Following the signing of the Edinburgh Agreement in October 2012, Scotland’s voters are promised a referendum on independence in autumn 2014. If they reject both options, the proposed changes from the Calman Commission’s review on Scottish Devolution will most likely be put in place. But what will happen after the referendum? How will Westminster and the rest of the UK respond? What would a Calman regime entail? Is it even clear what independence will mean? What about the oil? What wil...

John Curtin, prime minister during the darkest days of the Second World War, is remembered as the reluctant hero of Australian politics. In the Australian story he is the recovering alcoholic and the accidental prime minister who saved Australia from invasion by Japan, overrode the opposition of Churchill and Roosevelt to bring home Australian troops from the Middle East, and created the Australian alliance with the United States. However, there is much more to the Curtin story than this.

The questions surrounding how the Irish economy was brought to the brink – who was to blame, and who should pay for these mistakes – have been rightly debated at length. But beyond this very legitimate exercise, there are deeper questions that need to be answered.These questions relate to why we made the decisions we did, not just in the last 10 years, but over the last 80. How did certain industries become prominent at the expense of others, banking as opposed to ...

Jim Sillars argues convincingly that the referendum gives the Scottish people the power to create a better country, helps renew our belief in socialism as the answer to the economic and social crisis facing the country, and challenges the idea in the Yes campaign that independence means “change but no change” and that a Yes voter endorses Alex Salmond and the SNP. There is a far more radical road, with better policies than those Salmond is offering in the first independence elections in 20...

A fully revised and updated edition of Nigel Lawson's extraordinary autobiography. A key minister for a full decade and Chancellor of the Exchequer, from 1983 to 1989, Nigel Lawson was one of the most powerful and effective of Margaret Thatcher's colleagues, and among the chief architects of Thatcherism. This abridged edition of Lord Lawson's memoirs - first published as The View from No.11 in 1992 and acclaimed as one of the best political memoirs of the period - goes straight to the hear...

A TIMES POLITICAL BOOK OF THE YEARA LONGMAN/HISTORY TODAY BOOK OF THE YEARThe award-winning history of the British Welfare State –now fully revised and updated for the 21st Century.‘A masterpiece’ Sunday TimesGiant Want. Giant Disease. Giant Ignorance. Giant Squalor. Giant Idleness.These were the Five Giants that loomed over the post-war reconstruction...

Shortlisted for 'Polemic of the Year' at The Paddy Power/Total Politics Political Book Awards 2013!Following an introductory chapter exploring why political argument deals in probability and plausibility across interdependent areas of social activity not certainty in individual areas, this book offers a case for independence under six main headings - the democratic case, the economic case, the social case, the international case, the cultural case and the environmental case. Under each hea...

On 18 September 2014, everyone in Scotland aged 16 or over will be asked the question: 'Should Scotland Be An Independent Country? 'As the referendum approaches, the debates over whether or not Scotland should be an independent country are becoming more heated. This guide, produced by respected Scottish journalists and authors, Jamie Maxwell and David Torrance, covers everything you need to know in advance of deciding which way to vote. Maxwell and Torrance summarise the main arguments for...

In September 2014, a referendum will be held in Scotland to decide whether or not Scotland should become independent and cease to be part of the United Kingdom. In this book, two of the nation's leading political commentators will address both sides of this historic debate. George Kerevan will put forward the case for voting Yes, and Alan Cochrane will make the case for voting No. In this volume, the first title in this Great Debate series, the authors will presen...

The First World War appears as a fault line in Britain’s twentieth-century history. Between August 1914 and November 1918 the titanic struggle against Imperial Germany and her allies consumed more people, more money and more resources than any other conflict that Britain had hitherto experienced. For the first time, it opened up a Home Front that stretched into all parts of the British polity, society and culture, touching the lives of every citizen regardless of age, gender and class: veg...

MacLaren, a former diplomat posted to London, offers an insider's perspective on immigration, Canada's trade and finance, the coronation of George VI, the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and NATO. For many years the position of high commissioner was so important that the incumbent had to be a minister in the Canadian government. MacLaren argues that, despite today's shift in Anglo-Canadian relations, a political appointee can be more effective in the role.

How Tory Governments Fall is a landmark study of the forces that shape – and ultimately destroy – political power. It assesses the factors that are common to the decline and fall of each Conservative administration in British history since the beginnings of the modern, party-based system.Each government is examined by the leading specialist of the political history of the period: Norman Gash on the Wellington-Liverpool era, Martin Pugh on Salisbury; John Turner on the Macmillan yea...