Utopia, you are standing in it!

Talk is cheap. Governments, particularly wealthy, western ones, have been quick to make promises on climate change. They swear blind that they understand the threat the world faces, and that they will implement a policy response commensurate with it.Few nations have adopted this rhetoric as determinedly as the UK, with the British government promising to transform the UK into a net-zero country by 2050, an oath enshrined in law through the passing of the Climate Change Act 2008 (Order 2019) by Parliament in the summer of 2019.

Yet for all this hot air, whether in the form of domestic legislation like the above or international treaties like the Paris Agreement, even those wearing the most rose-tinted spectacles will see only incremental progress.Reporting last year, the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) concluded that ‘this [2020] was not the year of policy progress that the Committee called for in 2019’, while…

The turbulent eleven years known as the “Interregnum” (from the Latin for inter “between” and regnum “reign”) was the only period in English history to not have a ruling monarch. It was an age of suspicion and paranoia. A king had been executed, Parliament and the New Model Army jockeyed for power, and Puritanical fanaticism took hold. The Interregnum took place in two effective periods: the Commonwealth (1649-1653) wherein power was largely concentrated in the hands of Parliament, and the Protectorate (153-1659) wherein Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard took power with the support of the military as the Lords Protectorate.

After the shocking beheading of Charles I, England became a nominal republic. Abroad on the Continent, the monarchs of Europe looked on in horror as England committed regicide, but not a single European monarch offered military support to Charles. In London, a statue of Charles was cast down with…

Most of us probably think of pubs as informal spaces for leisure and socialising. In the period we research for the House of Commons 1832-1868 project, however, things were rather different. Public houses played a central role in many of the formal routines of public life, providing meeting places and temporary offices for a range of civic and commercial activities. These more formal functions were especially apparent when it came to the business of organising and running election campaigns. The idea of the pub as a suitable venue for electioneering might seem rather alien to us today, but our research shows that they continued to play a significant part in British political life well beyond the 1832 Reform Act.

Unused ‘refreshment’ ticket, 1841

The traditional view of the pub in early Victorian elections, of course, is as providers of drink. Vast quantities of alcohol were often given away in the…

When James VI left Edinburgh to become King James I of England, his frail younger son, Charles, was left behind in Scotland. “Baby Charles” was a sickly child who had unfortunately inherited his father’s lack of confidence. He was never supposed to be king. That honor was conferred upon Charles’s elder brother, Prince Henry, a vigorous and confident young man who many embraced as successor to the crown. However, he tragically died of an illness early in 1612. Charles was further isolated when his older sister, Elizabeth, departed to marry the King of Bohemia in 1613. At that point all eyes turned toward Charles for the succession of the crown. To fulfill his solemn duty, Charles grew into a proud, pious, and ultimately pathetic figure. He continued his father’s delusions about the “divine right of kings” and exacerbated hostilities between King and Parliament, and Church and State. His failures and…

Posted by Krista J. Kesselring, 20 April 2021.

‘Justice’ comes in many forms. Women mired in violent marriages in early modern England had little hope of formal, legal escape but might try for justice of a rougher sort. A woman might seek a separation authorized by the church courts if her very life was in danger, or at least ask a justice of the peace to take bonds for her husband’s good behaviour, but that was about all the law offered, and even that only sparingly. That’s not to say that women in abusive relationships had no other options, though. Early modern wives, and their friends, sometimes tried rather less licit ways to improve their situations. This post tells the story of one woman whose complaints about her drunken brute of a spouse prompted a sympathetic vicar to sneak into her husband’s house at night, whip in hand and wearing…

The Elizabethan era came to a close in 1603 when the good queen gave up the ghost after a long and consequential reign. The twilight of the Tudors marked the end of the most transformative epoch in English history. The seed of Henry VIII was finally exhausted and there was no immediate heir to the crown. England was forced to look abroad for a stable political future. Queen Elizabeth’s ongoing refusal to acknowledge a successor befuddled her court and caused great consternation within her council. It was only thanks to the skillful and covert diplomacy of her greatest administrator, the hunchbacked Robert Cecil, that a peaceful transfer of power was secured. The new king of England was to be a Scotsman, James VI, the only son of Mary Queen of Scots.

When Elizabeth breathed her last, a messenger, Sir Robert Carey, was dispatched from Elizabeth’s death bed at Richmond Palace…

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011placed a legal obligation on the Prime Minister to make arrangements for a committee to review the legislation before the end of 2020. That committee was duly created, and published its reportlast month.Robert Hazell and Meg Russell offer a summary of the committee’s work and argue thatthe committee ‘ignored’ the weight of the evidence on several key areas.

On 24 March the parliamentary Joint Committee to review the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA) published its report. The committee was established last November under section 7 of the FTPA, which required the Prime Minister in 2020 to make arrangements for a committee to review the operation of the Act, and if appropriate to make recommendations for its amendment or repeal. The review was carried out by a Joint Committee composed of 14 MPs and six members of the House of Lords, and…

By Eyal Berelovich

militarystrategymagazine.com

The views expressed above are those of the author and do not represent those of the Israel Defense Force Ground Forces, the R.D.C Department, or the Israel Defense Force.

Professor Eyal Zisser’s 2018 article on the Syrian Civil War begins with the following words: “In March 2011 a revolution erupted in Syria. It began as a limited local non-violent protest in the rural and peripheral areas of the country, and within a few months escalated into a bloody civil war that quickly became sectarian, and worse yet – religious, a holy war (Jihad). The civil war attracted foreign intervention that transformed Syria into a regional and international arena of conflict, with the rival sides being used by the global and regional powers as pieces on the chess-board of their conflicts.” [i]

Most descriptions and analyses of the war divide it chronologically into several main phases. Some…

Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York

Of the many sudden changes of political fortune which mark English history in the fifteenth century, none is more remarkable than the recovery of the Yorkist cause following the débâcle of October 1459. Within a month of Ludford its leaders were proscribed and attainted exiles. Yet by June 1460 they were able to mount a successful invasion of England and take control of London. Shortly after, they defeated the king’s forces at Northampton and Henry VI became a prisoner in their hands. This made possible a period of Yorkist-controlled government lasting to the end of the year, when the disasters at Wakefield (30 December 1460) and St Albans (17 February 1461) again put all in suspense, and thrust Edward of March onto the English throne.

Why this Yorkist revival was so successful has never been properly explained. Certainly, the rebels’ control of bases outside England…

I’ve been bothered for some time by how lightly the Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, was excused over his lapse of judgement in accepting hospitality from New Zealand Cricket at a time when preferential access to the Covid vaccine for the New Zealand cricket team was a matter of some concern to New Zealand Cricket, and when Bloomfield himself exercises considerable clout in such matters (having both formal statutory powers assigned to him ex officio, but also being (one of) the Covid minister’s chief advisers). It wasn’t even as if this was a single lapse, since Bloomfield acknowledged that he had last year several times accepted tickets to rugby games, and yet the Rugby Union had been negotiating with the government re the ability to host foreign teams in New Zealand.

New Zealand has tended to pride itself over many years about the incorruptibility of public life. Unfortunately, we…