By Anna Sonny In Europe, Belarus holds a few records for longevity. President Lukashenko is Europe’s longest-running leader, ruling the ex-Soviet nation since 1994. The country has been dubbed by Washington as “Europe’s last dictatorship” and the recent execution of two men purported to have planted bombs in a metro station has brought to light… [Read More]
The Commons Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform is currently considering the introduction of recall powers against MPs who engage in serious wrongdoing. In response to a proposal that Parliament or a committee of MPs be given the power to initiate a recall petition of one of their colleagues, I warned: There is a… [Read More]
By Lucy Hatton Following the announcement that a referendum on Scottish independence is to take place in autumn 2014, debate has raged about what implications this will have for Scotland’s membership of the European Union. Whilst Scottish nationalists, who have called for the referendum, are incredibly optimistic about the future position of Scotland within the… [Read More]
The West, Islam and Islamism by Caroline Cox and John Marks is a systematic analysis of the ideology of Islamism and its relationship with the West. The authors distinguish between Islam as a religion, and Islamism as a totalitarian doctrine that resembles other extremist doctrines of the 20th century, including Marxist communism and Fascism. This… [Read More]
Charles Murray is one of America’s most respected social policy analysts. His ideas about the underclass, outlined in his classic Losing Ground, and re-examined more recently in Coming Apart, have entered the mainstream of the debate about poverty. Murray’s thesis, that the underclass represents not a degree of poverty but a type of poverty, characterised… [Read More]
By Lucy Hatton This weekend, Roger Helmer MEP announced his defection from the Conservative Party to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Although many will have been shocked by his decision, others have long thought that the politician’s views, especially those concerning the EU, are more in line with UKIP than the Conservatives. In fact,… [Read More]
By Anna Sonny While the rest of the world struggles to agree on a coherent plan of action for Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s troops continue to lay siege to Homs, mercilessly suppressing opponents to his regime. More than 7,500 civilians have been killed since the uprising began last March and the government is still refusing to… [Read More]
Neither America nor Germany rely solely on commercial banks As George Osborne’s next Budget approaches and the UK teeters on the edge of recession, a new Civitas report reveals that the Government is failing to tackle the key barrier to growth. A lending freeze affecting small and medium-sized (SME) businesses is preventing economic recovery. Extending… [Read More]
Last December Civitas published the ‘STEM Subject Push’ which examined the take up of STEM subjects in British universities in the last decade. Yesterday the University and College Union (UCU) published ‘Choice Cuts: How choice has declined in higher education’. Where the Civitas publication documented the slow growth or even fall in British students choosing… [Read More]
By Anna Sonny Last weekend, Latvia held a referendum on making Russian the second official language. Although the motion did not go through and was never expected to, the referendum has succeeded in highlighting the cultural tensions that have existed within the fabric of Latvian society since the beginning of Soviet rule in 1940.