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This article seeks to open up debate about Parliamentary debate by exploring the history of ideas about Parliamentary debate and rhetoric through the lens of four core concepts: deliberation, oratory, opposition and spectacle. These are not the names of singular ideas let alone schools of thought; they are conceptual fields each of which gives a particular shape to ways of conceiving, criticizing and defending Commons debate. In mapping this topos – identifying historical debates and practices alongside contemporary arguments found in political theory, political science and Rhetoric – I show that our thinking and arguing about the Commons is part of a contested and ongoing history more complex than we acknowledge. I argue that Parliamentary Debate has a number of purposes and that our thinking about it, and evaluation of it, should not be contained within the frame of “deliberation” but should also take account of the political value and importance of oratory, opposition and spectacle.

Background Risk factors are often considered individually, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of combinations of multiple behavioural risk factors and their association with socioeconomic determinants. Methods Multinomial logistic regression was used to model the associations between socioeconomic factors and multiple risk factors from data in the Scottish Health Survey 2003. Prevalence of five key risk - smoking, alcohol, diet, overweight/obesity, and physical inactivity, and their risk in relation to demographic, individual and area socioeconomic factors were assessed. Results Full data were available on 6,574 subjects (80.7% of the survey sample). Nearly the whole adult population (97.5%) reported to have at least one behavioural risk factor; while 55% have three or more risk factors; and nearly 20% have four or all five risk factors. The most important determinants for having four or five multiple risk factors were low educational attainment which conferred over a 3-fold increased risk compared to high education; and residence in the most deprived communities (relative to least deprived) which had greater than 3-fold increased risk. Conclusions The prevalence of multiple behavioural risk factors was high and the prevalence of absence of all risk factors very low. These behavioural patterns were strongly associated with poorer socioeconomic circumstances. Policy to address factors needs to be joined up and better consider underlying socioeconomic circumstances.

Finlayson talks about the problem of the Labour Party. Past conflicts within Labour might be understood as being between those who emphasized just one of these: at one extreme a pseudo-sociological reductionism insisting on the environmental constraints to which politics must subordinate itself; at the other, insistence that a principled political will can always overcome all obstacles. Advocates of the former see the latter as, at best, naive dreamers and, at worst, dogmatic purists. Advocates of the latter see the former as, at best, naive conformists and, at worst, cynics with nothing but betrayal in their hearts.

Abstract Research into online forms of far-right, alt-right, populist, and supremacist politics has raised questions about the extent to which social media enables or constitutes extremist affects and ideologies. Building on this research and through a case study of how a pro-Trump community on Reddit made sense of news events and sought to contest their representation, this paper explores the relationship between games and politics, arguing that digital platforms encourage people to apprehend, interpret, and contest political ideas and information as if engaged in a kind of videogame. We show how the group sought to manipulate platform affordances, waging a kind of Info War rooted in an understanding of politics as a pure space of conflict. We show how social media orients people to politics, phenomenologically, through the logics, structures and narratives of online games and argue that this affects not only online behaviors but more general apprehensions of politics.

Research into online forms of far-right, alt-right, populist, and supremacist politics has raised questions about the extent to which social media enables or constitutes extremist affects and ideologies. Building on this research and through a case study of how a pro-Trump community on Reddit made sense of news events and sought to contest their representation, this paper explores the relationship between games and politics, arguing that digital platforms encourage people to apprehend, interpret, and contest political ideas and information as if engaged in a kind of videogame. We show how the group sought to manipulate platform affordances, waging a kind of Info War rooted in an understanding of politics as a pure space of conflict. We show how social media orients people to politics, phenomenologically, through the logics, structures and narratives of online games and argue that this affects not only online behaviors but more general apprehensions of politics. La recherche sur les formes de politiques d'extreme droite, alt-right, pop-uliste et supremacistes a souleve des questions quant a la mesure dans laquelle les reseaux sociaux favorisent ou forment des affects ou des ideologies extremistes. Cet article se fonde sur cette recherche et utilise une etude de cas d'une communaute pro-Trump sur Reddit, de sa comprehension des evenements de l'actualite et de sa tentative de remise en question de leur representation. Il s'interesse ala relation entre les jeux et la politique, en affirmant que les plateformes numeriques nous encour-agent a apprehender, interpreter et remettre en question les idees poli-tiques et informations, comme si nous etions dans une sorte de jeu video. Nous montrons comment le groupe a tente de manipuler 1'affordance des plateformes, en menant une sorte de guerre de l'information, ancree dans la comprehension de la politique en tant que pur espace de conflit. Nous montrons comment les reseaux sociaux nous orientent dans nos opinions politiques, de facon phenomenologique, par le biais des structures, logiques et recits des jeux en ligne. Nous affirmons que cet etat de fait a une incidence sur les comportements en ligne, mais aussi sur notre perception generale de la politique. La investigation sobre las formas en linea de las politicas de la ex-trema derecha y de la derecha alternativa, populistas y supremacistas ha planteado preguntas sobre hasta que punto las redes sociales permiten o constituyen afectos e ideologias extremistas. Sobre la base de esta investi-gacion, y a traves de un estudio de caso relativo a como una comunidad pro-Trump en Reddit doto de sentido a algunos eventos que fueron noticia y busco impugnar su representacion, este articulo explora la relacion existente entre los juegos y la politica, argumentando que las plataformas digitales alientan a las personas a captar, interpretar y disputar ideas e informacion politica como si estuvieran involucradas en una especie de videojuego. Mostramos como este grupo intento manipular las posibili-dades de la plataforma, librando una especie de guerra de la informacion que estaba arraigada en una comprension de la politica como si fuera un espacio puro de conflicto. Tambien, demostramos como las redes sociales orientan a las personas hacia la politica, fenomenologicamente, a traves de las logicas, estructuras y narrativas de los juegos en linea y argumenta-mos que esto afecta, no solo los comportamientos en linea, sino tambien las aprehensiones mas generales de la politica.

This article discusses the utility and fecundity promised for British political studies by the study of speech and rhetoric. It is argued that the systematic investigation of speech in British politics can shed light on political institutions, ideologies and strategies. After exploring these areas in some detail the article goes on to discuss the last party conference speech Tony Blair delivered as Prime Minister. This discussion is demonstrative and synoptic in nature, surveying a broad territory and showing the kinds of questions that a rhetorical political analysis can ask and what, in response, might be done to answer these questions.

Computational methods and network analysis are vital means for understanding how digital platforms are employed by political extremists. Western democracies focused on the security threat of jihadi extremism have been comparatively slow to recognize the threat of the far-right extremism. Understandably, scholars have reacted to the knowledge gap about far-right extremists by practicing \"surveillance-as-method,\" or the use of computational methods to gather data on far-right activities on digital media platforms, typically in order to track keywords or phrases or to map network connections. Here, Topinka et al urge greater caution and reflexivity in reproducing surveillant methods and greater attention to the historical, ideological context of far-right politics.

One of the most surprising things about the success of the Leave campaign is that so many are surprised by it. Could people really have expected any other result -- after forty years of misrepresentation of the EU by politicians and media alike, and in the midst of a calculated intensification of hostility towards immigrants? Thirty years after the abandonment of coal, steel and fishing industries and communities -- eight years into a brutal and unnecessary regime of fiscal austerity imposed to save the banks -- they may be shocked but there are no grounds to be surprised by the size and intensity of public mistrust of politics and rejection of the status quo. The situation demands immediate responses. There are old policies and positions to be defended as well as new ones to be formulated. But there is also a need for patient analyses which specify and measure the forces and contradictions of which referendum votes were expressions.