The last seven years in British politics have been tempestuous. The turmoil has had multiple causes: Covid, Putin’s attack on Ukraine, and Trussonomics among them. But the politics of much of the period has been dominated by Brexit: by a referendum on an ever so simple question, followed by years of wrangling over what the question meant and how the answer that voters gave to it should be interpreted and implemented. Much of that contest took place in parliament. Meaningful voters, indicative votes, the Brady amendment, the Malthouse compromise, the Cooper–Letwin Bill and the legality or otherwise of prorogation – all became the stuff of prime-time television.
So what should we make of that period? And what can we learn from it – about how parliament and our constitution work, and about how they should work?
Well a new book recent
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7/11/2023
EPISODE SUMMARY
This week we ask "what have been the legacies of conflict in Northern Ireland?"
EPISODE NOTES
In 1998, after three decades of conflict, lasting peace was achieved in Northern Ireland through an accord variously known as the Good Friday Agreement or the Belfast Agreement. The 25th anniversary of that Agreement comes next month.
Though there are problems – the institutions of power-sharing government established through the Agreement are currently suspended, and pockets of paramilitary violence remain – the settlement reached a quarter of a century ago has been strikingly successful in its central aim: conflict has not returned; and contestation over Northern Ireland’s constitutional future is now conducted solely by political means. People in Northern Ireland have lived in much greater freedom and security as a result. For most people, life has got much better.
Nevertheless, 30 years of conflict were always going to leave lasting legacies that would take time to heal
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7/11/2023
The second talk in The Pre and Post-History of Brexit - Race, Class and Finance in the Making of British Economic Strategy Lecture Series will look at the economic trap of post-Brexit, post financial crisis Britain, and why escaping from the growth trap Britain is in will require rethinking Britain's fundamental economic strategy in the neoliberal era.
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5/22/2023
The first talk in The Pre and Post-History of Brexit - Race, Class and Finance in the Making of British Economic Strategy Lecture Series will look at the prehistory of Brexit and its roots in the post-imperial crisis of British industry and the neoliberal approach to British political economy of successive British governments in the 1990's during the high tide of European integration. The focus will be on the centrality of issues of race, class and empire to the economic fate of post-imperial Britain.
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5/11/2023
This week we look at parliament’s role in shaping Brexit-related legislation between 2017 and 2019. We ask: What role did parliament play in Brexit? More particularly, how much influence has it had over Brexit legislation? And has it done harm or good?
Politics in the UK is in a state of turmoil. Every time we think it can’t get any crazier, it finds a way of doing just that. Many of the roots of the trouble can be found in Brexit. Whatever you think of Brexit, it’s clear that the referendum of June 2016 forced parliament to implement a massive switch in the direction of the country that most MPs thought was wrong, and split the main parties – particularly the Conservative Party – down the middle. The politics of ideology trumped the politics of competence.
This week we look at a new piece of research by two researchers here at UCL, which sheds light on an important aspect of the story. It assesses just how much influence parliament had in shaping the various laws that had to be..
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12/14/2022
What are the challenges facing London as it comes out of the pandemic and into a post-Brexit world? Join Prof Alan Thompson, Pro-Vice-Provost for London, in conversation with Dr Jon Reades from The Bartlett, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment.
Show notes and transcript on www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-minds/podcasts/ucl-future-cities
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7/26/2021
The inaugural podcast from the team at The UK Energy Research Center. In this episode, UKERC Director Prof Rob Gross discusses the impact of Brexit on the UK energy landscape with Caroline Kuzemko (Associate Professor in the University of Warwick’s Politics and International Studies department) and Antony Froggatt (Chatham House).
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6/15/2021
Since the 2016 EU Referendum, two narratives have been prominent in the public debate surrounding the outcome of the vote. The first narrative sees Brexit as a revolt of the ‘economically left-behinds’, while the second narrative attributes Brexit to the resurgence of an English nationalism.
In his lecture, Tak Wing Chan uses data from a large scale and nationally representative survey to evaluate these two narratives. He considers whether Brexit support is associated with neighbourhood deprivation, concentration of migrants, and exposure to the 'Chinese import shock'. He also assesses how social class, social status, low income, and expressions of Britishness and Englishness shape ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’ sympathies.
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1/24/2020