Now in its eleventh year, the annual Channel 4 Political Awards bring together MPs, peers and political journalists gather to pay tribute to their colleagues and reflect on the events of 2008.
This is a year dominated by economic crisis but also rocked by by-election upsets, rows over allowances and donations, the 10p tax revolt, a controversial police raid on a House of Commons office and the surprise returns and resignations of key parliamentary figures.
Last year Channel 4 News viewers voted The Countryside Alliance the winner of the Channel 4 News Award for the Most Inspiring Political Figure of the Last Decade.
This year, viewers have been asked to choose the Channel 4 News Political Impact Award winner from the following shortlist: Prime Minister Gordon Brown; Boris Johnson, elected Mayor of London in May; Vince Cable, former Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats - currently Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and Peter Mandelson who left his post in Brussels as an EU trade commissioner to become Gordon Brown’s Secretary of State for Business.
Two nominees from outside Westminster are former MI5 Chief Eliza Manningham-Buller who was an outspoken critic of plans for the 42-day detention of terror suspects without charge and Andrew Walker, the Oxfordshire-based coroner who has issued damning criticisms of the Ministry of Defence in his verdicts on the deaths of servicemen.
MPs and peers have nominated their colleagues for the Politicians' Politician, Opposition Politician, Peer of the Year and Campaigning Politician Awards, which will be presented by surprise guests.
Short-listed for the Politician's Politician Award are: Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington; John Bercow, MP for Buckingham; Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
The winner of the award for Political Book of the Year will be decided by politics students from Hull University who are spending a year as interns in Westminster. The panel’s decision will be for the best written and most enduring book on British politics. Nominees include: ‘A Political Suicide: The Conservatives' Voyage into the Wilderness’ by Norman Fowler, ‘Cameron on Cameron: Conversations with Dylan Jones’, David Cameron & Dylan Jones; ‘Prezza: My Story: Pulling No Punches’ by John Prescott; ‘Speaking for Myself: The Autobiography’ by
Cherie Blair and ‘The Hugo Young Papers: Thirty Years of British Politics - Off the Record’ by Hugo Young. Other awards include Politics in the Media and the Hansard Society Democracy Award.
