Birkbeck Politics

The Rt Hon John Bercow MP, Speaker of the House of Commons, delivers a lecture at Birkbeck College on parliamentary reform. Addressing the conclusions of The Good Parliament report (authored by Birkbeck's Professor Sarah Childs), the Speaker discussed his vision for a reformed Parliament and the principles which must underpin it.

Since his election as Speaker in 2009, John Bercow has embarked on an extensive outreach programme, travelling across the country to visit schools, universities and community groups to talk about his role and that of Parliament. He has sought to champion the rights of backbenchers, and has ensured parliamentary business is dealt with in a timely manner to ensure as many MPs can contribute as possible. In addition, he has granted an unprecedented number of Urgent Questions in order that Parliament discusses the pressing issues of the day.

This is a recording of an event that took place at Birkbeck College on Monday 12 February 2018. He is introduced by Birkbeck Professor of Politics Rosie Campbell.

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Description: Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck's BA Politics module, Contemporary British Politics, in particular. In episode 38, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy reflect on their 2017 predictions and offer some thoughts as to what 2018 may hold.

In episode 38 of our politics podcast, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy reflect on some emerging data about the June 2017 General Election and on the instability in Ireland’s supply and confidence arrangements.

Dr Duncan Kelly (Cambridge) speaks at Birkbeck College, a recording of an event on Tuesday 21 November 2017. This event was hosted by the Centre for the Study of British Politics and Public Life. The discussion is chaired by Dr Jason Edwards (Birkbeck).

It is almost impossible to overstate the impact of John Maynard Keynes in the field of modern political economy, and certainly impossible to tell the political and economic history of the first half of the last century without at least some reference to his thinking, teaching and public presence. But what might be said about Keynes both in the context of the history of British political thought in that period, and also of the extent to which Keynes, as a political economist, might himself be considered an historian of political thought?

This lecture attempts to engage these questions in two ways. First, by looking at Keynes’s attempts to redeploy the legacy of Thomas Malthus from the Great War to the middle of the 1930s, alongside his attempts to consider the nature of modern liberalism in general, it aims to consider to what extent this part of his wide-ranging output might actually be seen as an exercise in the history of political thinking. Second, and much more speculatively, by connecting up some of the ways in which contemporary debates about the interrelationship between environmental and financial crisis take us back to debates about political economy in the 1970s, might we see how the illustration of Keynes’s various ‘Malthusian moments’ may retain some resonance in contemporary debates about the interconnection between environmental and financial crisis.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/BirkbeckPolitics/

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/birkbeck-dept-of-politics

Twitter: www.twitter.com/bbkpolitics

Centre website: www.csbppl.com

Department website: www.bbk.ac.uk/politics/

Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck's BA Politics module, Contemporary British Politics, in particular. In episode 37, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy reflect on the power of the Prime Minister to hire and fire and the constitutional crisis in Northern Ireland.

Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck's BA Politics module, Contemporary British Politics, in particular. In episode 36, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy ask who can be Prime Minister under Britain’s uncodified constitution.

Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck's BA Politics module, Contemporary British Politics, in particular. In episode 35, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy reflect on the 2017 Labour and Conservative Party Conferences.

In the last decades British government and society has been opened up in all sorts of new ways. From the Freedom of information Act to Open Data and from surgeons’ performance rates to ownership of UK businesses, we know a great deal more about what is being done and spent in our name. New initiatives promise new openness about everything from gender pay gaps to executive bonuses. Exposés such as the MPs’ expenses scandal show what effect the new openness can have.

But how open is Britain? How well do these new systems of openness and streams of data work? Can they be avoided or turned to politicians’ advantage? This seminar asks a panel of experts to discuss how open Britain really is and to look to the future and ask, as Britain moves into the opaque world of the Brexit negotiations and faces new and uncertain post-EU world, how open will the new UK be?

Panel:

Martin Rosenbaum (Journalist, BBC)

Rosemary Agnew (Former Scottish Information Commissioner and now Scottish Public Services Ombudsman)

Professor Sarah Childs (Professor of Politics and Gender, Birkbeck College)

The event is chaired by Dr Ben Worthy, whose book The Politics of Freedom of Information: How and Why Governments Pass Laws that Threaten Their Power was published in 2017.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/BirkbeckPolitics/

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/birkbeck-dept-of-politics

Twitter: www.twitter.com/bbkpolitics

Centre website: www.csbppl.com

Department website: www.bbk.ac.uk/politics/

Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck's BA Politics module, Contemporary British Politics, in particular. In episode 34, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy ask why political scientists failed to predict the 2017 general election result and discuss what's next for Theresa May's minority government.

Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck's BA Politics module, Contemporary British Politics, in particular. In episode 33, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy discuss the 2017 General Election two days before voters go to the polls.