Brace yourself for the post-election glut of political books - those on the election itself and those on completely unrelated subjects but which are held back by their publishers until after the dust has died down.

One example of the latter is Anthony Seldon's second edition of the Blair Effect, this time focussing on 2001-05. There's a chapter by us in it on parliament - which covers reform and rebellion in both the Commons and Lords. It can be downloaded from here (pdf, 117k).

Another example of the latter is the forthcoming authorised biography of John Smith, which has been written by one of the revolts.co.uk team and which will be a snip at a mere 25 quid. Expect to hear quite a lot about this book on this site over the next month or so!

And an example of the former is a book on the general election, edited by Andrew Geddes and Jonathan Tonge, the third in a series that began in 1997. One of us has (co-written) a chapter in it on the Conservatives, and although it's not about MPs per se, it does contain a section on the Conservative leadership election of 2001, in which we argue that the frequently made claims that the grassroots somehow over-ruled the (oh-so-wise) MPs are simply not true, as anyone who looked at the voting figures in a bit more detail would see straight away. In case anyone's interested, it's available from here (pdf, 132k).

26 May 2005.

Sadly*, there aren't that many academics who research and write on the Commons. One of the best young academics to do so is Alexandra Kelso, a postdoc at Strathclyde University. Her most recent paper on the Modernisation Committee since 1997 is here (pdf, 96k). It's not really about voting, but it is about parliament and it's very interesting, and that's enough to get on this site, to be honest.

* We say 'sadly', but it does mean that there's more interesting stuff for those of us who do. So it's not all bad.

22 April 2005.

Since the new Scottish constituency names were first announced, there have been a few moans about the clumsiness of their titles – but no one has produced any evidence that the titles today are actually any longer, or more verbose, than, say, 50 years ago – probably because no one has been sad enough to go back and work out the length of all the constituencies in 1955.

Except that now someone has. We are sad enough to do it – and in this very short article, co-written with David Denver of Lancaster University, we show conclusively that Scottish constituency names have been getting progressively more cumbersome over the last fifty years.

Are these the self-serving complaints of electoral anoraks, who are already dreading the prospect of reading out some of these names at 4am on 6 May? Well, yes, to be honest.

UPDATE: This has earned us a place in the Guardian's Anorak's corner. Some would say t'is our natural home.

14 April 2005.

Following our earlier post on Michael Howard and his voting on abortion - with the Bremner, Bird and Fortune programme on Channel 4 being the latest to pick the story up - The New Statesman have just published this by one of us, which argues that the voting pattern of MPs on votes on abortion hardly suggests the issue is as non-partisan as some people seem to be implying. Since a sub is required to read the NS article, a longer (ie, unedited) version is available for free from here (word, 32k), with a table giving the detailed scores for each of the votes available from here (word, 36k).

The argument that these supposedly non-party votes are in fact almost entirely driven by party is an argument that we have been making for years (as, for example, in this book). It was equally clear in all the recent votes on hunting. The most recent key vote (pdf, 35k) saw 2% of Conservatives back vote in anti-hunt direction, compared to 92% of Labour MPs. And it was clear in a story in Friday's Guardian that the gay rights group Stonewall have ranked all MPs according to their voting record, and - surprise, surprise - found clear party divisions. The 32 least 'pro-gay' MPs comprised 30 Conservatives and two Unionists. Details of the survey don't yet appear to be available from Stonewall's site.

28 March 2005.

This article (pdf, 198k) article is forthcoming in Parliamentary Affairs in the new year. As well as summarising the rebellions of the last session - especially over top-up fees - it also looks at the clash between the Lords and the Commons over fox hunting (largely misunderstood) and the procedural reforms to the Common (largely ignored). 13 December 2004.

Conservative backbench rebellion has not attracted the same level of media interest that has been generated by the splits within the Government’s ranks. Conservative MPs have not been rebelling as frequently as Labour MPs, nor in such large numbers. But there were still 74 occasions during the first two sessions of the 2001 Parliament when Conservative MPs defied their party managers. This short article (pdf, 104k), forthcoming in Political Quarterly, looks at the three main issues to have produced division on the Conservative benches since 2001. And although not contained in the article (for reasons of space), this one page piece (pdf, 59k) contains a listing of the most rebellious Conservative rebels during the period. 3 June 2004.

Apologies for the lack of new material over the last few weeks, caused partly by running a last minute (and almost certainly futile) attempt to save civilisation. It has also been academic conference time, and at one we presented a very rough first draft (pdf, 532k) of some work on the Iraq rebellions of 2003. If you download it, be warned: it's very much a first draft, and some of the data analysis is pretty rough. But it might still be of interest, even in this form. Any comments welcome.

We've also just finished a short article on the role of the whips (pdf, 110k) for the teaching journal Politics Review. This is, though, pretty basic - and is unlikely to be of much interest to many of you.

We're hoping to post up some more interesting material on the voting of Scottish and Welsh MPs - as well as on the voting of Labour women MPs - shortly.

17 April 2004.

The de-selection of Jane Griffiths as MP for Reading East has (yet again) prompted examination of the behaviour of the large number of women Labour MPs first elected in 1997. This study – published last year in the British Journal of Political Science – looked at the voting of New Labour's women MPs in the last Parliament and found that they were disproportionately likely not to have voted against the Party line. By the end of the second session of the 2001 Parliament, a total of 24 of the 65 women elected for the first time in 1997 had voted against their party line since their election. Four of the rebels left at the last election (Jenny Jones and Tess Kingham stood down, Chris Butler and Eileen Gordon were defeated), which leaves 20 who have voted against their whip, 19 of whom have done so at some point over the past two years. The most rebellious is Ann Cryer, who from 1997 to the end of the second session of this Parliament (in November 2003) has rebelled 30 times; she is followed by Berry Williams (24), Julie Morgan (22) and Chris McCafferty (17). The 19 include 13 MPs who did not rebel at all during the 1997 Parliament, but who have now begun to do so. This last group includes Helen Clark (who as Helen Brinton became synonymous with party loyalty) as well as the now de-selected Jane Griffiths. Many of the new women, however, dispute the idea that rebelling is a useful indicator of their behaviour, and point to other ways in which they have influenced Government. This paper (399k), by Sarah Childs and Julie Withey, forthcoming in Political Studies, finds that there is a clear gendered dimension to the behaviour of women MPs when it comes to Early Day Motions (EDMs). Based on analysis of all the EDMs in the 1997 Parliament, some 5000 motions, they find that Labour’s women are more likely than its men to sign ‘women’s’ and especially feminist ‘women’s’ EDMs. 23 February 2004.

This paper (179k), which is forthcoming in a book entitled Old Labour, New Labour, looks at backbench behaviour between 1974 to 1979, during which the Government was vulnerable to defeat in the division lobbies, both as a result of opposition parties combining against it during the periods when it was a minority government and its own backbenchers entering the opposition lobby. As a result, it suffered more defeats than any government in modern British history. Yet despite the fact that the Government was returned in October 1974 with a miniscule parliamentary majority, and lost that majority in April 1976, it survived into a fifth session. It was thus, remarkably, one of the longer Parliaments of the post-war era. 13 February 2004.

This article (171k), forthcoming in Representation, examines the votes of February 2003 on House of Lords reform, discusses the reasons for the failure of the Commons to agree on any of the options and looks at the future prospects for reform. 2 February 2004.

This article (172k), forthcoming in The Journal of Legislative Studies, looks at voting in the House of Lords. The Lords is a chamber in which the political parties lack the constraints and incentives that in other legislative chambers normally constitute the means available to ensure party unity. But this study of voting behaviour between 1999 and 2002 demonstrates very high levels of cohesion in peers’ voting, cohesion that cannot be attributed to disciplinary sanctions. 15 January 2004.

This article (223k), forthcoming in the British Elections and Parties Review, summarises the behaviour of the PLP between 2001 and the end of the second session in November 2003. It provides detail on the level of rebellions since 2001, on the number and composition of the rebels, and on the extent of factional behaviour on the backbenches. It supersedes our earlier Research Paper of 10 September 2003. 10 January 2004.

This article (86k), forthcoming in The Journal of Liberal History, examines the voting behaviour of Lib Dem MPs over the last decade. It gives data correct up to the end of the second session, and supersedes our earlier briefing paper on the subject. It shows the dramatic change in the Party’s behaviour, which as seen the Lib Dems shift from being almost indistinguishable from Labour to becoming a bona fide party of Opposition. It also shows that this cooling in relations did not result from Charles Kennedy becoming leader. Rather his election as leader – and the changed electoral strategy that has resulted – was evidence of the Party’s changed stance as much as its cause. 5 January 2004.

This article (152k), forthcoming in Parliamentary Affairs in April 2004, provides an overview of Parliament in 2003, covering the rebellions over Iraq and other issues, as well as the abortive votes on Lords reform. 18 December 2003.

The purpose of this very short paper (115k) – which is unlikely to be of interest to all but a handful of anoraks – is to make Roger Scully, of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, a happier man. He is unhappy about the way measures of backbench dissent are calculated and presented; and so this note analyses the effect that measuring rebellions in either absolute or relative terms makes to the findings. If this interests you, you need help. 14 November 2003.

This article (65k), published in the THES in August 2003, discusses the reasons for the growth of backbench dissent amongst the PLP. 8 August 2003.