List of contributors

Lewis Baston is Research Officer of the Electoral Reform Society and author of Reggie: The Life of Reginald Maudling (2004). He and Simon Henig have collaborated on three political reference books, including most recently Politico's Guide to the General Election 2005 (2005).

Louis Blom-Cooper QC has been an active public lawyer of the public domain.

Vernon Bogdanor is Professor of Government, University of Oxford and Professor of Law at Gresham College. His books include The People and the Party System: The Referendum and Electoral Reform in British Politics (1981), Multi-Party Politics and the Constitution (1983); and Devolution in the United Kingdom (1999). He is currently working on an interpretation of the British Constitution.

Philip Cowley is Reader in Parliamentary Government at the University of Nottingham, and author of Revolts and Rebellions: Parliamentary Voting Under Blair (2002). He runs www.revolts.co.uk and his next book, The Rebels: How Blair Mislaid His Majority, is due out shortly.

Andrew Gamble is Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield and author of Between Europe and America: The Future of British Politics, which was awarded the Political Studies Association W.J.M. Mackenzie prize for the best book in political science published in 2003.

Stephen Glaister CBE FICE is Professor of Transport and Infrastructure at Imperial College London. He is a member of the Board of Transport for London and has been economic advisor to the Rail Regulator and to various government bodies.

Howard Glennerster is Professor Emeritus in Social Policy at the London School of Economics. He is author of British Social Policy Since 1945 and numerous books and papers on the economics of social policy in general and health care in particular. He has lectured widely abroad and has spent several sessions as a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Simon Henig is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Sunderland. He was co-author with Lewis Baston of Politico's Guide to the 2005 General Election (2005), Politico's Guide to the 2001 General Election (2001) and The Political Map of Britain (2002), and also co-author of Women and Political Power (2001).

Christopher Hill is Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations, and Director of the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge. He has published widely in the areas of foreign policy analysis and general international relations, his most recent books being The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy (2003), and The European Union in International Relations (edited with Michael Smith, forthcoming 2005). He was Chair of the British International Studies Association, 1998-2000.

Raymond Kuhn is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary, University of London. He has published widely on the politics of the British and French media, including the monograph The Media in France. His most recent book is Political Journalism, co-edited with Erik Neveu.

Iain McLean is Professor of Politics and Director of the Public Policy Unit, University of Oxford. He has worked on devolution and the politics of the nations and regions of the UK for over 30 years. Recent publications include The Fiscal Crisis of the United Kingdom (2005) and State of the Union (with Alistair McMillan, forthcoming 2005). He has written reports for three Government departments and for the Commons Treasury Select Committee on regional public expenditure patterns.

Pippa Norris is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School, Harvard University. She has published almost three dozen books, most recently Electoral Engineering (Cambridge University Press 2004), Radical Right (Cambridge University Press 2005) and Britain Votes 2005 (2005).

Peter Riddell is Chief Political Commentator of The Times and was the Political Studies Association's Political Columnist of the Year in 2004. He has written several books on British politics. His Hug Them Close - Blair, Clinton, Bush and the 'Special Relationship' won the Channel 4 award for Political Book of the Year 2004. His book The Unfulfilled Prime Minister - Tony Blair's Quest for a Legacy appears in autumn 2005.

Robert Skidelsky is Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University and is the author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000).

David Smith has been economics editor of The Sunday Times since 1989, where he writes a weekly column. He is also an assistant editor and policy adviser. He is the author of several books, including North and South (1994), Eurofutures (1997), UK Current Economic Policy (1999), Will Europe Work? (1999) and, most recently, Free Lunch: Easily Digestible Economics (2003).

Alan Smithers is Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham. He has previously held chairs at Manchester, Brunel and Liverpool universities. He has researched, written and commented extensively on education. Throughout the first two Blair governments he has been adviser to the House of Commons Education Committee.

Peter Snowdon is a freelance writer whose books include The Conservative Party: An Illustrated History (2004).

Kitty Stewart is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interests include child poverty and disadvantage, international comparisons of policy and outcomes relating to poverty and exclusion and employment trajectories for the low skilled. She is the co-editor, with John Hills, of A More Equal society? New Labour, Poverty, Inequality and Exclusion (2005).

Mark Stuart is a researcher in the School of Politics at the University of Nottingham. He has just published John Smith: A Life (2005), the authorised biography of the Labour leader, and he has also written Douglas Hurd: The Public Servant (1998).

Robert Taylor is an adviser to the European Trade Union Confederation. Former labour editor of the Financial Times and the Observer, he is the author of six books on trade unions and labour markets. He is now writing a history of the parliamentary Labour Party since 1906.

Tony Travers is Director, Greater London Group, at the London School of Economics. He has acted as an advisor to a number of House of Commons select committees, notably for Education & Skills. From 1992 to 1997 he was a member of the Audit Commission and has been a Senior Associate of the King's Fund. He has also undertaken many projects for local authorities and published extensively on the subject.