Utopia, you are standing in it!

We’ve had a couple of widely-reported contributions to discussions on housing policy in the last few days.

The first was the Concluding Statement from the staff mission responsible for conducting the latest International Monetary Fund Article IV consultation with New Zealand (usually a physical mission here from Washington, but presumably done remotely this time). These statements are not formally the official view of the IMF management, let alone the Board, but you don’t get to be a mission leader without demonstrating your soundness and ability to run a line that won’t upset the Board and management. That doesn’t mean the messages are typically consistent either across time or across countries, but it does mean the final report (and the Board review of it) won’t be materially different. Of course, it helps that New Zealand isn’t a very important country (to the IMF – we don’t borrow from them, we pose…

The end of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate reign of Oliver Cromwell closed a dour, gloomy epoch in English history. Theatres were reopened, dancing was permitted once again, and other English revelries were welcomed back into society. The people of England longed for a return to familiarity, stability, heritage, and the restoration of the monarchy. In a way it was not Charles II that reclaimed the crown, rather it was the Cromwellian Protectorate regime that fell apart. It invited the return of the king. After more than a decade of Puritanical religious extremism, the new Carolinian age hailed a rebirth of literature, science, the arts, and theatre in England.

This was the era of Dryden, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, and Congreve; the reconstruction of London took place after the Great Fire under Christopher Wren’s capable architectural administration; and a Royal Society charter carried with it the promise of the Enlightenment under Newton’s…

Brexit has led to numerous clashes between London and the devolved governments, raising fundamental questions about the very nature of the United Kingdom, in a context where the European Union is no longer available as an ‘external support system’. Michael Keating argues that we need to find new constitutional concepts for living together in a world in which traditional ideas of national sovereignty have lost their relevance.

Since the Brexit vote, there have been repeated clashes between the UK and devolved governments. Some of these concern policy differences, notably over the form Brexit should take. Some reflect the inadequacies of mechanisms for intergovernmental relations. There is an inevitable rivalry between political parties at different levels. Beneath all this, however, are fundamental questions about the nature of the United Kingdom as a polity and where ultimate authority lies, especially after 20 years of devolution.

On the one hand, there…

Three Ways of Dissolving Parliament

In his famous treatise Commentaries on the Laws of England, Blackstone identified that dissolution can occur through one of three ways:

“1. By the king’s will […];
2. By a demise of the crown […];
3. By length of time.”[1]

Under Responsible Government, where Ministers of the Crown take responsibility for all acts of the Crown and the Crown acts on ministerial advice, dissolution by “the king’s will” now means dissolution by the prime minister’s or premier’s will. All dissolutions of the Parliament of Canada since 1867 have occurred under this method, and based on what I’ve seen in the last ten years of researching this field, the premiers have effected all dissolutions of the provincial legislatures since 1867 as well. (But if someone can find a contrary example, please do let me know – because that would prove most interesting). The first minister…