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Philip Cowley is a British political scientist and an academic at Queen Mary University of London in the School of Politics and International Relations. [1] He previously held the same title at the University of Nottingham. Within academia he is particularly notable for his analysis of Parliamentary voting behaviour in the UK House of Commons and House of Lords and secondly his opposition to a lowering of the UK voting age below 18.
Cowley is involved in the continuous production of highly detailed and closely analysed briefing papers and reports of divisions in the UK Parliament, with eye-witness accounts of whipping practices in action, counts and comparisons of rebellious voting by Parliamentarians and discussion of how such activity impacts on its political context. He co-ordinates this work through the maintenance of a website produced in a blog format. [2] He is assisted by his colleagues Mark Stuart, also of the University of Nottingham, and Lord Norton of the University of Hull. They are funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and through previous research by their respective universities and the Leverhulme Trust. The project is not affiliated to any political party, nor does it receive funding from any other source.
He had a website entitled "Votes for Adults" in which he claims to dismiss comprehensively the arguments put forward in support of a reduction of the voting age to 16. This is in opposition to the Votes at 16 campaign, supported by a broad coalition of youth charities and other organisations.
The 2001 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 7 June 2001, four years after the previous election on 1 May 1997, to elect 659 members to the House of Commons. The governing Labour Party was re-elected to serve a second term in government with another landslide victory with a 167-seat majority, returning 412 members of Parliament versus 418 from the 1997 general election, a net loss of six seats, though with a significantly lower turnout than before—59.4%, compared to 71.6% at the previous election.
The 1997 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 1 May 1997. The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister John Major was defeated in a landslide by the Labour Party led by Tony Blair, achieving a 179-seat majority and a total of 418 seats, the highest ever won by Labour.
New Labour is the name given to the period in the history of the British Labour Party from the mid- to late 1990s until 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The name dates from a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen in a draft manifesto which was published in 1996 and titled New Labour, New Life for Britain. It was presented as the brand of a newly reformed party that had altered Clause IV and endorsed market economics. The branding was extensively used while the party was in government between 1997 and 2010. New Labour was influenced by the political thinking of Anthony Crosland and the leadership of Blair and Brown as well as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell's media campaigning. The political philosophy of New Labour was influenced by the party's development of Anthony Giddens' Third Way which attempted to provide a synthesis between capitalism and socialism. The party emphasised the importance of social justice, rather than equality, emphasising the need for equality of opportunity and believed in the use of markets to deliver economic efficiency and social justice.
David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen, is a British politician and physician who served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs as a Labour Party MP under James Callaghan from 1977 to 1979, and later led the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He was a Member of Parliament for 26 years, from 1966 to 1992.
Graham William Allen is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Nottingham North from 1987 to 2017. He stood down at the 2017 general election.
The Referendum Party was a Eurosceptic, single-issue political party that was active in the United Kingdom from 1994 to 1997. The party's sole objective was for a referendum to be held on the nature of the UK's membership of the European Union (EU). Specifically, it called for a referendum on whether the British electorate wanted to be part of a federal European state or to revert to being a sovereign nation that was part of a European free-trade bloc without wider political functions.
Eric Forth was a British Conservative politician. He served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Birmingham North from 1979 to 1984. He then served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Worcestershire from 1983 to 1997. Finally, he served as MP for Bromley and Chislehurst from 1997 until his death in 2006.
Christopher Michael Leslie is a debt collection executive and a former British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Shipley from 1997 to 2005 and Nottingham East from 2010 to 2019. A former member of the Labour Party, he defected to form Change UK and later became an independent politician.
Nicholas Douglas Palmer is a British politician, translator and computer scientist. He was the Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire from 1997 until he lost the seat at the 2010 general election to Conservative Anna Soubry, by 390 votes.
James Hood was a Scottish Labour Party politician, who served as a Member of Parliament from 1987 until being defeated in 2015. He represented the Clydesdale constituency until 2005, and the Lanark and Hamilton East constituency thereafter. Hood, a National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) trade union official during the miners' strike of 1984–85, remained a backbencher throughout his parliamentary career.
Paul William Barry Marsden is a British writer, businessman and former politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Shrewsbury and Atcham from 1997 until 2005. He was most prominently known for his anti-war views and crossing the floor twice, from Labour to the Liberal Democrats in 2001 and returning to Labour in 2005. He instructed a solicitor in 2010 to begin action for phone hacking that allegedly took place back in 2003 by a newspaper. In 2012, Marsden was appointed to draft the parliamentary inquiry report into VIP security at the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London. Marsden is currently Head of Quality for the Transpennine Route Upgrade West rail alliance, improving the railway between Manchester and Leeds.
Andrew John Bower Mitchell is a British politician currently serving as Deputy Foreign Secretary since 2024 and Minister of State for Development and Africa since 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sutton Coldfield since 2001 having previously served as the MP for Gedling from 1987 to 1997. Mitchell served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development from 2010 to 2012 and then briefly as Government Chief Whip in the House of Commons in late 2012.
Sir Peter Hannay Bailey Tapsell was a British Conservative Party politician and Member of Parliament (MP) for Louth and Horncastle. He served in the House of Commons continuously from 1966 until 2015, and was also previously an MP from 1959 to 1964. He was Father of the House between 2010 and 2015. With a total parliamentary service of 54 years, he is one of the longest-serving MPs in British history.
Nottingham East is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2019 by Nadia Whittome of the Labour Party.
John Donkin Dormand, Baron Dormand of Easington was a British educationist and Labour Party politician from the coal mining area of Easington in County Durham, in the north-east of England. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for the Easington constituency from 1970 until his retirement in 1987.
Tony Blair's term as the prime minister of the United Kingdom began on 2 May 1997 when he accepted an invitation of Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, succeeding John Major of the Conservative Party, and ended on 27 June 2007 upon his resignation. While serving as prime minister, Blair also served as the first lord of the treasury, minister for the civil service and leader of the Labour Party. He and Gordon Brown both extensively used the New Labour branding while in office, which was presented as the brand of a newly reformed party that had altered Clause IV and endorsed market economics. He is the second-longest-serving prime minister in post-war British history and the longest-serving Labour politician to have held the office, and the first and only person to date to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories.
Reverend Sir Herbert Dunnico was a British Baptist minister, leading Freemason and Labour Party politician.
The Labour Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as being an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The Labour Party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. In all general elections since 1922, Labour has been either the governing party or the Official Opposition. There have been six Labour prime ministers and thirteen Labour ministries. Since the 2010 general election, it has been the second-largest UK political party by the number of votes cast, behind the Conservative Party and ahead of the Liberal Democrats. The party traditionally holds the annual Labour Party Conference during party conference season.
Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results.
Conor Ryan is an Irish-born UK-based independent writer and consultant, a former senior civil servant, and adviser who was until June 2023 the Director of External Relations at the Office for Students, a non-departmental public body of the British Department for Education. He served as a special adviser and the senior education adviser to British Secretary of State for Education and Employment David Blunkett from 1997 to 2001 and then to British Prime Minister Tony Blair from 2005 to 2007.
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