In a Snap Brexit Election, 16 and 17 Year-Olds Must Have the VoteYoung people are refusing to be ignored – the recent school climate strikes and campaigning on Brexit have shown that. But while they can protest outside Parliament all they want, there’s a brutal fact: they...Posted 05 Apr 2019
ERS in the Press – March 2019Brexit might be dominating the news, but the rolling constitutional crisis that we call Westminster is still up to its usual tricks. We’ve spent the last month getting press attention for some of our biggest...Posted 29 Mar 2019
Binary indicative votes were never going to achieve a consensusThis is an expanded version of a letter from our Senior Director, Willie Sullivan, that was published in the Times on March 29th. When MPs voted to take control of the order paper in an...Posted 29 Mar 2019
While MPs debate our democratic future, another aristocrat takes a seat in Parliament for lifeOn Wednesday – while elected MPs debated Britain’s future – the results came out for the latest in a series of bizarre House of Lords ‘by-elections’. The vote – to fill the vacant seat following...Posted 28 Mar 2019
New figures demolish the government’s argument for mandatory voter IDThe government’s case for excluding voters who lack ID is getting weaker by the day. Last week the Electoral Commission released its latest round of statistics on voter fraud for 2018. The numbers were revealing....Posted 26 Mar 2019
What does preferential voting mean?There has been talking recently about using preferential voting to solve the Brexit impasse – whether through MPs using it to find a form of Brexit that parliament can support or through a referendum. When...Posted 26 Mar 2019
Money could flood into British politics under planned lawThe Overseas Electors Bill, which returned to the Commons last week, has a sound purpose – to end the current limit on how long Britons can live abroad and still be able to vote. But,...Posted 25 Mar 2019
Why replacing the unelected House of Lords is key to the movement for fair votesFor far too many of its members, the second chamber of our Parliament is a private members’ club. The House of Lords – the UK’s revising chamber – is packed to the brim with appointees...Posted 22 Mar 2019
Local citizens’ assemblies could break our political deadlock – but the government have vetoed themLast summer, ministers announced genuinely exciting plans for piloting ‘deliberative democracy’ across the UK. The plan was to use a series of citizens’ assemblies to engage people with politics, to tackle complex and contested topics,...Posted 22 Mar 2019
How hereditary aristocrats are still trying to call the shots in ParliamentOn Friday, a handful of hereditary aristocrats managed to club together to stop even the most modest of attempts to modernise the House of Lords. Lord Grocott’s bill would have ended the absurd practice of...Posted 19 Mar 2019