Latest News
The billionaires are on strike
The Electoral Commission has released the latest set of donations to political parties
What can the midterms tell us about the health of American democracy?
The USA sees the most important set of elections since Trump’s election in 2016
Is your council working for you or for lobbyists?
There’s a housing crisis in the UK, and yet unbelievably, councillors are still allowed to be on the payroll of developers and property lobbying firms. We take a look at some of the key ethical issues in local government lobbying.
What happens if you cheat democracy?
On Thursday 29 March Unlock Democracy's Director Alexandra Runswick spoke at the Fair Vote rally outside Parliament. This is what she had to say.
For Vote Leave, "breaking electoral law may have been a price worth paying"
Unlock Democracy is calling for an urgent and immediate overhaul of electoral law and extended powers for the Electoral Commission, in light of allegations that Vote Leave has broken electoral law.
Vote Leave referendum spending: Old tricks, different packaging
Another year, another major scandal revolving around big money distorting our democracy. But cutting through the noise, this is really a story about the same old tricks being used with different packaging.
Paradise Papers and Lord Ashcroft: A fault of the system or a result of it?
The Paradise Papers have shown that the elites aren’t contributing their fair share to society by avoiding taxation through different (legal and illegal) mechanisms. The UK government has failed once again to tackle this important problem. In a time in which whilst cuts and austerity hit harder the most vulnerable in our societies, we need to ask ourselves: why?
A damaged democracy is just collateral damage for ministers hellbent on going rogue
The government is plagued by scandals, and the Secretary of State for International Development Priti Patel may be the second minister to fall in just a week.
House of Lords reform: A piecemeal solution to a seismic issue is not good enough
The Lord Speaker’s Committee on the size of the House of Lords recently published a report on its findings and recommendations. While the report proposes long-needed reforms and is a step in the right direction, it only offers a piecemeal approach to reforming the second chamber rather than offering the radical, wholesale solutions we need to make the chamber fit for a twenty-first-century democracy.
What one MP’s side job tells us about the failings of the UK’s lobbying register
This week Barry Sheerman became the first sitting MP to sign up to UK’s the statutory lobbying register, as the result of his role as the Chairman of Policy Connect. The idea that MPs can run organisations that undertake lobbying activity sits uncomfortably, and serious questions must be asked about what this says about the state of lobbying regulation in the UK.