Articles by Jessica Garland

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Jessica Garland, Director of Policy and Research

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In these divided times, a new consensus is emerging around our broken election laws

Fresh off the back of our call for Parliament to take action on Britain’s analogue-age campaign rules – and the launch of our petition for an end to ‘dark ads’ – commentators and public figures...

Posted 31 Jul 2018

Campaign regulation is needed now before all trust is gone

The need to tighten the rules around how political parties and campaigns target voters online is a hot topic right now. Last week’s fines against Vote Leave for overspending (and breaching other key rules) in...

Posted 24 Jul 2018

From rule-breakers to foreign influencers, our democracy is under threat

The Electoral Commission has fined Vote Leave, the official pro-Brexit campaign, £61,000 for breaking electoral law during the 2016 EU referendum. This could be a game-changer. Its long-awaited report, published on Tuesday, states that there...

Posted 17 Jul 2018

There’s an easy way to tackle the ‘political gender gap’ – what’s the government waiting for?

It’s no news that British politics has a big problem with gender diversity. Just a third of MPs and councillors are women. Established prejudices need challenging, social media trolls need stopping and there must be...

Posted 02 Jul 2018

One simple change could take us much closer to gender equality in politics

There can be no doubt that in order to see more women elected to our political institutions, political parties need to stand more women candidates. Yet there is no official information on the diversity of...

Posted 04 Apr 2018

A handful of hereditary peers are trying to stifle reform – they are on the wrong side of history

Westminster is packed full of peculiar traditions from the Commons’ door being slammed in Black Rod’s face to the ban on MPs clapping. While many of them are relatively harmless, there are others which are...

Posted 03 Apr 2018

Seven reasons to cancel the cut in the number of MPs

Six months ago it appeared that controversial changes to electoral boundaries were to be dropped by the government. There has never been a great appetite for the number of MPs to be cut from 650...

Posted 19 Feb 2018

100 years after women won the right to vote, there’s still a long way to go

2018 marks one hundred years since a major landmark in the history of our democracy – the first time women in the UK had the right to vote. The Suffrage movement saw women organise and...

Posted 17 Jan 2018

A portrait of the leader of the Women's Suffragette movement, Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst (left) and her daughters Christabel (centre) and Sylvia (right) at Waterloo Station, London. Mrs Pankhurst was about to leave for a lecture tour of the USA and Canada.

Bargaining on equality: a challenge to the trade unions?

“If we want to see women in positions of power in society – how do we achieve it?” This was the challenge we set for the audience at the Unions21 debate: Women, Power and Trade Unions....

Posted 04 Apr 2012