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About Stuart Weir

Stuart Weir is founder of Democratic Audit at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, and co-founder of Charter 88. He is a consultant to the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust on the State of the Nation polls.

Articles by Stuart Weir

The best way to defend the UK's role in the EU is to be honest about its failings

Stuart Weir 14 May 2013

Nigel Lawson's provocations on the EU question raise some important points. It is no longer tenable to trot out the same tired arguments for the Union. It has very serious failings. A positive account of the UK's membership must address them head on.

Transparency International raises serious concerns about corruption in the UK

Stuart Weir 22 April 2013

The creep of the market into almost all areas of public life has brought with it a steady and damaging growth in corruption. Both the media and the political class insist the UK is largely free of corruption, a claim that no longer stands up.

Be it ever so humble!

Stuart Weir 18 April 2013

Forget “Home, Sweet Home”. The British government’s bedroom tax humbles families in social housing, depriving them of the dignity to call their home their own, forcing many of them to move and driving some into homelessness.

UK becomes world's second largest outsourcing market

Stuart Weir 29 March 2013

Stuart Weir responds to news that the UK is now second only to America as an outsourcing market. The UK's "new enclosure movement" is fast transforming the British state into one marked by foodbanks and 'toll booths'.

‘Not in Our Name’: Why MPs remain powerless to stop Britain going to war

Stuart Weir 25 March 2013

The massive 2003 public campaign against Blair’s attempt to take the UK into war against Iraq demanded a war powers rule in Parliament to ensure that no government could ever again commit the country to war without Parliament’s approval. A decade later, the fight goes on for the ruling.

Add voter suppression to the disadvantages of the poor and marginal

Stuart Weir 29 January 2013

The debate over the boundary review has overshadowed an imminent threat to British democracy. Proposed changes to the electoral register are likely to see voter numbers fall significantly. Who are these people? The young, the poor and the disadvantaged.

A 'Fresh Start' for Britain in Europe?

Stuart Weir 18 January 2013

A new manifesto, 'Fresh Start', has been published by a group of Conservative MPs proposing a new relationship between the UK and EU. The (not so hidden) agenda: sweeping away many of the rights that protect British workers from exploitation.

The welfare state is dead – what is rising from the grave?

Stuart Weir 15 January 2013

The old welfare state cannot survive the global financial crisis. Beneath the Punch and Judy debate, what is the Coalition  putting in its place? And what is the alternative?

Three reasons why I'm changing my mind about a British Bill of Rights

Stuart Weir 18 December 2012

A Commission has just reported in whether Britain needs its own Bill of Rights instead of relying on the European Convention. It divided as a Conservative majority says it does. They convinced Stuart Weir, a long time supporter of such a Bill, to change his mind!

Tax avoidance: indignation only gets us so far...

Stuart Weir 11 December 2012

There has been a huge shift in public opinion in the UK on big corporations and rich individuals avoiding tax. How best to build on this?

UKIP, 'child catchers' and dignity

Stuart Weir 28 November 2012

The latest scandal over foster services and the UKIP party reveal how low the British press can stoop. Will Leveson help at all?

Why Jews are proud to be Spurs fans

Stuart Weir 21 November 2012

Are Spurs fan's chants of 'Yid army" anti-semitic, as the Society of Black Lawyers have claimed, or this is a case of appropriating terminology as a means of nullifying it?

A response to my critics on child benefit

Stuart Weir 9 November 2012

A piece on the proposed limits to child benefit prompted a vigorous comment thread. Its author responds. 

The poisonous logic behind cuts to child benefit

Stuart Weir 29 October 2012

Before British families bid what could be a final farewell to universal child benefit, we take a look at what is motivating Iain Duncan Smith.

TUC London March and Rally no match for the coming catastrophe

Stuart Weir 22 October 2012

Limited, moderate, ineffectual — we must do better than London's little uprising on Saturday 20 October.

This week's editor

Heather McRobie


Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

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