Laura Sandys has been a political consultant for over 15 years, with experience of political structures across Europe, Turkey, South America and the US. She is currently a trustee of Open University Foundation and the Civic Trust and has recently worked as a journalist and policy strategist in Washington DC. She is a member of the Board of openDemocracy and also works as Senior Research Associate for the Centre For Defence Studies, Kings College.

Recent articles

There is no question that the last few weeks have been the worst for British politics in my life time. And with very just cause. The public are revolted, disgusted and appalled. This is not limited to those outside the political sphere, activists who knock on doors, stuff envelopes, and deliver leaflets in support of their party feel particularly betrayed. 

But there has been a typically British revolution simmering away for many years - not violent but one that has turned its back on politicians and the political class. The expense claims have been the lightening rod for this sense of disillusion, disempowerment and disengagement from our political process. Politics in this country have not been right for a long time. 

Power has resided in the wrong places – centralised in Whitehall with faceless politicians and even more invisible bureaucrats deciding our futures. We are harassed by illogical inflexible procedures and pushed around by officialdom. 

Why is it that we are educating people more while imprisoning them with regulations that inhibit their innovation and self-reliance.   We are making people “compliant” rather than allowing diversity of opinion and approach to life and work. We have more regulation “police” monitoring our businesses and telling our local public servants how to do their jobs, giving them no opportunity to exercise their own sound judgement. As a people we are becoming fearful of risk, inhibited from being different, creating a grey society that is judged through box ticking as either compliant and obedient or risky and dangerously “adventurous”. 

OpenDemocracy Chair Laura Sandys, describes how her father Duncan Sandys received the 'Damian Green treatment' prior to the Second World War.

A month after the London bomb attacks, openDemocracy’s chair Laura Sandys calls on Britain’s government to shift its policy and thinking in relation to the country’s Muslim citizens.

What lies behind the revolt of the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Shi’a followers? Does it signal the end of American rule in Iraq? Laura Sandys sees parallels and portents in an earlier period of colonial rule.

Who will be the vultures, and who the carrion, in a post-Saddam Iraq? The Iraqi opposition plans for transition. The country’s neighbours – especially Turkey, Iran and Syria – covet influence and power after ‘regime change’. America is torn between impulses of order and freedom. The decisive role belongs to Iraq’s people. Will they unite, or fragment?