Deprecated: Function wp_make_content_images_responsive is deprecated since version 5.5.0! Use wp_filter_content_tags() instead. in /home/edadbce1/archive.progressivebritain.org/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114

Peter Riddell Articles

The Too Difficult Box: The Big Issues Politicians Can’t Crack

Charles Clarke is one of the wasted talents of British politics – his ministerial career was cut off too soon in 2006. Never easily classifiable in any Labour faction, he has always been a stimulating thinker and writer about politics, and particularly the problems of...

A Festschrift for Vernon Bogdanor

I had to look up the word ‘Festschrift’ when I received this volume: it is a work which honours a distinguished academic, drawing contributions from colleagues on the matter of their expertise. Vernon Bogdanor is undeniably the foremost constitutional scholar of his...

Nick Clegg: The Biography

Nick Clegg is a more formidable politician than his critics allege but a more flawed one than Chris Bowers portrays in this uneven apologia. Clegg has, after all, achieved what his predecessors – notably David Steel and Paddy Ashdown – sought and failed to achieve:...

In Defence of Politicians (In Spite of Themselves)

Politicians have always been a loathed race apart, as King Lear (‘scurvy politicians’) and Abraham Lincoln (‘one step removed from honest men’) indicated. Peter Riddell’s book argues that current British politicians are generally well motivated, but have not been at their best in defending themselves from the excesses of the hardcore abusers in the expenses scandal.