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The article explores how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affected the legal transition and foreign relations of Great Britain following Brexit or the British withdrawal from the European Union (EU). Topics discussed include the representation of Great Britain in EU institutions during the transition period, the reported economic and social impact of the pandemic on Great Britain, and the ratification of the trade and cooperation agreement between the EU and Great Britain.

The article explores the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on social security, workplace safety, and employment in Great Britain. Topics discussed include the duty of employers to ensure the safety of workers under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the compliance of workplaces to the lockdown protocols introduced by the British government in response to the pandemic, and the furlough of employees between March and October 2020.

The article explores the policies implemented by the British government for the benefit of companies in the midst of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Topics discussed include the introduction of the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 to prevent placement of concerned firms into insolvency, the job retention assistance extended for both employers and employees, and the investment of the government in private companies to support continued innovation.

The outcome of the 2016 referendum on European Union membership took many by surprise and has continued to define the political discourse in Britain. Despite there being a growing body of research focused on explaining how voters cast their ballot, we still know little about what motivated our politicians to do the same. In this article, we draw on individual-level survey data from the British Representation Study to explore support for Brexit among parliamentary candidates who stood at the 2017 general election. We find that candidates' political views on immigration and democracy were key determinants of their decision to vote Leave. In addition, more optimistic views of how Brexit was expected to impact British economy and democracy are associated with greater likelihood of voting Leave. These findings highlight that, while politicians were less likely than voters to support Brexit overall, their motivations for doing so were quite similar. Interestingly, however, we also find that candidates contesting constituencies with higher Leave support were no more likely to vote for Brexit themselves. Taken together, these findings have important implications for elite representation of voters' policy preferences on the issue of Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the political dimension of volunteering in the context of austerity. It explores how the economic recession and the austerity measures taken by governments in the UK in recent years affect how volunteers define their engagement and whether they relate it to more political forms of collective action such as protest. The article analyses the narratives and life trajectories of volunteers active in five charities in the field of poverty alleviation in Leicester. It shows how the context of growing inequalities and austerity leads these actors to construct hybrid – 'in-between' – forms of engagement in which compassionate action is mixed with social and critical resilience based on collective empowerment processes. Furthermore, it shows that participants' narratives about their own engagement are also ambivalent: they are based on a criticism of the disempowering consequences of austerity, but they sometimes tend to reproduce dominant discourses that blame the poor for their suffering. It argues that these ambivalences are inherent to narratives based on empowerment processes. The article concludes by suggesting how the focus on these 'in-between' forms of engagement – and their ambivalences – can reveal some of the changing features of collective action in contemporary societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK has had a long-standing regional house price gap with prices in London much higher than the rest of the UK. Using price data from 1969 to 2016 we track price differentials through several cycles of boom and bust, and note the growing divergence of London, particularly central London, from the rest of Britain. In explaining this divergence, we highlight the growing importance of international investment since the global financial crisis. We conclude that, although 'Brexit' may have brought the latest long London boom to a close, there is nothing to suggest that the regional house price gap will close. Given the ongoing importance of global financial inflows to major world cities, this has significant implications for how governments approach affordability and housing policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart metering studies typically focus on quantifying behavior change. However, little is known about how users understand energy information and analyze and interpret feedback from energy data visualizations. To investigate this, we gave 13 participants from nine UK households an electricity power clamp meter. Prior to installing and using the device, we conducted interviews with participants to gauge their understanding of their home electricity consumption and found that participants varied considerably from limited to substantial energy literacy. Two weeks after the clamp meter had been installed, we conducted a contextual inquiry in which we asked participants to explain the web-based time series visualization of their recorded electricity data. We found that the visualization proved unfit: participants relied on memories and suggested likely routines, while widely being unable to reliably identify specific events in the data visualization. In follow-up interviews 3 months later, we found that participants’ understanding of their home electricity consumption had hardly changed. Finally, we invited participants to generate ideas how smart electricity feedback could be optimized. They named different forms of disaggregation, higher temporal resolution, and interactivity as design requirements. In summary, these results suggest that people find home energy data very difficult to understand and link to everyday actions and behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the political condition in Ireland following the Great Recession from 2008 to 2016. Topics include the impact of the recession to the economy in the country and in British and European economies, the main development in Irish politics since the global financial crises, and the key factors that will determine the future political stability in the area.

This article lays out both a critique of the oxymoron ‘sustainable development’, and the potential and nuances of a Post-Development agenda. We present ecological swaraj from India and Degrowth from Europe as two examples of alternatives to development. This gives a hint of the forthcoming book, provisionally titledThe Post-Development Dictionary, that is meant to deepen and widen a research, dialogue and action agenda for activists, policymakers and scholars on a variety of worldviews and practices relating to our collective search for an ecologically wise and socially just world. This volume could be one base in the search for alternatives to United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in an attempt to truly transform the world. In fact, it is an agenda towards the pluriverse: ‘a world where many worlds fit’, as the Zapatista say. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this brief article I explain why the expectation amongst economists that Brexit means Britain will experience significant economic losses, thanks to the reversal of the gains from specialisation, is incorrect. The background assumptions regarding comparative advantage are false and cannot inform real-world situations. However, this is not the same as to suggest Britain as a post-Brexit country will follow successful trade policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One vision of a post Brexit Britain is of a political economy sustained by highly flexible labour markets, light touch regulation, and a hyper competitive low-tax regime. This article focuses on the tax element, evaluating the prospects of this vision’s realization on the basis of the attributes of the British political economy, the substance of the Britain’s new found freedoms and the forces at play in the European and international regulatory environment. Britain is seeking a smooth transition via a strategy of upgrading and expanding national position in global wealth chains (GWCs). Occupying space in GWCs requires a series of careful balancing acts between making a tax offer attractive to mobile capital and maintaining revenue, designing a low-tax regime and staying within the boundaries of accepted practice established by multilateral rules and norms, and between multiple, often conflicting, goals that Britain must simultaneously pursue as it leaves the European Union. With hard Brexit, Britain will pursue this vision, but these balances are likely to prove illusive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how the policy-maker’s ‘decision not to decide’ affects different levels of internal organization and how it is reflected in the residential patterns of different population groups. The article explores the dynamics of residential patterns in two case studies: the Collective behaviour of the Sylheti community along Whitechapel Road in Eastern London and the Group Action of the ‘Kol-Torah’ Community in Zangwill Street, Jerusalem, where Inner-markets activities create clear property lines around/within their boundaries and result in a similar homogeneous pattern. Identifying the main engines of organized neighbourhood change and the difficulties of planning and dealing with individuals in the housing market shed light on similar processes occurring in other city centres with diverse population groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the education and career trajectory of Valpy FitzGerald, from his upbringing within the culturally distinguished Knox family, his education at Oxford and Cambridge and his career as a radical macroeconomist of development at Cambridge, The Hague and the Oxford Department of Development (ODID). It highlights his work with the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, his advisory role with the British Labour Government after 1997 and his contributions to the reform of ODID. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recent economic crisis has brought into focus how even open and highly interdependent economies in the European Union try to govern their economies according to territorially defined interests. The aim of this article is to examine an area, online gambling, with the technological and legal conditions that challenge approaches that favour economic patriotism. The article compares two cases, the United Kingdom and Italy, that represent two different models of economic governance to argue that they are similar in which interests they seek to protect and at which level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article re-claims and invigorates the debate on ‘New Materialism’ as it is unfolding within Marxist political economy specifically. We choose this site to make our intervention in the debate because, while Marxism claims to makes visible the poor, dispossessed and those ‘left behind’ in the contemporary global capitalist economy, we discern, in contributions made thus far, a marked tendency to sideline the rich tradition of feminist historical materialist scholarship. We contend that feminist analyses are vital in elucidating the ‘gendered face’ of global financial crisis and austerity. Accordingly, after first mapping the contours of current discussion, we briefly revisit feminist critiques of Marxism; interrogate the inter-relationship between neoliberal capitalism, the gendered nature of labour markets, the ‘patriarchal’ state and social reproduction and unpaid care work; and, finally, we further develop our argument through an analysis of the gendered impacts of current austerity measures in the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong's greater economic integration with China has continued to underpin its service-oriented economy following the manufacturing sectors' hollowing out since the 1990s. Hong Kong is an important transit hub for China's external trade, especially for the Pearl River Delta Region. China's deregulation of mainland visitors to Hong Kong under the Individual Visit Scheme since 2003 has contributed to Hong Kong's bulging trade surplus in travel. Nonetheless, the tremendous business opportunities from China's financial reform won't unseat the US and the UK as Hong Kong's top trade partners in financial services. Overall, Hong Kong's service economy will continue to prosper in the near term with China's continuous granting of special treatment. In the long run, strengthening Hong Kong's bridging role between mainland China and the global market will be crucial for the viability of its services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reform of the eurozone and the concerns surrounding a potential 'Brexit' has given rise to a new debate about differentiation but also disintegration in the European Union. This article provides a theoretical and analytical approach to understanding how differentiation is related to the debate on distribution of competences across various levels government. It finds that differentiation has played an important role in the EU integration process since the 1950s, even though the risk of fragmentation has always existed. Facing the benefits and costs of differentiation, the member states have developed their own practices. Three ideosyncratic groups of member states can be identified in this regard: first, a group of Anglo-Scandinavian member states which refuse centralization of the EU; a Franco-German group which considers the integration through the promotion of a 'core Europe'; and, third, a group of central and east European member states who fear that differentiation would set their interests aside and relegate them to second-class status within the EU. Finally, Brexit is not only about the status of the UK in the EU, but casts deeper questions on how to clarify the nature of relations between the eurozone and the EU as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Global Financial Crisis placed the utility of financial services in question. The crash, great recession, wealth transfers from public to private, austerity and growing inequality cast doubt on the idea that finance is a boon to the host economy. This article systematizes these doubts to highlight the perils of an oversized financial sector. States failing to harness natural resources for development led to the concept of the Resource Curse. In many countries, resource dependence generated slower growth, crowding out, reduced economic diversity, lost entrepreneurialism, unemployment, economic instability, inequality, conflict, rent-seeking and corruption. The Finance Curse produces similar effects, often for similar reasons. Beyond a point, a growing financial sector can do more harm than good. Unlike the Resource Curse, these harms transcend borders. The concept of a Finance Curse starkly illuminates the condition of Britain's political economy and the character of its relations with the rest of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Conservative party's ability to embrace popular concerns around value, place and equality has enabled it to resurrect the old pre-crisis growth model, says Craig Berry, in a move which none of the post-crisis narratives offered by the Labour party has yet been able to disrupt or overturn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the last two decades, cultural quarters have been used by many local councils across the UK as attempts to redevelop and revitalize declining urban centres. Cities have spent millions of pounds developing cultural quarter policies, justified by the prevailing rhetoric of culture revitalizing the local economy and the creation of a “cultural milieu” that stimulates creative industry activity. However, in many cases in the UK, visitor numbers remain lower than expected, and in some cases, flagship projects have been sold off or closed down. High rents force out small and freelance creative industry actors, and (non-commercial) artistic interventions are strictly policed. Forming part of the wider debate on the political circumscription of the creativity paradigm, this paper argues that cultural quarters have been viewed within a predominately economistic, dichotomous and simplistic framework. This paper argues that there is a need for a more practiced-based, subjective account of cultural quarters that goes beyond such a traditional framework to include more deleterious practices such as community impoverishment, precariousness and short-termism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates the underlying mechanisms at the heart of Britain's post-crisis political economy. We argue that the contemporary economic recovery has been characterised by a dynamic of ‘regressive redistribution’: a socially regressive dynamic of state-led economic restructuring that has worked through two axes at the centre of the recovery. The first axis, a monetary policy framework centred upon Quantitative Easing, has driven asset-price inflation to the benefit of the wealthiest asset holders. The second axis centres upon the politics of regressive labour market restructuring which has provoked widespread wage deflation. In combination, these two axes have been central to defining the contours of the Britain's post-crisis political economy paradigm: characterised by rising asset wealth for the few, and falling living standards alongside increasing economic insecurity for wage earners. The opportunity to change path from the trends of deepening inequality that defined the pre-crisis era has not been taken. Instead, the prevailing policy paradigm of the post-crisis period – discursively unified and sustained by David Cameron's government – has intensified the regressively redistributive dynamics at the core of the neo-liberal project. Ultimately, this is likely to further entrench structural weaknesses in Britain's economy in the years ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper identifies how a series of higher apprenticeships projects funded by the UK coalition government in England between 2012 and 2014 are located within structures of professional and vocational formation. Factors that relate to the structuring of formation are discussed, including how notions of professionalization and legitimacy, and the political economy of skill, impact on formation processes. Using sketches of three modes of formation, and evidence from documents associated with eight developmental and capacity building projects, higher apprenticeships are perceived as providing opportunities to vertically extend formation structures ‘upwards’ and ‘downwards’, in addition to providing forms of ‘horizontal extension’ through the development of new alternative progression routes to professional qualification. Alterations and extensions to formation structures are engendered by the specific macro and meso context of the relevant sector or profession, and may be influenced by the involvement of further and higher education institutions, leading to the prioritization of particular types of progression, professional accreditation and qualification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the effect of an increase in the stock of human capital due to skilled immigration on the innovative performance of recipient economies? Combining firm-level micro-data with area-level labour force information, this paper investigates the impact of skilled international migration inflows on firms' product and process innovation in British local labour market areas. The paper supports the evidence in favour of a causal link between immigration and innovation. Results also show that the nature of the innovative process and the typology of innovative activities performed by local firms play a key role in the relation between immigration and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The news-media has been identified as an influence on donor nations’ overseas aid allocations, acting as a site where decisions are justified to ‘domestic constituencies’ and through which resistance is mobilised. Mediated pressures on aid allocations amplified between 2008 and 2011 in three donor countries experiencing domestic economic difficulties: Ireland, the UK and the US. This study suggests that each country’s print-media positioned the macro resourcing of aid primarily as an inward concern, neglected recipient country needs, and made weak connections to international policy frameworks to benchmark, contextualise and rationalise aid allocations. The research suggests that the explanatory limitations of the countries’ news-models in communicating the processes and rationales underpinning macro aid resourcing may be a factor in sustaining a knowledge and legitimacy deficit among domestic publics for international aid agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of research methods is regarded as crucial for the UK economy and workforce. However, research methods teaching is viewed as a challenging area for lecturers and students. The pedagogy of research methods teaching within universities has been noted as underdeveloped, with undergraduate students regularly expressing negative dispositions to the subject. These are challenges documented in university-based higher education (HE), yet little is known of the practices and pedagogies of research methods teaching in the college-based HE setting, where the delivery of HE has grown in prominence in recent years. Because college-based HE is widely regarded as primarily vocational, incorporating research methods into curricula may be seen as an additional level of complexity for staff to negotiate. In this article, we report on the data collected within a study to examine research methods teaching in social science disciplines on HE programmes taught in college-based settings in England. Drawing on data obtained from college-based HE lecturers and students, we discuss features of research methods teaching and how these may be applied with a diverse student body, within vocationally focused institutions. Issues of institutional culture, resourcing and staff development are also considered as these are identified as integral to the successful embedding of research methods teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that the UK pension system is gender blind and is structured around a heteropatriarchal experience. It does so by analysing two key pieces of UK pension policy: the New Flat Rate State Pension and Auto-Enrolment. Since the 1980s the value of the British state pension has fallen, and it is now worth half what it was in 1979. This presents a particular disadvantage for women who not only tend to be lower paid, but because of a gendered occupational life course, also tend to work part-time hours, and thus also fail to work the number of qualifying years for the full state pension. Traditionally, this results in a pension penalty for women. It is argued that the New Flat Rate State Pension and Auto-Enrolment will counteract this disadvantage, and political discourses used by policymakers claim that they will also create a fairer society. The argument presented here seeks to demonstrate that this claim is problematic by exposing how (i) gender blindness prevents gender equality in pension provision delivery, and (ii) how the formulation of these policies are actually reinforced by a heteropatriarchal welfare system, which fundamentally undermines the contribution made by women to the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to this article is the use of sports mega-events as part of a state's “soft power” strategy. The article offers two things: first, a critique of the “soft power” concept and a clearer understanding of what it refers to by drawing on the political use of sports mega-events by states; second, the article seeks to understand how and why sports mega-events are attractive to states with different political systems and at different stages of economic development. To this end a case study of an advanced capitalist state (London Olympics, 2012) and a so-called “emerging” state (FIFA World Cup, 2014; Rio Olympics, 2016) will be undertaken in order to shed light on the role of sports events as part of soft power strategies across different categories of states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the planned 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review, it is timely to consider afresh the global security landscape and the UK's place within it. What does “security” mean in this context, and what challenges does the UK face? Following a discussion of the meaning of “security”, the article will identify three broad themes from which security challenges for the UK emerge. These are: (1) cyberspace and the digital age; (2) change and the current international system; and (3) inequality within the UK. By examining recent developments in each of these areas, it will be argued that there are good reasons for these challenges to remain important in thinking about British security over the medium to longer term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partisans often perceive real world conditions in a manner that credits their own party. Yet recent findings suggest that partisans are capable of setting their loyalties aside when confronted with clear evidence, for example, during an economic crisis. This study examines a different possibility. While partisans may acknowledge the same reality, they may find other ways of aligning undeniable realities with their party loyalties. Using monthly survey data collected before and after the unexpected collapse of the British national economy (2004-10), this study presents one key finding: As partisans came to agree that economic conditions had gotten much worse, they conversely polarized in whether they thought the government was responsible. While the most committed partisans were surprisingly apt in acknowledging the economic collapse, they were also the most eager to attribute responsibility selectively. For that substantial share of the electorate, partisan-motivated reasoning seems highly adaptive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to estimate whether job applicants who have obtained a BSc in economics from 15 UK universities face different labour market prospects. The author examines whether university entry standards and Russell Group membership affect UK economics applicants’ occupational access and entry-level annual salaries when unobserved heterogeneities, such as ability, motivation, family characteristics and networks, are minimized. Design/methodology/approach – The author evaluate the research question by recording the job search processes of 90 British economics applicants from randomly selected universities. The key elements of the approach are as follows: third-year undergraduate students apply for early career jobs that are relevant to their studies. Applications are closely matched in terms of age, ethnicity, experience and other core characteristics. Differential treatment in the access to vacancies and entry-level annual salaries per university applicant are systematically measured. Findings – By observing as much information as a firm does, the estimations suggest that both entry standards and Russell Group membership positively affect applicants’ labour market prospects. Although the firms cannot evaluate by themselves whether graduates from highly reputable universities are more or less capable and motivated than graduates from less reputable universities, it appears that the university attended affects firms’ recruitment policies. Importantly, valuable variables that capture firms’ and jobs’ heterogeneities, such as occupational variation, regions, workplace size, establishment age, and the existence of trade unions and human resources, are also considered and provide new results. Practical implications – Understanding the impact of entry standards and university reputation on students’ labour market outcomes is critical to understanding the role of human capital and screening strategies. In addition, obtaining accurate estimates of the payoff of attending a university with a high entry threshold and reputation is of great importance not only to the parents of prospective students who foot tuition bills but also to the students themselves. Furthermore, universities will be interested in the patterns estimated by this study, which will allow recent UK economists to evaluate the current employment environment. In addition, universities should be keen to know how their own graduates have fared in the labour market compared with graduates of other universities. Originality/value – In the current study, the author attempt to solve the problem of firms’ seeing more information than econometricians by looking at an outcome that is determined before firms see any unobservable characteristics. In the current study, ability, motivation, family characteristics and networks cannot affect applicants’ access to vacancies and entry-level salaries. The current study can estimate the effect of university enrolment on applicants’ occupational access and entry-level salaries, controlling for unobserved characteristics that would themselves affect subsequent outcomes in the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on attempts by the British Government to reexamine and recalibrate its oil policy following the Suez Crisis until the election of the Conservative Government of Edward Heath in 1970. It argues that despite a long-term strategy of non-intervention in the affairs of Britain's two domestically-based oil companies, British Petroleum and Shell, repeated Government attempts to increase the effectiveness of its oil policy in meeting its twin goal of security of supply and profitability to the British economy led to a gradual increase in state intervention in oil matters. The unintended consequence of this process was the deterioration of relations with BP and Shell, leading to the breakdown of Britain's traditional approach of allowing the firms to handle oil matters independently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out a framework for understanding the impacts of the financial crisis and its aftermath that is based on the idea of three interacting spheres: finance, production and reproduction. All of these spheres are gendered and globalised. The gendered impact of the current crisis is discussed in terms of the impact on unemployment, employment protection and security, public sector services, social security benefits, pensions, and the real value of wages and living standards. Drawing on the analysis of the UK Women's Budget Group, the paper demonstrates that the biggest falls in disposable income as the result of austerity policies by the Conservative-led government since 2010 have been borne by the most vulnerable women-lone mothers, single women pensioners and single women without children. Working-age couples without children have been least affected. The paper then goes on to discuss what an alternative economic strategy, based on feminist political economy, might look like. It utilises the notion of the 'reproductive bargain', first developed to understand the transition in Cuba in the 1990s. It sets out a possible feminist economic strategy that insists on the incorporation of reproductive and care work into the analysis of alternative economic policies and links employment, wages and social security payments to public provisioning of trans-generational reproductive services. It suggests feasible strategies to finance the proposed Plan F-a feminist economic strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 2010 George Osborne put deficit reduction and control of debt at the centre of his economic strategy, announcing a much more radical fiscal retrenchment than the plan inherited from Alastair Darling. The key reason for this was political. Osborne sought to redefine the terms of the debate on economic policy, enabling the Coalition to blame the recession on Labour and to create a new narrative to bolster its claim to economic competence. He failed to achieve his fiscal targets, but his statecraft was highly successful, allowing him to claim the credit when recovery finally started in 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between electoral support and the economy over the period 2004-2013, paying particular attention to the impact of the economic strategy pursued by the Coalition government in Britain since the 2010 general election. This involves modelling the relationship between voting intentions, perceptions of economic performance and a variety of other variables using survey data collected from 2004. The evidence shows that when Labour was in office, support for the party was strongly influenced by the state of the economy, as was support for the opposition parties. However, since the Coalition came to power, the relationship between the economy and political support has changed, with neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats gaining from a fairly rapid growth in economic optimism which has taken place since early 2013. The article explains this change in terms of a growing perception among the public that none of the major parties can effectively manage Britain's economic problems. Optimism about the national economy has not significantly percolated down to the level of the individual voter. So individuals may be more optimistic about the future of the national economy but they are still being badly affected by the recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the collapse of Northern Rock in 2008 the UK authorities have constructed a state-of-the-art resolution framework for dealing with failing banks comprising both a Special Resolution Regime and a Proactive Intervention Framework. Whilst the design of the SRR has been examined, how the resolution framework will function in practice has to be analysed in detail. This paper will examine the ambiguity that exists surrounding when a firm should be placed into resolution, along with the discretion regarding the operation of the resolution framework that has been placed into the hands of the new microprudential regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority. It will argue that these issues have the potential to fatally undermine the framework's ability to protect both public funds and financial stability in the UK from the impact of bank failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]