This chapter outlines the challenges that current political polarization presents for constitutional law and judicial authority. Over the past fifty years, US politics have polarized, producing close political competition between two ideologically defined national parties that view each other with fear and distrust. This polarization has encouraged political actors in Congress and the federal executive branch to take legally aggressive positions and prioritize substantive policy achievements over adherence to good-governance norms or even constitutional restraints. At the same time, polarization has generated rival constitutional visions, and aligned slates of judges, that aim to advance partisan goals through constitutional interpretation. This environment poses risks for both judicial authority and constitutional law, because the public may lose trust in courts as neutral arbiters of constitutional disputes if it perceives them as wholly political institutions.

In science, to be ‘conservative’ is to understate your findings. In insurance, it means the opposite: erring on the side of overstatement of risks. For a clear assessment of the risks of climate change, we need these two cultures to meet in the middle. This requires a separation of tasks: between those who gather information, and those who assess risk.

Marriage equality was a significant achievement, one that yielded both practical and symbolic benefits for hundreds of thousands of queer households. At the same time, marriage equality is not the same as full equality. In the years since the Obergefell decision, LGBTQ rights advocates have continued to fight difficult and demoralizing battles against harmful laws and policies, which have increasingly targeted transgender rights. However, the movement’s past successes should offer hope for the future. The history of gay and lesbian rights advocacy reveals that small victories at the state and local level, brought about by working with nonlegal actors, can transform both the law and society. Although advocates have not yet achieved gay liberation’s visions of the future, they have attained meaningful reforms. The movement’s history thus offers a crucial reminder that the law can change society for the better.

The fight for gay and lesbian rights has become one of the most conspicuous social justice movements in American history. Although numerous scholars and popular writers have detailed the history of the marriage equality movement, the struggle for marriage equality was only one small part of a more than half century-long movement for queer family rights. Decades before the United States became embroiled in debates over same-sex marriage, advocates were working to support and promote the rights of queer couples and their children. Family Matters uncovers this hidden history of gay and lesbian rights advocacy. Instead of focusing on marriage rights, it highlights the legal reforms that predated the marriage equality movement. The introduction sets out the book’s arguments and methodology. As it explains, the transformation of gay and lesbian rights in America depended on advocacy at the state and local levels, as well as the work of nonlegal actors.

Anthony Seldon introduces the concept of the Effect series, the key questions and the fourteen wasted years accusation. This Effect book will be the eighth in the long line of academic and historical analyses dating back over fifty years of history to 1970 – and it builds on the conclusions and methodology of previous works in the series. One of these, The Coalition Effect (Cambridge, 2015), encompassed five of the years in question – allowing reflections to be made on the authors’ arguments in that volume, and for the impact to be judged in a longer time frame of government.

Any fair evaluation of the Conservative effect (2010-14) must be cognisant of the context. Tom Egerton’s chapter will place the Conservative premierships in the six external shocks Britain faced, beginning with the Great Financial Crash and the Eurozone Crisis, before the impact of Brexit (and a debate over its external and structural causes), Covid, the Russo-Ukrainian War and the inflation crisis. How did each government succeed or fail in the face of compounding shocks? What opportunities and constraints emerged as a result? Only through an analysis of a decade of poly-crisis, and in the perspective of wider political change, can we make a conclusion on the question of ‘fourteen wasted years’.

How should we best characterise the UK party system in the wake of nearly a decade and a half of Conservative government? Has it undergone a significant and enduring realignment, or merely amounted to passing turbulence, after which things have returned to the seemingly eternal verities of stable two-party competition? The question for us to consider in this chapter is whether we can regard the period since 2010 in such terms: in particular, does the general election of December 2019 constitute a moment of critical realignment? Or is it more sensible to view this as the mere culmination of a relatively prolonged period of Conservative Party ascendancy based on a regular swing of the electoral pendulum – a swing which will inevitably reverse itself as the centre of electoral gravity shifts in favour of Labour once more? In other words, a simple affirmation of the age-old dynamics of the two-party system.

Superficially, the period of Conservative rule since 2010 has been one of electoral stability. The Conservatives emerged as the largest party in four general elections in a row. As a result, the party has retained the reins of power for fourteen years. This represents the second longest period of government tenure for any one party in post-war British politics. Yet, in truth, it has been a period of unprecedented electoral instability and political change. Two of the four elections produced a hung parliament, an outcome that had only occurred once before in the post-war period, while a third only produced a small overall majority. After the first of these hung parliaments, in 2010, Britain was governed by a coalition for the first time since 1945, while in the second such parliament, between 2017 and 2019, a minority government entered into a ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionists. The right of prime ministers to call an election at a time of their own choosing was taken away, only to result in parliamentary tussles that, in the event, failed to stop two prime ministers from eventually holding an election well before the parliamentary term was due to come to an end.

The accusation of ‘thirteen wasted years’ was first levelled against the Conservatives by Labour in 1964 about the period in office since 1951. To gain perspective on the years 2010–24, we open with an acknowledged authority assessing progress in the last fourteen years compared to what was achieved then. Kellner’s chapter will aim to synthesise the charge made about the ‘thirteen wasted years’ (1951-64) narrative and build the foundations of the analytical approach for the rest of this book by considering what governments abroad, notably in Europe, were achieving at the same time.

Chapter 6 explores the impact of the French Revolution on Goethe and examines the development in his responses, especially as reflected in the literary works he composed between 1789 and 1797. Goethe was horrified by the violence of 1789 and its aftermath; at the same time, he was critical of the French elites, and saw their fate as a warning to their German counterparts. This chapter highlights the ambivalence of his attitudes and aligns him with the reform conservatives, who favoured the maintenance of privileges but also reform from above.

Trigeminal neuralgia (TN), or tic douloureux, is characterized by recurrent attacks of lancinating, neuropathic facial pain in the dermatomal distribution of the trigeminal nerve. It was first described as early as in the first century, but accurate descriptions were not documented until the 1700s. Tic douloureux refers to the distinctive facial muscle spasms associated with condition. In patients with TN, minimal stimulation (e.g., light touch, tooth brushing, chewing, talking, wind) causes debilitating pain. Mainstays of treatment include medication, surgery, and complementary approaches. Surgical management is indicated for those who have failed medical treatment with three or more medications, suffer from intolerable side effects, or have intractable symptoms.

In June 2016 the UK shocked the world by voting to leave the European Union. In our previous book (Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union) we told the story of what happened in the referendum and why it produced a leave vote. This book is a sequel to the earlier one and examines what happened after the decision was made looking at events up to the point that the UK formally left the EU in January 2020. This was a period of unprecedented political and electoral turmoil in British politics which for a period looked like it could shatter the party system. It encompassed three elections and three different Prime Ministers and unprecedented volatility in both Parliamentary and electoral politics. The book maps out the twists and turns of the Brexit process, both at the level of the political elites and among the mass public. It then goes on to examine the long-run antecedents of this momentous decision, using data that goes back more than fifty years. Finally, it speculates about the economic and poltical consequences of Brexit for the future, while taking into account the Covid Pandemic which itself added to the turmoil in British politics.

Boris Johnsons victory over Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 general election

The electoral consequences for Theresa Mays government in the 2017 general election examining the role of Brexit and other factors in explaining the results

The political twists and turns of the Brexit process

The fragmentation of the UK party system in the European Elections of 2019. Why the Brexit party won, Labour came third and the Conservatives came fifth.