Chapter
Before you open the post...
1st post. Life, feral politics and fell running
1. Fire and ashes: Success and failure in politics
2. Down and out in Bloemfontein
3. Reveries of a solitary fell runner
4. Feral politics: Searching for meaning in the 21st century
5. Sharks, asylum seekers and Australian politics
6. The smart fork and the crowding out of thought
7. ‘Vape’ – a word that encapsulates the nothingness of today
8. Saints and sinners, politicians and priests
9. Why satire is no joke any more
2nd post. Democracy and disgust, love and loathing
10. In our name: The ethics of democracy
11. The problems with democracy – continuing the conversation into a new year
12. Do we have too much democracy?
13. Calming the storm: Bernard Crick, defending politics and the importance of citizenship
14. Look beneath the vote
15. Democracy is about more than a vote: Politics and brand management
16. Beastly Eastleigh and the ‘None-of-the-Above’ Party
17. Where next? New politics, kinder politics and the myth of anti-politics
3rd post. Representation, disintegration and desire
18. What a mess! The politics and governance of the British constitution
19. The Dis-United Kingdom?
20. A new and fair constitutional settlement? Beware of constitutional hyper-activism
21. Looking beyond the Scottish referendum
22. The culture of nastiness and the paradox of civility
23. Learning to love democracy: A note to William Hague
23. Let the people speak! Devolution, decentralisation, deliberation
25. Raw politics: Devolution, democracy and deliberation
4th post. Pressure, personality and politics
26. Vote Jeremy Clarkson on 7 May! Celebrity politics and political reality
27. After the storm: Failure, fallout and Farage
28. Tony Benn was a true man of the people
29. Dear Russell Brand: On the politics of comedy and disengagement
30. Foolish, but no fool: Boris Johnson and the art of politics
31. Remembering Margaret Thatcher
32. Trump that: The failure and farce of American politics
5th post. Art and architecture, politics and protest
34. Shake your chains: Politics, poetry and protest
35. DIY democracy: Festivals, parks and fun
36. Participatory arts and active citizenship
37. The body politic: Art, pain, Putin
39. Left behind? The future of progressive politics
40. Why Parliament matters: Waging war and restraining power
41. Rip it up and start again
42. Democracy Day: We need to break free
6th post. Fig leaves and fairy tales
43. Attack ads and American presidential politics
44. Dante and the spin doctors
46. Bang, bang – democracy’s dead: Obama and the politics of gun control
47. Fig leaves and fairy tales: political promises and the Truth-O-Meter
48. Disengaged Britain: ‘Don’t vote, it just encourages the b**tards’
49. The blunders of our governments
50. Dear Maria Miller, it really wasn’t all your fault
51. Bring me a scapegoat to destroy: Babies, blame and bargains
The last post. Making politics relevant in a post-truth world
52. Explaining political disaffection: Closing the expectations gap
53. Politics without vision
54. Dangerous minds: ‘Public’ political science or ‘punk’ political science?
55. Claims of increasing irrelevance of universities are ideology masquerading as evidence
56. The dismal debate: Would a ‘Brexit’ mean more power for the UK?
57. Post-truth, post-political, post-democracy: The tragedy of the UK’s referendum on the European Union
58. A talent for politics? The ‘great scholar, poor politician’ thesis
59. Standing up and shaping the agenda: Rejecting discrimination, embracing difference
60. Welcome to the year of living dangerously – 2017
A special delivery: ‘So, what kind of democracy is this?’