News and opinion

It is commonplace in Britain to identify a “political class”, out of touch with the general population. It was promised that the Scottish Parliament would broaden recruitment of MSPs, becoming more representative to class, ethnicity, gender, education and former careers. But, Michael Keating, University of Aberdeen, and Paul Cairney, University of Stirling, argue that we have not seen such a divergence between MSPs and MPs.

Richard Parry discusses the way that the 2019 UK General Election bucked the trend for surprise results.

Instead of focusing on the success of the SNP, we should compare the Labour and Conservative vote share in Scotland and England since 1945, states David McCrone, University of Edinburgh.

Malcolm Harvey, University of Aberdeen, provides a rundown of the general election results in Scotland, asking is this the new norm?

Richard Parry assesses the prospects of Boris Johnson’s surpassing the electoral achievements of David Cameron and Theresa May.

Brexit has played a conspicuous role in the election in Northern Ireland, but, as in the rest of the UK, it has also been forced to compete for attention with other headline-grabbing political issues.

In the second edition of our series analysing where parties stand on constitutional issues, Jack Sheldon looks at where the Conservatives stand on Brexit and Scottish independence.

Throughout the General Election campaign, we will analyse where the parties stand on constitutional issues. Following the launch of the Labour Party's manifesto, Dr Coree Brown Swan looks at Labour commitments.

Richard Parry discusses the media presentation of opinion poll findings as we await evidence of the impact of the Brexit Party withdrawal from Conservative seats.