Professor Bogdanor gives a 50 minute lecture on the 2015 Election results.
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05y9fgc/briefings-election-2015-lecture
Professor Bogdanor taught Cameron at Oxford when Cameron was studying PPE.
"Professor Bogdanor's most famous former student is the current Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron whom he has described as "one of the ablest" students he has taught, whose political views were "moderate and sensible Conservative".[6] Professor Bogdanor has, however, expressed reservations about some of Cameron's policies, notably his proposal for a British "Bill of Rights", about which Bogdanor said, "I believe it's ill thought-out and confused.... He [Cameron] may have forgotten some of the things I've taught him. I'd be happy to give him a few more tutorials on civil liberties"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Bogdanor
Professor Bognador talks about our electoral system and how it is not adequate for representing voters' wishes in the new multiparty politics we now have. He says that 25% of English voters are represented by just 8 MPs, while the big two parties have over 500 MPs. He also says that just under 50% of Scottish voters are represented by just 3 MPs.
He talks about the "grassroots insurgency and rebellion" of the British electorate in voting SNP and UKIP, and says that this election shows the defeat of liberal intenationalism - represented by Labour, the LibDems and even Cameron and Osborne - vis-a-vis the identity politics of nationalism (both UKIP and SNP).
He says that the liberal internationalst Labour Party has for years been founded on a Hampstead-Humberside alliance between the liberal metropolitan elite and the working class, but that that is now fractured with the working class abandoning the metropolitan elite.
He suggests that the new split in British politics is no longer based on class, but on identity and belonging (as represented by the SNP and UKIP) and that rather than a left/right divide we may now be seeing a globalisation/anti-globalisation or internationalist/nationalist divide. But in reality this divide is just the underlying left/right divide anyway, in my opinion, i.e. internationalist and global governance a la Labour, modernisers in the Tory Party etc, versus right wing national independence, freedom, democracy and sovereignty.
He says that the constitutional reforms such as devolution have highlighted the uncertainty in Britain and have even questioned the unity of Britain. He says the self confidence of Britain has gone and can't say whether it will return.
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Politics
Professor Vernon Bogdanor's analysis of the 2015 Election
3 replies
claig · 26/05/2015 10:06
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