Should David Cameron regret campaigning against AV?

In May 2011, as part of the deal that brought together the coalition government, the UK was asked if it wanted to change its electoral process to use the Alternate Vote system as opposed to the current First Past The Post.  Recall that the AV system involves voters ranking the candidates, and essentially eliminates the bottom candidates and redistributes their votes until one candidate gets above 50% of the total.  For a number of reasons, some based on merit and some based on other things, the idea was rejected by a margin of more than two to one.

In the lead-up to the referendum, the Conservatives were campaigning to keep FPTP, while the Liberal Democrats were the driving force behind AV.  However, over the last year, we see that UKIP has been taking a considerable share of the votes away from the Conservatives.  So was opposing AV a mistake on the part of the Tories?

Five things we learned from the UK local elections

Last Thursday, elections were held throughout most of England to elect county councils.  These particular councils were last fought in 2009, when Conservative popularity was at its peak.  This meant that the Tories had a very high starting point, controlling 28 of the 34 councils being contested in England.  Despite them losing the popular vote (at least according to BBC figures), they were still able to control a majority of the councils up for election.  The UK Independence Party (UKIP), though, has reached record support, taking nearly a quarter of the vote and over a hundred council seats.

So what have we learned from these council elections?

Five things we learned in Eastleigh

Last night, the voters of Eastleigh elected a new MP.  The result came in around 02:20 GMT this morning, and looked like this:

Of course, as is the law of politics, every party will try to put some spin on it.  But what can we take from yesterday's by-election result?

Three things to watch in Eastleigh tomorrow

Tomorrow, the people of Eastleigh in Hampshire go to the polls to elect their new MP after the Liberal Democrat Chris Hunhe, who pleaded guilty for telling his wife to take his speeding points, resigned from Parliament.  This by-election will be very close between Lib Dems and their coalition partners, the Conservatives.

10 Ways around America's debt ceiling standoff

At the end of last year, the United States government has reached the legal limit for how much money it can borrow, commonly known as the "debt ceiling", which is just shy of $16.4 trillion.  This means that the Treasury is no longer allowed to borrow any money (except to roll over existing debt) to finance government operations and the resulting $1.1 trillion annual deficit.

The Treasury has been able to cope so far by temporarily suspending investments into pension plans, but that measure can only last for a couple of months.  After this time, unless Congress has agreed to increase the debt ceiling, the government will have to find another way to close the gap.

Many ideas have been floated around.  Many of them are ridiculous, and some of them would open the government to a legal challenge of some sort.  But they're worth at least exploring.

Rob Ford: Sorting out the rhetoric in Toronto

On Monday, Justice Charles Hackland found that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford had violated the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act and ordered him to vacate his position within two weeks.  Since then, a lot of rhetoric has been flying around about his guilt and his term generally as mayor.  But what really happened, and what comes next?

19 days to Election 2012, 20 days to Campaign 2014

We're less than three weeks away from Americans choosing their next President (as well as their Congress).  And the main topics of political conversation?  You would hope that it's either the trillion dollar deficit, the $16 trillion debt, the impending debt ceiling debate, the fiscal cliff, or the high unemployment.