History & policy database
Opinion Articles
H&P encourages historians to use their expertise to shed light on issues of the day. If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece for publication, please see our editorial guidelines. We currently have 342 Opinion Articles listed by date and they are all freely searchable by theme, author or keyword.
Nuclear elections
Britain's nuclear deterrent is an ageing resource. The Trident submarines carrying the United Kingdom's nuclear weapons will not last long into the 2020s, and if they are to be replaced a major spending commitment will have to be made in the next couple of years. Given that the total cost is uncertain – estimates range […]
Read MoreWhere will the axe fall? Public opinion and spending cuts
In the final televised leaders' debate, each of the party leaders promised they would be honest with the electorate about how they would tackle the public deficit. This pledge came after the Institute for Fiscal Studies published an influential report that criticised Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats for failing to disclose the full […]
Read MoreWhen the wheels came off Brown’s campaign bus
Surveying the wreckage of Gordon Brown's political fightback on the streets of Rochdale, some commentators are claiming that it's all happened before. They're wrong; even taking a very long-term perspective, no senior politician has gaffed quite so damagingly while on the stump as the Prime Minister did yesterday. It is true that, ever since microphones […]
Read MoreCabinet Office quest for written constitution should worry historians
The Cabinet Office is currently engaged in a process of defining the UK constitution. But its approach gives grounds for concern. First, there is a democratic deficiency in the closed nature of the process being followed. No public consultation has been held, with the Cabinet Office drawing in outside advice largely confidentially and on terms […]
Read MoreRevisiting the ‘Big Society’
Following the first televised Prime Ministerial Debate last week, Conservative party strategists have adopted an increasingly negative campaign focused on the potential dangers of a hung parliament. The reason for this negativity might be more complex than a simple reaction to liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg's success in seizing the mantle of 'change'. Indeed, the […]
Read MoreDon’t mention the war? History suggests foreign policy can swing voters
Party strategists may think that tonight's Sky News leaders' debate, focusing on foreign policy – will be less important to voters than the debates on social policy and the economy. The election campaign so far has been marked by a lack of reference to foreign policy – despite the deaths of hundreds of British military […]
Read MoreHistory suggests that Scandinavian policies will be lost in translation
Conservative Party proposals to allow parents, businesses or religious groups to set up 'free schools' in England have been the subject of intense debate during the election campaign. The party wants to 'copy' Sweden where, it argues, these institutions have 'driven up standards'. But there has been little focus on whether their attempt to import […]
Read More‘History suggests “boom and bust” won’t go away’
On the Today programme on Thursday 8 April, Gordon Brown was challenged by John Humphreys over his oft-repeated claim as Chancellor of the Exchequer that he had “put an end to boom and bust” in the UK economy. From a man once hailed as a brilliant economist, this was always an astonishingly naive, ahistorical assertion. […]
Read MoreA return to Victorian levels of railway building?
The Liberal Democrats argue that investing in Britain's railways should mean more than building new high-speed lines. By spending 'nearly £3 billion' to reopen 'thousands of miles of track' closed in the 1960s and earlier, they want to promote the 'biggest expansion' of the network since the Victorian age' to 'make our railway great again'. […]
Read MoreHistorians respond to the Budget 2010
Glen O'Hara of Oxford Brookes University, puts the public debt in historical perspective “During the budget debate, the Leader of the Opposition said that the £167 billion being borrowed by the government this year is 'more than every single Labour Government in history ever borrowed, added up together'. The key here, of course, is that […]
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