Three ideas for a PhD project.

April 26, 2026 ~ pwedge ~ 2 Comments

One of the striking things about a UK PhD in an area like law or history is how we look to a candidate to have the fundamental idea for what they want to spend four years becoming a world expert in at the start of their doing so. My doctoral idea changed significantly through the process – most notably having the timescale reduced from “mad” to merely “very challenging” – but the fundamental idea was largely the same. Colleagues supervising students working as teams in labs they supervise find this a big thing to ask of someone at the start of their research life.

So, in case you are at the stage of thinking about doctoral work in law or history, here are three topics which I think are live intellectually, interesting, ambitious, but doable in the confines of a doctoral project. I would be very pleased to supervise a suitable student in any of them but, as they say, other supervisors are available and I will not take umbrage if one of these gives you the start of an idea best pursued elsewhere!

Borders and the Crown Dependencies since Brexit and the Coronavirus Pandemic.

The Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey share both islandness, and a semi-autonomous relationship with the UK. Brexit shifted the wider frame in which this relationship operated, putting a new emphasis on the Common Travel Area. More powerfully, a common response to the global Coronavirus pandemic by all three jurisdictions was to close their borders – with a rigour, and penalties, not seen elsewhere in the British Islands. In the Isle of Man for instance, details of border control were regularly debated throughout the pandemic, with border control against travellers from the UK being seen as self-evidently a concern for Tynwald. Post-pandemic, border control has been given new prominence as part of policing the Islands. How have island attitudes to their borders changed over time? How far have the Islands moved into regulatory space formerly seen as part of the “external” matters in which the UK operated for the islands? What similarities and differences do we see across the three jurisdictions? What accounts for these patterns? What are the policy challenges and opportunities insular border-mindedness pose?

Calls to public attitudes in small democracies.

One of the recognised features of small democracies is the concentration of political power in a small number of individuals, even when the number of elected officials per head is much larger than in larger democracies. Another is the intimacy of small democracies, with unmediated relationships between politicians and individual constituents the norm rather than the exception. This raises some interesting questions around calls for public consultation, particularly when unusually extensive (such as with the Manx and Jersey assisted dying legislation). What role does formal public consultation have in small democracies? How is it carried out? How far, if at all, are those outside of the small democracy excluded from the consultation? How do formal referenda – whether hard or soft – and citizens assembles fit into this landscape? Given their special characteristics, how can small democracies most effectively make use of public consultations?

The Irish influence on Manx Independence and Autonomy in the 20^th century.

As an unintegrated possession of the UK crown, most obviously since the Revestment of 1765, the Isle of Man has been the potential locus of a tension between national identity and loyalty to the state. Revestment itself was seen by some as part of a broader rebalancing of the British Empire, one which could be resisted by the (distant) rebels of North America, but not by the Manx. From the late 18^th century on links were drawn with experience in Ireland, both by the state, and by those opposed to it. As might be expected, 1916 merits sustained attention: UK troops were deployed at the 1916 Tynwald, and Manx nationalists of Mec Vannin obscurely, but fascinatingly, were guests marching to commemorate the Easter Rising fifty years later. How far were Manx attitudes to their constitutional position shaped by the radically changing position of Ireland throughout the 20^th century? How far were UK approaches to Manx autonomy shaped by the UK experience of Ireland?

Should I stand for the House of Keys? Free public event, Wednesday 22nd April 2026.

April 1, 2026 ~ pwedge ~ Leave a comment

With the General Election to the House of Keys in September 2026 approaching, people across the Isle of Man will be considering whether to stand for election to one of the 24 seats. Manx politics is very different from that of the UK and US. Elections, and the Keys, are dominated by Independent candidates who are not associated with a political party.

This distinctive feature can work in favour of candidates standing for the Keys for the first time. Unlike in larger neighbours, there is no process of party approval. If a legally qualified candidate wishes to stand, and can secure enough signatures from fellow citizens, they will be on the ballot. Our work on Women in Manx Politics showed that while some candidates began their planning an entire General Election in advance, others decided within months of the General Election that they were going to stand.

Deciding to stand for the Keys is a big decision. Our interviews with MHKs, and those who had decided not to stand, found that they drew upon a very disparate range of sources of support in making this decision. Family, naturally; friends, commonly; but in sharp contrast to the UK, members of political parties were not significant. In the absence of the support of political parties, how do potential candidates find out what they need to know to inform this crucial decision?

One way is to come along to our event on “Should I stand for the House of Keys?” at 6pm on 22 April 2026. This will be available live, either by joining us in person at the Studio Theatre at Ballakameen High School; or online via Zoom. We will be covering key issues like:

What do MHKs do?
Myths about getting to be an MHK.
Deciding to run for the Keys.
Some tips on how to run for the Keys.

For those not able to attend on the day, the presentation will be posted online on the YouTube channel of the Centre for Law, Criminology and Social Justice Research at Oxford Brookes University.

You are welcome to join us in person on the day. If you would like to attend online, please contact pwedge@brookes.ac.uk in advance to receive the Zoom link to the event.

Why you should vote in the 2026 General Election to the House of Keys – particularly if you are a young voter.

March 31, 2026April 1, 2026 ~ pwedge ~ Leave a comment

This is going to be a lively year for Crown Dependency politics. In Jersey, the General Election of 7 June 2026 will elect the 49 members of the States Assembly, including 9 island-wide Senators abolished for the 2022 general election. In the Isle of Man, the General Election of 24 September 2026 will elect the 24 Members of the House of Keys. In this blog, I am going to put some of the global discussion about voting into the Manx context to argue that you should vote in September.

Why everyone should vote.

Globally, there are significant concerns about voter turn out for national elections. Particular parties, or political perspectives, campaign to bring out “their vote”, but we also find non-partisan campaigns which want to encourage people however they intend to vote.

Some of their arguments are about benefits to the political structure from good voter turn out – for instance increased legitimacy for those elected. Focussing on the interests of the individual voter, there are three important arguments that certainly influence me.

Shape the future. Voting gives you a say on issues important to you that impact on your life “from roads to recycling, to education and climate change, to housing and employment”
Protect your interests. If you don’t vote, other people get to choose who represents you.
Hold elected politicians accountable. Elected politicians serve a term, and can be rejected by the electorate if they are not happy with how they used it. They know this.

Within the Manx context, I want to bring out just how important an individual vote can be.

Most of us absorb a lot of political commentary, and drama, from the UK and the US. Manx constituencies are much smaller than those of the UK or the US. In the Keys, the optimum size for a two-member constitutency is 7k total population. In the House of Commons, the optimum size is 73k electors for a single member constituency. In the US, in the federal House of Representatives, the average size for a single member constituency is 800k total population. So, looking at this in terms of a voters power to get a person into the legislature, the Manx voter is 20 times as powerful as the UK voter; and 200 times as powerful as the US voter.

This means a very small number of votes can make the difference. In the General Election of 2016, Graham Cregeen beat Phil Gawne for Arbory by 19 votes, while Chris Robertshaw beat Jon Joughin for Douglas East by 7 votes.

While the size of Manx constitutencies can make a vote very important in determining who sits in the House of Keys, the absence of a developed party political system can make the contribution of an individual MHK of pivotal importance. Voting records are public domain data, and quantifiable. What they don’t capture is the importance of influence and interaction in a 24 member chamber. MHKs do listen to each other, and exercise individual judgement. So an MHK may only have one vote to cast, but perhaps their influence means two other MHKs cast a vote differently from how they would have done otherwise. So the vote examples I am going to give are, I think, the quantifiable and provable tip of an iceberg!

The Keys is the centre of Manx political life, and has a very wide remit, far beyond any of the devolved assemblies in the UK. I am going to focus on two functions – creating and staffing government, in particular the Council of Ministers; and creating primary legislation in the form of Acts of Tynwald. In both these functions, we can identify events where the 19 voters in Arbory, or the 7 voters in Douglas East, had an obvious impact. Starting with executive government:

In the election for Chief Minister in 2016, the Keys voted first, and Howard Quayle secured 12 votes. This plurality included Graham Cregeen, but not Chris Robertshaw – Robertshaw voted for the next closest (Cannan, on 9). If someone other than Cregeen had been elected, and they had voted for Cannan too, we would have had an 11 Quayle, 10 Cannan vote from the Keys. The Legislative Council – in the last time they would be able to vote for the Chief Minister – block voted for the candidate who had carried half the Keys. Would they have been willing to do so if Quayle did not have a majority, and was only one vote ahead of the next candidate?
Staying with Graham Cregeen, who remember was in the Keys because of a 19 vote lead over Phil Gawne, he served as Minister for Justice and Home Affairs from 2020-2021 – a post he could not have held had he not been in Tynwald and, realistically, not been an MHK.

Similarly, we can give concrete examples of the importance of our two closely elected MHKs in relation to primary legislation passed by Tynwald.

On 9 February 2021, Chris Robertshaw was in the 13/11 majority to pass an amendment to clause 7 of the Competition Bill 2020. The clause sought to make it clear that competition law applied to public sector bodies, as well as the private sector. An amendment was proposed to make it clearer that the law applied to everyone, rather than just those parts of the public sector covered by the Freedom of Information legislation. The amendment was adopted by the Keys, and became the Competition Act 2021 s.7.
On 2 February 2021, Graham Cregeen was in the 12/11 majority to accept amendments to the Climate Change Bill 2020. As a result, clause 32 was amended. Clause 32 covered powers of entry under the Act, or under regulations made by the Department under the Act. The clause did not require reasonable suspicion of an offence, and the proposed amendment would have required “reasonable grounds for suspecting that an offence has been committed”. The amendment was adopted by the Keys, and became Climate Change Act 2021 s.32(2).

Why young people should vote.

Within the Manx context in particular, it is worth noting that the Isle of Man is very much in the minority in enfranchising 16 and 17 year olds (continuing an honorable tradition for such a young democracy in innovation, being the first to enfranchise women in 1881). All of the arguments .above apply to younger voters, but there is another to consider.

Across the world, older people are much more likely to vote than younger people. Not only are they more likely to turn out, older people as a group may hold different political views than younger people as a group. A robust poll in the UK in January 2026 found that the Green Party was the most popular with 18-24s, Labour with 25-49s, and Reform with 50+. Without getting into policies, and quickly getting partisan; if young people vote at a significantly lower rate than older people, we would expect to see views represented by the Green Party underrepresented, and views represented by Reform overrepresented. So voting by younger voters can help to represent the younger demographics views.

So make sure you can vote, and vote!

The 21st century House of Keys really matters. Since the late 20th century the Legislative Council, although an important part of Tynwald, has been without doubt the subordinate chamber of Tynwald. Around the same time running the Manx government shifted from the Lieutenant-Governor to Manx politicians able to command majority support in Tynwald – and latterly, just the House of Keys. From even earlier, Tynwald had become far more important in Manx life than the UK Parliament. So who is elected into the House of Keys in the General Election really matters for the Isle of Man.

In large democracies with dominant political parties, the feeling that one voters vote is not going to matter is understandable. Large constituencies mean you need to be part of a much broader trend to make a difference in who is elected to represent you; politics dominated by parties mean that your individual decision may not make much of a difference over the next five years. In the Isle of Man, things are very different. If 4 people who voted for Chris Robertshaw had instead voted for Jon Joughin, Douglas East would have had a different MHK. That different MHK would have been one of only 24 people, the vast majority of whom sat as independents, who sat and voted in the Keys; and whose views and discussions shaped national policy.

To be able to vote, you need to make sure you can. There is an excellent elections site, updated for the General Election 2026, maintained by the Crown and Elections Unit in Cabinet Office. Well worth checking out!