London’s choice of mayor will give a tantalising hint of which party will be favourites to win the next general election

Kicking off our London Mayoral Election 2012 coverage, Tony Travers looks at the state of the race for City Hall. As the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats offer up ‘repeat’ candidates, he wonders what this election might tell us about the state of the parties and their prospects for the next general election

99 per cent of London is not burning. We should not over-react to the weekend’s riots

Saturday and Sunday saw large scale rioting in Tottenham as well as in other parts of the capital. Tony Travers argues that while these riots have been damaging in specific areas, if things remain calm, there is no need for over-reaction, or even for senior politicians to return from their summer holidays. It is for the Metropolitan police to deal with, and they must now tread very carefully and ensure they communicate very openly and closely with local communities

The debate over Labour’s mansion tax reflects an increasingly federal political landscape

When Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy observed last week that Scotland could fund 1000 additional nurses with its share of the British Labour Party’s mansion tax, Scottish Labour stressed that 95 per cent of the new revenue would come from the South East of England. In this post, Tony Travers discusses the implications of Labour’s internal division over the mansion tax, and argues that this is merely one manifestation of a new proto-federal British electoral landscape

The LSE’s ‘Influential Academics’ project: How a number of the School’s personalities have contributed directly to political thought and policy-making

he LSE has a long history of influencing political thought and policy. The British Government at LSE has embarked on a project to showcase the numerous scholars, from Beatrice and Sidney Webb to Richard Layard, that have had an important impact on the state and society. In this article, Tony Travers provides an overview of the project’s purpose and progress

The LSE’s ‘Influential Academics’ project: How a number of the School’s personalities have contributed directly to political thought, government and policy-making

The LSE has a long history of influencing political thought and policy. The British Government at LSE has embarked on a project to showcase the numerous scholars, from Beatrice and Sidney Webb to Richard Layard, that have had an important impact on the state and society. In this article, Tony Travers provides an overview of the project’s purpose and progress

What do local election results tell us about parties’ prospects in 2015?

In this post, Tony Travers uses historical data from local elections to analyse the chances of a Labour party victory in 2015. Mirroring the general message from most current forecasting models, he finds that Labour are some way off the level that has been historically necessary for opposition parties to replace the government in UK elections

The Greater Manchester Agreement is only a small step towards greater devolution in England

Tony TraversThis week, George Osborne announced an agreement to devolve powers to the Greater Manchester area. Tony Travers reviews the agreement and finds that, while any devolution in a country as centralised as England is to be encouraged, the deal is modest and conditional in nature and suggestive of a long, laborious road to further devolution in England

Book Review: Taking power back: putting people in charge of politics by Simon Parker

In Taking Power Back: Putting People in Charge of Politics, Simon Parker argues for urgent reform of the UK’s centralised democracy. Tony Travers welcomes this book as a well-researched account that both outlines the historical decline of local government in the UK and proposes innovations through which citizens can gain more direct control over their own lives. However, public faith in the capacity to actually secure such empowering change remains a pressing question

From promise to policy: what the manifestos tell us about the task facing London’s next Mayor

With Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith leading the polls going into the London Mayoral Elections on May, Martin Rogers and Tony Travers analyse some of the key manifesto pledges being made and what they tell us about the major issues facing the incoming Mayor of London

Local elections: How does National equivalent vote share help us to understand the results?

Ahead of the local elections on 5 May, Tony Travers looks at how National Equivalent Vote Share allows us to draw clearer conclusions from the results