The Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his Budget Statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday. Below is a summary of the announcements in his speech. A full list of the documents published alongside the Budget and a list of consultations announced can be found at the bottom of this post. OBR figures and forecast…

Political Backgrounds As you would expect with a new intake of MPs, a large proportion of them have a background in politics, with around half having previously held elected office. This includes a significant number of councillors, a sitting MEP (Alun Smyth), two London Assembly Members (Gareth Bacon and Florence Eshalomi), and four members of…

The Scottish National Party published their 2019 Election Manifesto on Wednesday. The manifesto includes pledges to: fight for a second independence referendum in Scotland, support a second EU referendum with Remain on the ballot paper, call on the UK government to match Scottish per capita NHS spending, demand an end to austerity, call for the…

The Conservative Party published their 2019 Election Manifesto on Sunday, alongside a document providing costings of their manifesto policies, mirroring similar documents published by the Lib Dems and Labour. The manifesto includes pledges to raise the National Insurance threshold to £9,500 in 2020, with an ambition to raise it further to £12,500, rules out any…

Labour have published their General Election manifesto, titled ‘It’s Time for Real Change’, and a ‘manifesto costings summary’ setting out their spending plans and how they will afford to fund their proposed policies, such as through reversing cuts to corporation tax and also taxing multinationals. Their manifesto includes pledges to launch a Green Industrial Revolution,…

The Lib Dem’s have published their General Election manifesto entitled ‘Stop Brexit: Build a Brighter Future’ and a ‘manifesto costings summary’ setting out their spending plans and where they predict the additional Government income required to pay for their proposals will come from, which includes a £50m ‘Remain Bonus’ dependent on the UK not leaving…

Headline Summary The 2011 Fixed-Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) requires the support of 434 MPs for an early General Election to be granted, which Boris Johnson failed to achieve twice since becoming Prime Minister. An extension to Article 50 will almost certainly to be granted in the coming days, and the structure of this extension will…

The Queen’s Speech saw the return of the Environmental Bill, a flagship bill which seeks to build a domestic framework for environmental governance and protections after the UK withdraws from the EU. A draft version of the Bill was first published in December 2018 and many of the measures, shaped by public consultations, have been…

Getting Brexit done, strengthening the NHS, addressing crime, investing in infrastructure and tackling the climate emergency were the key themes to this year’s Queen’s Speech, in what could be the first of two visits by the Queen to Parliament this year, if a general election is held in the next few months. Please find below…

Social media, Twitter in particular, is an incredible tool for political monitoring companies like ours. It presents us with huge amounts of data on what politicians are up to, what they’re thinking and what they’re planning, often in real time. It also alerts us to the latest political developments sometimes hours ahead of any Government…

We were left in no doubt about the Government’s main message at the Conservative Party Conference this year – Get Brexit Done. It was plastered everywhere so you literally couldn’t miss it. But behind the slogans and traditional party rhetoric from the podium, were a number of policy announcement and re-announcements in the spirit of…