Japan has had five prime ministers in five years
Japan's leader answers to the ruling party rather than to voters directly, so a bad poll or a scandal can end a premiership within a year.
category archive
Politics.
Public decisions, competing ideas and the institutions behind them.
England's compulsory purchase fight is about hope value
Planning permission can lift farmland's price 275 times. In 2023 the government planned to let a minister drop that hope value from an order, case by case.
What Greenland's 1979 home rule gave it, and what Denmark kept
A 1979 referendum gave Greenland its own parliament for internal affairs. Denmark kept defence, foreign policy and the constitution, and still does.
The UK is cutting aid to its lowest share of income since 1999
Britain's aid spending is set to fall to 0.3% of national income by 2027 to pay for defence. Aid to Africa falls by more than half, and polio funding ends.
Beijing promised Hong Kong 50 years of its own way of life
Britain says China seriously breached the 1984 treaty by removing bookseller Lee Po in 2015. Beijing says one country, two systems could outlast 2047.
UK MPs shut the door on Black Rod. Speakers say it isn't defiance
MPs shut the door on Black Rod at the State Opening. Most read it as defiance, but Speakers have ruled it lets the Commons establish who is knocking.
Australia's 1975 dismissal and the palace letters
Sir John Kerr sacked Gough Whitlam in 1975. Letters released in 2020 show the palace told him a week earlier that the reserve powers still existed.
Miliband was tipped for chancellor. He got the Foreign Office.
Ed Miliband was tipped to replace Rachel Reeves as chancellor under Andy Burnham. He was made foreign secretary instead, succeeding Yvette Cooper.
Germany's Basic Law lets judges ban a party outright
Germany's constitution lets its Federal Constitutional Court ban a political party outright, though it has done so only twice since 1945.
Bosnia's presidency chair passes hands every eight months
Bosnia's head of state is three people, not one. The chair rotates between a Serb, a Bosniak and a Croat every eight months.
Texas started a US map war that the Supreme Court then widened
Since 2025 US states have redrawn House districts mid-decade, led by Texas. The Supreme Court's Louisiana v Callais ruling made racial bias harder to prove.
UK has 47 working F-35B jets, and the next order is stalled
DE&S accepted the UK's 48th and last first-batch F-35B in March, but the next order waits on a delayed Defence Investment Plan.
Congress counts the votes that name the next US president
Every four years Congress opens the sealed electoral votes, counts them in one joint session, and reads out who won. Here is how that day works.
Rupert Lowe won't say if King Charles is a 'white Briton'
Pressed on BBC radio, Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe would not say whether King Charles is a white Briton, as his party wins a Tory convert.
Australia's parliament passed compulsory voting in under an hour
A senator from Tasmania proposed the 1924 bill. Both houses passed it unanimously in under an hour, and turnout has stayed above 90% since.