Search results for "House of Commons"

‘Less Stale, Only Slightly Less Male, but Overwhelmingly Less Pale’: the 2015 New Conservative Brexiters in the House of Commons

2019

AbstractThis article will study the new face of Conservative Euroscepticism in the House of Commons, with a special focus on the 2015 intake of MPs who were supposedly ‘less stale, male and pale’ and their attitudes to the British referendum on the EU. In this respect, this article will also take a specific interest in new Conservative Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) MPs who turned out to be more active on the ‘leave’ side of the referendum campaign, thus serving as a showcase for the party's strategy of ‘decontaminating’ the Brexit brand and its hyperglobalist geopolitical perspective.

"That in the opinion of this House" : The parliamentary culture of debate in the nineteenth-century Cambridge and Oxford Union Societies

2012

British parliamentary attitudes towards a supranational parliament and the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, 1948–49

2018

With a mounting communist threat from Eastern Europe after the Second World War, in Western Europe an attempt was made to create permanent structures not only to help in facilitating cooperation in different fields of life to rebuild societies, but to launch a common European supranational parliamentary body. The creation of the Council of Europe in May 1949 proved to be a compromise. It lacked a workable European parliament, as had been the vision of certain federalists in many Western European countries. During the creation process, the British foreign policy leadership emphasized the weak supranational parliamentarization of Western European politics. In this article, parliamentary debat…

Procedure and Debate in the British Parliamentary Culture

2016

Haapala illuminates the relationship between procedure and debate in the British parliamentary culture that was formed during the nineteenth century. While emphasising the constitutional shift to parliamentary government after the passing of the 1832 Reform Act, the chapter demonstrates its effects on the parliamentary culture with a special focus on the increasing role of debate and the attempts to reform House of Commons’ procedures. As well as drawing attention to the publicity of parliamentary proceedings and professionalisation of political journalism, Haapala uses rhetorical treatises and manuals to show the common attitudes towards parliamentary debate before and after the institutio…

The concept of the Royal Prerogative in parliamentary debates on the deployment of military in the British House of Commons, 1982–2003

2014

The article will discuss how one political key concept, the Royal Prerogative, was discussed in the British House of Commons in relation to the right to deploy and use armed troops abroad during the period 1982-2003, a time when the role of the British Parliament in decisions to deploy and commit troops to an armed conflict abroad was under extensive discussion in Parliament. This discussion began increasingly to address the state of the constitutional arrangements, more specifically the redefinition of the Royal Prerogative rights, the residual powers of the executive, as outdated in the understanding of modern representative democracy. The use of the concept was studied to reveal the atti…

Conclusion: Transfer of the Rhetoric of Procedure to British Debating Societies

2016

In the concluding chapter, Haapala demonstrates why nineteenth-century British rhetoric should be appreciated more than previous studies suggest. While highlighting the political relevance of the British debating societies, the chapter illuminates the crucial role of the transfer of the rhetoric of procedure from the House of Commons to the Union Societies. Instead of focusing on the role of speech-making in British political culture, it puts forward an interpretation of the Unions as forerunners in the adoption of parliamentary procedure.

Introduction: The Rhetoric of Parliamentary Debate

2016

Haapala introduces a rhetorical approach to studying parliamentary debate. Focusing on the debating practices of the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, the chapter suggests that an extraordinary relationship was formed between debate and parliamentary procedure in the Unions and the mid nineteenth-century House of Commons. As well as drawing attention to the relevance of procedure and rules of debate in the history of the British Parliament, Haapala discusses approaches previously used to make sense of parliamentary discourse and debate. The chapter also illustrates the adoption of parliamentary procedure in the Unions and highlights them as an important historical source for understanding politi…

2018

With a mounting communist threat from Eastern Europe after the Second World War, in Western Europe an attempt was made to create permanent structures not only to help in facilitating cooperation in...

The Politics of Debate in the Union Societies

2016

The chapter discusses the disputes over procedure in the private meetings of the Union Societies and how they can be interpreted politically. Haapala points out that some of the rules were adopted from the House of Commons, although the Unions did not follow the parliamentary model in all respects. As well as noting that the politics of debate in the Unions was largely conducted through rule interpretation and challenging the decisions of the president, the chapter also draws attention to the role of the standing committees, the vast powers of Union presidents and the rhetorical strategies the members used in the debates. The chapter ends with a typology of politicisation of the rules in th…