Public Affairs articles

We are on the eve of a Boris Johnson government.  In the context of the many challenges it faces, WA is scenario planning around whether it succeeds or fails. Here are our thoughts on what a Johnson government may look like, if it succeeds.  In the next couple of days, we’ll provide an alternative analysisRead more

On the face of it, the call from Tom Watson, deputy leader of the Labour Party, for more stringent regulation of the gambling industry is a typical Labour solution to a problem: more government intervention, more taxes and more money for the NHS. In a speech given at a Demos, the centre-left think-tank on 18Read more

Theresa May’s speech yesterday afternoon represented a last roll of the dice, gambling on cobbling together a cross party consensus to land a Brexit deal. It is clear this morning that this has manifestly failed. The headlines will make for painful reading in Number 10. The ‘new’ deal has been resoundingly rejected by all ofRead more

There’s a new kid on the block in UK politics. Climate change and the demand for radical, green policies has burst onto the political stage and into our discourse in recent weeks. This has been driven by the Extinction Rebellion protests which took over London in a huge display of civil disobedience, capturing the eyeRead more

Time to shift gear The publication of the Urban Mobility Strategy was, in many ways, the final piece of the jigsaw. From future mobility being framed as a “Grand Challenge” to delivering goods more sustainably as part of “the last mile”, there’s nothing left to do but act. If government is serious about fully realisingRead more

After the chaotic scenes of last night’s Commons votes on whether to rule out no deal we take a look at what happened, what it means and what might happen next. What happened last night? The government tabled a motion that would allow the Commons to express its opposition to a no deal scenario whileRead more

Last night Parliament overwhelmingly rejected the slightly revised Withdrawal Agreement put before them by Theresa May. The government was defeated by 149 votes, a narrower margin than the first meaningful vote (230) but still one of the largest defeats by any government in parliamentary history. The Attorney General’s legal opinion that ‘the legal risk remainsRead more

Late last night Theresa May and Jean Claude Juncker announced that a deal of sorts had been reached over the Withdrawal Agreement. Today the deal has been rejected by the ERG and DUP and looks set to be defeated in the second meaningful vote this evening. The agreement announced last night consisted of three newRead more