I won’t be voting SNP for the very good reason that I am not Scottish and don’t live in Scotland.  For the same reason, I was tempted to leave the SNP out of this series.  But if the SNP win a lot of seats in Scotland and no other party gets a majority in the

No party in Britain has a more romantic history than the Labour Party.  It is a thread in British society that goes back to the Diggers and the Levellers of the Civil War, continues through the struggles of the Trade Unionists and the Chartists and in which the founding of a socialist party to represent

The UK will be electing a new government in May of this year, and the coverage is already extensive.  The media always give elections far more coverage than most of us want in terms of volume.  However I always feel that we don’t get much in terms of depth. The party machines are adept at

The ice cap at the North Pole melted, and you were worrying about the budget deficit?  Sea levels rose around the world and you were bothered about bankers’ bonuses?  The world’s food supply failed to keep up with population growth and you were focused on immigration controls?  How are future generations going to look back

The Conservative Party’s origins go back ultimately to the royalists of the English Civil War – though the descent is not a linear one.  They have also acquired DNA from the Liberals with and without capital Ls and from intellectual influences like Edmund Burke.  They have always been about supporting the establishment, but have often

  It isn’t too hard to explain why Christianity became the predominant religion in the Roman Empire.  It was well organised.  It provided social security at a time of great insecurity.  It also had all the coercive power of the state behind it.   But how did the conversion of the barbarians make such inroads into