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British Conservatism after the vote for Brexit: the ideological legacy of David Cameron
Abstract
Following the referendum on membership of the EU, this article assesses the ideological legacy of David Cameron on Conservative politics in Britain. It focuses on three areas of ideological tension in contemporary conservatism, namely European integration, the divide between social liberals and traditionalists, and the future of the Union post-Brexit. Applying the concept of heresthetics to offer a theoretically informed account, it argues that while Cameron enjoyed some successes in ‘the art of political manipulation’ (Riker 1986) with electoral benefits, his desire to modernize conservatism was ultimately undone by his failure to restructure the key issue dimensions animating his party’s ideology. Ultimately this failure undid his premiership, leading to his downfall.
... This analysis offers the basic theoretical scaffolding for a deeper exploration of the dynamic relationship between conservatism and crime, but in order to understand how these varied ideological perspectives find contingent expression within the contemporary British Conservative Party it is necessary to engage with the extant political science literature (see Heppell and Hill 2005;Hayton 2017;Heppell 2020). Writing at the advent of Thatcherism, Norton and Aughey (1981) were still at ease in describing a Conservative Party defined by the creative tension between a liberal conservatism-or 'Whiggery' -that was largely concerned with management of the economy, and a traditional conservatism-or 'Toryism' -that evoked an ideology of 'just' political order, constitutional balance and good governance. ...
... The Conservative Party had been in opposition since 1997 and three heavy General Election defeats had left the party in the grips of an 'existential crisis' (Kerr and Hayton 2015). For a large section of the British electorate the Conservative Party brand had become politically toxic, and a key plank of the Cameron project was to move the party in a more socially liberal direction (Hayton 2017). The extent to which this modernising strategy represented a genuine reckoning with the party's Thatcherite legacy is open to debate. ...
Recent scholarship has underscored the limitations of a theoretical repertoire that reduces the politics of punishment to debates over punitiveness, neoliberalism or penal exceptionalism. In this paper I argue that greater understanding of the dynamic interplay between ideologies and power can provide a richer account of the complex and contradictory landscapes of contemporary penal politics. I seek to show that political parties occupy a prominent position within representative systems of government and this mediating role, at the intersection between ideology and power, is closely associated with the production of penal policy outcomes. Reflecting upon the recent history of the British Conservative Party, I conclude that the politics of punishment is shaped, not only by inter-party competition (and consensus), but the dynamics of intra-party conflict.
... The two dimensions of this modernisation-ideological and organisational-had different outcomes. Although Cameron's desire to modernise British conservatism can be assessed as a failure (Hayton 2017), his record in attempting to modernise both the institutions and the party by introducing organisational and procedural innovations is arguably mixed. In this particular light, it is, however, easy to interpret his use of referendums as a device which was consistent with a whole package of constitutional and party organisational reforms. ...
... In 2015 and 2017, a large majority of Conservative members placed themselves on the socially conservative right (respectively 70.9% and 69.7%) (Bale et al. 2020, p. 62; see also Heppell 2013). Cameron's agenda also failed to reshape the party's ideology (Hayton 2017). The failure of the ideological modernisation of the party already prepared the ground for a shift towards substantive populism which was then easily legitimised by Johnson, who narrowed it down to identity politics and explicitly associated it with disengagement from the EU. ...
Brexit was often associated with a recent upsurge of populism in Western democracies, with the idea of re-engaging with the people being construed as a populist strategy to disengage from Europe. This article seeks to explore the populist hypothesis by stepping outside the dominant literature on populism to take a closer look at Peter Mair's ‘populist democracy’ as applied to two defining moments: David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum on EU membership and Boris Johnson’s process of implementing Brexit. Mair's notion encompasses two aspects—procedural and substantive populism—which seem to apply to both moments. While Cameron's long leadership (2005–2016) reveals changes in governing practices and party management which have altered the nature of the relationship between the leader and the ‘people’, Boris Johnson’s (2019–) more contemporary leadership can be described as an illustration of a new populist rhetoric in its combination of hard Brexit, anti-immigration and anti-Parliament discourse. Although both leaderships expose ingredients of Mair’s two variants of populism, the ‘populist hypothesis’ does not hold in the light of the type of leaders that Cameron and Johnson have actually turned out to be.
... In 2010, David Cameron led his party back to power after thirteen years in opposition, but, lacking an overall majority, formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats (Hayton 2014). The widely anticipated result of the 2015 general election was another hung parliament, but Cameron defied expectations to secure a small majority of twelve seats. ...
... If advocates of 'progressive conservatism' could feel comfortable with, or even proud of, the record of the Conservative-led Coalition government on moral issues, it is unlikely the same could be said in relation to welfare, where, with an individualist outlook consistent with Thatcherism, it downgraded the role of the state in reducing material inequalities (Griffiths 2014). The welfare state became the target for genuinely significant spending cuts as part of the austerity agenda aimed at eliminating the deficit in the public finances, which was enshrined as the number one objective of the government in the 2010 Coalition Agreement (Hayton 2014). In opposition, Cameron had appeared to distance himself from Thatcherite welfare policy through an emphasis on 'social justice' (a Social Justice Policy Group was established), and explicit recognition of the need to tackle relative as well as absolute poverty (Hayton and McEnhill 2015: 140). ...
The chapter explains how the centrist Christian democratic Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) has responded to the challenges of the Silent revolution and counter revolution by demonstrating a selective willingness to cooperate with the populist radical right Freedom Party (FPÖ). Polling and manifesto data show how the ÖVP has shifted from dismissive to accommodative approaches when it was polling behind the FPÖ. Sufficient electoral distress led to the installation of new leaders who were able to change the strategic status quo. In the first instance in 1995 Wolfgang Schüssel emphasized policy-seeking and in the second case Sebastian Kurz pursed vote-seeking. Both strategies resulted in a positional alignment and eventually a coalition with the FPÖ, which at the time was pursuing office. Changes in the ÖVP depended on shifts in the balance of power among important intra-party groups, specifically, hardline conservatives and market liberals viewing cooperation with the FPÖ as advantageous for their respective interests. Analysis of the supply side reveals the close programmatic alignment of ÖVP with FPÖ positions since 2002. Demand side analysis suggests that the programmatic shifts by the ÖVP coincide with changes in the profile of its electorate toward a composition more typical of a far right party. Overall, the chapter concludes that while the ÖVP has been affected by massive voter dealignment since the 1980s, it responded to the counter revolution and the resulting surge of nativist populism mainly by means of emulation and cooperation.
... As Dorey highlighted, the electoral threat posed by UKIP was already a significant source of concern to right-wing Conservatives in this period, who were afraid that Cameron's centrist strategy would drive their core supporters towards UKIP. Although Cameron initially sought to dismiss UKIP supporters as 'fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly', this fear effectively acted as a brake on modernization in some areas, such as immigration and European policy (Hayton 2018). Later assessments of Cameron's project to modernize the party (such as those published in volume 10 of British Politics) would concur that it created 'political space into which moved a reinvigorated UKIP, creating an historic schism on the Right' (Lynch 2015: 186). ...
The right of British politics is being reshaped, threatening the dominant position of the Conservative Party. This paper analyses the symbiotic relationship between the Conservatives and Reform UK. It argues that both parties now represent and articulate what can be most accurately described as populist conservatism. This populist conservatism in part reflects the rise of national conservatism globally, but it is also a distinctively British phenomenon with its roots and development decisively shaped by the electoral competition on the right in the UK over several decades. Possible scenarios for the future of the right are explored. The dynamic competition between the two parties is reinforcing the dominance of populist conservatism on the right of British politics. A pact between the two would reinforce this further.
... The development of an English agenda, aimed at placating the right of the party and responding to the electoral threat posed by UKIP, was a key aspect of Cameron's leadership (Hayton 2010;Webb et al., 2017). Although Cameron's initial strategy for dealing with UKIP dismissed them as a party of 'fruitcakes, loons, and closet racists' (Lynch and Whitaker 2013: 298-9) and sought to de-emphasize the issues of immigration and Europe (Hayton 2018), Cameron increasingly ceded political ground (Bale 2018). On immigration, Cameron adopted a series of 'restrictive, hard-line, and at times, both hyperbolic and hyperactive' policies despite initial promises of an 'evidence-based approach' (Bale et al., 2011;Partos and Bale 2015: 169-70), to create a 'hostile environment' for illegal immigrants and, indeed, for immigration generally. ...
This article reconsiders the longer-term legacy of David Cameron’s attempts to ‘modernize’ the Conservative Party. In doing so, we aim to make three main contributions to existing scholarship. Firstly, whilst Cameron’s modernization project is judged to have been a failure by most scholars, we show that Conservative leaders post-Cameron have continued a process of party adaptation that exhibits striking continuities with many of its key elements. Secondly, whilst these developments have co-existed alongside a ratcheting up of seemingly ‘anti-modernizing’ populist and nationalist rhetoric, we contend that such moves show important continuities with Cameron’s own attempts to balance modernization with gestures towards Thatcherite politics. Thirdly, we offer a re-conceptualization of Conservative Party modernization as a fluid and contingent aspect of Conservative Party statecraft marked by an oscillation between, and sometimes a fusing of, modernizing rhetoric with more traditional Tory appeals.
... 71 Hayton highlighted electoral support for UKIP and backbench unrest. 72 There had been a 'narrowing of the parameters of ideological acceptability for the Conservative Party on Europe', which Cameron had sought to manage. 73 Smith concluded, similarly, that Cameron took the decision for party management reasons -something that seemed to work, for a while. ...
This article argues for the importance of considering ideology in any analysis of major political judgements. Through an exploration of British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s judgement – an actor sometimes referred to as a pragmatist – the article shows that to understand why a referendum was held on Britain’s membership of the EU, we must consider Cameron’s ideology. His interpretation of conservatism showed an affinity with ‘reform to conserve’ – an idea that functions like a metaphor within British Conservative traditions for interpreting a core political concept within conservatism: that of managing what Freeden has called the ‘problem of change’. In setting out Cameron’s beliefs, and his perception of the beliefs and actions of others, the contingency of the referendum judgement is revealed – and existing explanations for the referendum decision are reframed. Narratives that approach an ‘inevitability thesis’ regarding Cameron’s decision should be resisted. Instead, we should recognize and consider the beliefs that inform such narratives and the assumptions they make. Outcomes based on ideological motivations can be unintended or even appear contradictory. For Cameron, a strategy of ‘reform to conserve’ resulted in something close to a political revolution.
... Ainsi les dissensions intrapartisanes ont encouragé deux types d'analyse du phénomène -idéologique et comportemental -tantôt conjointes (Dorey, 2017), tantôt distinctes. Certains chercheurs ont tenté d'identifier les caractéristiques idéologiques de l'euroscepticisme (Garry, 1995 ;Berrington et Hague, 1998 ;Baker et al., 2002 ;Heppell, 2002Heppell, , 2013Alexandre-Collier, 2015, 103-105 ;Hayton, 2017). D'autres se sont intéressés à la dimension comportementale à travers l'étude des dispositifs parlementaires utilisés par les députés, tels que les motions ou la rébellion proprement dite (Berrington et Hague, 1998 ;Cowley et Norton, 1999 ;Cowley et Stuart, 2012 ;Lynch et Whitaker, 2013Tzelgov, 2014 ;Moore, 2018 ;Aidt et al., 2019). ...
La discussion des modalités concrètes du Brexit a été une épreuve sans précédent pour l’unité du groupe parlementaire conservateur. Cet article questionne les effets de cet épisode sur les règles de la discipline partisane. Si la crise de Maastricht avait permis aux députés rebelles de « prendre la parole » face à un gouvernement favorable au traité et fait émerger une faction eurosceptique, la turbulence occasionnée par les débats autour du Brexit a, en revanche, non seulement inversé les rapports de force entre des rebelles hostiles au « hard Brexit » et un leadership de plus en plus favorable à cette option, mais elle a également fait naître un nouveau paradigme organisationnel au sein du groupe parlementaire, en institutionnalisant la « défection » et en favorisant le scénario de l’expulsion sous une forme inédite.
... Her 10 DUP supporters were fewer in number than his 57 Liberal Democrats, but they were also easier to ignore since none sat in Cabinet, and much more (small 'c') conservative. Her Conservatives were also, arguably, more conservative than his; Brexit firmly shifted the parliamentary party rightwards (Hayton, 2018). Compared to their left-leaning colleagues, right-leaning MPs are generally more likely to support the use of force and to oppose parliamentary oversight (Wagner et al., 2017;Fonck and Reykers, 2018;Oktay, 2018;Haesebrouck and van Immerseel, 2020). ...
This article asks whether Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to bypass the House of Commons and order military action in Syria in 2018 killed the UK’s nascent War Powers Convention, established most visibly when MPs vetoed an essentially similar operation under Prime Minister David Cameron in 2013. It finds that the War Powers Convention survives, but in a weakened state, subject to new caveats that significantly narrow its scope. What happens next depends on the dynamic, unpredictable interaction between what future prime ministers believe, what strategic questions arise and what MPs will accept.
... Having set in train a process leading to the award of greater fiscal and policy powers to Scotland -to head off rising support for independence towards the end of the referendum campaign -Prime Minister David Cameron (2014) decided to raise the question of England's position in the Union in the immediate aftermath of it. Dismissed by commentators and rival politicians as a gambit that risked injecting political energy into a question that was best left dormant, his decision reflected the growing salience and influence of new thinking about the constitution in the Tory party at this time (Hayton, 2018). In his autobiography, Cameron (2019: 555) suggests that 'few things exercised Conservative backbenchers more than this "West Lothian question"'. ...
This article explores how the British Conservative Party has dealt with the dilemmas arising from its pursuit of two increasingly discordant goals: delivering Brexit and maintaining the domestic Union. Drawing on interviews and analyses of parliamentary debates, we identify a resurgence in the 2016–2019 period of an older belief in a unitarist state, and a new form of pro-Union activism in policy terms. Against those commentators who depict Britain’s Conservatives as having abandoned their unionist vocation, we explore the coalescence of a more assertive and activist strain of unionist sentiment. But we also find a willingness among Conservatives at the centre to sub-contract thinking about non-English parts of the UK to ‘local’ political representatives such as the Democratic Union Party and the Scottish Conservatives, and a growing anxiety about how to handle emergent tensions between the competing priorities associated with delivering Brexit and maintaining the domestic Union.
... The tension between modernisers and traditionalists came to be identified as an enduring opposition between 'mods' and 'rockers' in addition to other existing cleavages (Alexandre-Collier 2010). Therefore, the new leader's strategy to 'detoxify' the Tory brand (Hayton 2010; see also Dommett 2015) by recruiting more women and ethnic minorities (A-list) was not simply meant to diversify the profile of MPs but also to change the distribution of ideological forces within the party (Hayton 2017). In this context, the idea was not only to select more modernisers but MPs who could symbolise an image of modernity that the party was keen to display under Cameron's leadership. ...
At the level of the Conservative parliamentary party, one of the main effects of Brexit has been a realignment of party cleavages. While the old cleavage between Europhiles and Eurosceptics is no longer relevant and a new cleavage has appeared between soft and hard Brexiteers, this political upheaval has thus restructured Conservative ideological pluralism in the parliamentary party. Following a study of the 2015 intake of MPs who were supposedly ‘less stale, male and pale’ and their attitudes to the 2016 British referendum on the EU, this article will take a specific interest in all Conservative Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) MPs who turned out to be more active on the ‘leave’ side of the referendum campaign. They arguably embody a new feature of Conservative pluralism by operating a synthesis between inclusive modernisation and hard Brexit. Although the party should capitalise on this group of MPs to rid itself of its persistent image of a ‘nasty’ party pervaded with anti-immigration sentiment and hard Eurosceptic populism – an expression used by Theresa May in 2002 -, the strategy of ‘detoxifying’ the Brexit brand did not seem to have ever been part of her priorities as Prime Minister.
... Such is the intensity of the influence of this English nationalism that the Conservatives appear willing to abandon another tenet of One Nationism; namely, a commitment to preserve the Union of the UK. The Conservatives have paid little attention to the protests and concerns of Scottish nationalists about a hard Brexit, thus bolstering calls for a new independence referendum (Hayton, 2018). The Conservative Party has shown a propensity to metamorphose into something more akin to a populist entity, giving credence to the predictions of Polanyi and Dahrendorf that neoliberalism can potentially transform into forms of fascism and authoritarianism in times of crisis. ...
The article gives an overview of the key cultural and structural factors behind nationalist populism in Britain and the decision to leave the European Union as a result of the referendum staged in 2016 (Brexit). The article seeks to identify socio-economic and cultural changes that might counter nationalist populism in Britain through transformative change centered on a renewed Social Europe, a revived civil society, constitutional reform and critical multiculturalism.
... Brexit is widely seen as a picture book example of a wedge issue. For decades, the EU membership question divided the Conservative Party (Gamble 1996;McLean 2001;Clarke et al. 2017;Curtice 2017;Hayton 2018;Lynch and Whitaker 2018). Against the backdrop of the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and growing assertiveness of a group of Eurosceptic backbench MPs, prime minister David Cameron promised in 2013 to hold a referendum on the UK's EU membership in order to get the issue off the table (Hayton 2018: 231). ...
This paper develops a theory of wedge issue politics in modern democracies. It argues that wedge issues are associated with a politics of intransigence which differs from the politics of concessions that typically comes with non-wedge issues. This theory explains why Prime Minister Theresa May opted for a divisive approach to secure ratification of her Brexit agreement in the House of Commons. Due to the intra-partisan division within the Conservative Party, the government had an incentive to employ politics of intransigence. Playing a chicken game with recalcitrant party members, it relied on bargaining strategies to force party rebels to back down. This politics of intransigence further deepened intra-partisan divisions and thus prompted both sides to harden their stance. This vicious circle not only brought the Conservative Party to a breaking point but eventually led to government failure.
... Relying on surveys of parliamentary attitudes, which they themselves carried out, some scholars have sought to identify the more ideological features of Euroscepticism, by trying to identify specific geopolitical attitudes, such as nationalism and hyperglobalism (Baker et al., 2002) or connections with existing factions, such as Thatcherism (Berrington and Hague, 1998;Alexandre-Collier, 2015, p. 103-105). More recently, other ideological positions, such as David Cameron's legacy (Hayton, 2018) or societal and moral issues (Heppell, 2002(Heppell, , 2013 have also been identified. Other works focus instead on the behavioural dimension through the study of parliamentary devices used by backbenchers, such as Early Day Motions or parliamentary rebellion, to express their views (Berrington and Hague, 1998;Cowley and Norton, 1999;Cowley and Stuart, 2012;Whitaker, 2013a, 2017;Tzelgov, 2014;Moore, 2018). ...
This article will study the new face of Conservative Euroscepticism in the House of Commons, with a special focus on the 2015 intake of MPs who were supposedly ‘less stale, male and pale’ and their attitudes to the British referendum on the EU. In this respect, this article will also take a specific interest in new Conservative Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) MPs who turned out to be more active on the ‘leave’ side of the referendum campaign, thus serving as a showcase for the party's strategy of ‘decontaminating’ the Brexit brand and its hyperglobalist geopolitical perspective.
En reconstituant le profil socio-démographique et idéologique des 24 députés conservateurs élus ou réélus en 2019 et identifiés comme « BAME » (« Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic »), cet article essaie de comprendre les motivations qui animent des députés partagés entre leur appartenance à une communauté ethnique dont ils ne cherchent pourtant pas à représenter les intérêts et leur positionnement au sein du parti, attesté par un discours pro-Brexit et anti-immigration. Répondant à une logique de représentation substantive (les valeurs du parti) et non descriptive (leur communauté), ces acteurs sont ainsi au cœur d’un dilemme identitaire entre d’un côté l’image de la diversité qu’ils projettent pour répondre à la stratégie de modernisation entreprise par le parti conservateur depuis leur retour au pouvoir en 2010 et l’uniformité idéologique que produisent leur discours et leur positionnement sur les enjeux culturels et sociétaux les plus clivants pour l’identité du pays.
In her first statement as Prime Minister, Theresa May announced her intention to lead ‘in the spirit’ of ‘one-nation’ and to address the ‘burning injustices in society’. However, May’s intention to govern as a One Nation conservative failed. After three years as Prime Minister, she did not deliver on her promises to tackle the burning injustices of society. This chapter seeks to explain why May was unable to deliver her One Nation agenda in the area of industrial policy, and crucially on her promise to introduce workers on company boards. Drawing on an analytical framework that combines discursive institutionalism and historical institutionalism, the chapter will map May’s proposal to introduce workers on company boards ‘from thought, to word, to deed’ and will show that an unfavourable timing and above all the lack of support from powerful institutional actors were the main reasons why she was unable to deliver on her promises.
The purpose of this chapter is to consider how Theresa May acquired the leadership of the Conservative Party, in the aftermath of the EU referendum of June 2016, which prompted the resignation of David Cameron. The chapter is broken down into two clearly defined sections. The first section will assess the electoral process by (a). explaining the leadership election rules that the Conservative Party utilised; (b). profiling the candidates who stood for leadership; and (c). evaluating the significance of the campaigning period and commenting upon why no membership ballot took place. The second section will explain how and why May was selected by exploiting the Stark criteria on leadership selection—i.e., the importance of acceptability, electability and competence—relative to the other candidates.
A curious feature of British politics over recent decades is the trend of Prime Ministers being notable for their religious background at a time when the country as a whole is becoming much more secular. Nobody illustrates this better than Theresa May, who alongside Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown was also the child of a Christian preacher. This chapter shows that despite the personal importance of her faith, Theresa May tended to be very selective in making references to her religious convictions when pursuing political objectives. Where previous leaders—notably Margaret Thatcher—situated their political ideology within their conception of Christian morality, May’s Anglicanism was less infused with her rhetoric and policy programme. Whilst there is some evidence that this reflects an active choice to view the religious and the political as different spheres, it also reflects how the Conservatives’ strategic aims in 2017 did not lend themselves to being supported by religious appeals. The rapidly changing religious landscape of the British electorate in moving towards a more secular position as well as voters simultaneously adopting more socially liberal stances on a range of other issues means that there is less value and greater risks for parties using overtly religious appeals. As a result, even considering her strategy of pursuing more socially conservative voters in 2017, there was less of an incentive for Theresa May to convey either herself or her policy platform as strongly dependent on her Christianity. The sparing use of religion in her public presentation came instead via more abstract notions of public service. Thus, this chapter evaluates May’s attitudes and uses of faith as Prime Minister.
This chapter examines the approach of UK Conservative Governments 2015–2020 to the territorial governance of the multinational UK and Scotland. The nature of Unionism for UK Conservative Governments 2015–2020 changed significantly following the referendum result of 2016. Legislation in 1998 that established the devolved Scottish Parliament was interwoven with continued UK membership of the EU, with devolved responsibilities interwoven with EU matters and responsibilities. The chapter explores whether constitutional challenges prior to the 2016 EU Referendum, underpinned by the electoral divergence between Scotland and England, were not only intensified after 2016 but that this marked a new period in the UK Conservative Government handling of the ‘devolution settlement’ in Scotland. By March 2020, government interventions in the UK as response to the COVID-19 pandemic shaped the nature of inter-governmental relations in the devolved UK and the approach of the Johnston Government to the constitution and devolution was characterised as ‘muscular’ unionism.KeywordsUnionismDevolutionBrexitTerritorial governanceScotland
Despite a burgeoning literature on the topic, Brexit has not yet been the subject of a comprehensive ideological analysis. Through morphological analysis we establish an understanding of the concepts and ideas which underpin Brexit’s ideological structure and situate the political event and its aftermath firmly within a political economy context, as a response to the 2008 financial crash. Brexitism is a permutation of Conservatism which seeks to protect the interests of capital by maintaining a ‘state of exception’ characterised by instability and crisis. Political support is mobilised by way of a relentless pursuit of destructive change and innovation combined with a deindividualising concept of sovereignty. Thatcherism’s market justice gives way to a more inequitable and arbitrary concept, manifested in Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda, which legitimises the sustained instability. Traditional Conservative rationality and respect for authority are necessarily eschewed in favour of stronger but more rigid emotional ties. While politically efficacious, Brexitism is inherently unstable and volatile, predicated on a contradiction between the promise of liberty and the maintenance of instability and uncertainty. Without the easy invocation of the ‘EU menace’ the fate of Johnson’s levelling up agenda will decide the longevity of this particular ideological iteration of British Conservatism.
Brexit has occasioned a rightward shift in British politics as successive leaders have grappled with the difficulties of negotiating with the European Union and the vicissitudes of politics in the governing Conservative party. Explanations for the hardening of Eurosceptic preferences focus on the demands of ‘taking back control’ and the polarisation of post-referendum politics as key drivers. But they have not explored the ways in which negotiation strategies shaped – rather than reflected – domestic political developments. Drawing on two-level games accounts of ‘synergistic’ bargaining, this article argues both David Cameron and Theresa May sought to leverage Eurosceptic sentiment in their respective negotiations to make it more credible the United Kingdom would walk away if its demands were rejected. While both leaders failed to convey their resolve, they inadvertently strengthened Eurosceptic constituencies back home, contributing to the paucity – and the rejection – of their negotiated agreements.
In spite of the fact that Conservative, Christian democratic and Liberal parties continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of every Western European country, they are rarely paid the attention they deserve. This cutting-edge comparative collection, combining qualitative case studies with large-N quantitative analysis, reveals a mainstream right squeezed by the need to adapt to both 'the silent revolution' that has seen the spread of postmaterialist, liberal and cosmopolitan values and the backlash against those values – the 'silent counter-revolution' that has brought with it the rise of a myriad far right parties offering populist and nativist answers to many of the continent's thorniest political problems. What explains why some mainstream right parties seem to be coping with that challenge better than others? And does the temptation to ride the populist wave rather than resist it ultimately pose a danger to liberal democracy?
Global crises become increasingly more frequent and consequential. Yet, the impact of these crises is unevenly distributed across countries, leading to discrepancies in (inter)national crisis-regulating institutions’ ability to uphold public trust and safeguard their constituents’ well-being. Employing the paradigm of citizens as customers of political institutions, drawing on attribution and socio-political trust theories, and using the COVID-19 pandemic as empirical context, we investigate how consumers’ relative perceptions of local impact following a global crisis affect the psychological processes of institutional trust-formation and consumer well-being. Conducting one survey-based study in two countries affected disproportionately by the pandemic’s first wave (USA, Greece) and one experimental study in a third country (Italy) during the pandemic’s second wave, we find that institutional trust declines more in countries whose citizens hold perceptions of higher relative local impact following a global crisis; institutional blame attributions explain trust erosion; institutional distrust decreases consumer well-being and adherence to institutional guidelines; consumers’ globalization attitudes immunize international institutions from blame and distrust; and political conservatives transfer blame and distrust from national to international institutions amidst global crises. The findings enrich institutional branding and trust literatures and have implications for stakeholders involved in global crisis-management (policymakers, political marketers, institutional brand managers).
Although Brexit had its short-term roots in economic and constitutional legitimation issues, it cannot be explained without considering the European geopolitical space, the EU's contrasting political formations in the security and economic spheres, and the fault lines these produce. Seen from a long-term geopolitical perspective, there have been recurrent problems in Britain's efforts to deal with the EU and its predecessors, and persistent patterns of crisis. The geopolitical environment, especially around NATO and energy security in the Middle East, first rendered non-membership of the EEC a problem, then made entry impossible for a decade, helped make EU membership politically very difficult for British governments to sustain, and then constrained the May governments’ Article 50 negotiations. These problems have a singularly British shape, but they cannot be separated from more general fault lines in the European geopolitical space.
The concept of the political legacy, despite its importance for institutionalist and historically minded political analysts more generally, remains both elusive and undeveloped theoretically. This chapter seeks to address that oversight by exploring the various ways in which political scientists have approached the legacy of Thatcherism and by building on existing studies of other politicians and their ideologies and policies. We aim to offer a clear definition and operationalisation of the term which might be used to inform future research. Legacies we view as traces of the past in the present; the claim to the existence of a legacy is both a causal and a counter-factual claim. We propose, in the light of this, a multi-dimensional approach to gauging political legacies, reflecting on some of the theoretical, analytical and methodological concerns which need to be addressed in establishing credible claims to their existence.
The embedded nature of the British Political Tradition has created a series of pathologies about the way politics in Westminster is conducted. The endurance of the British Political Tradition emanates from its resilience to pressures for reform. Yet the rising anti-politics tide, the expression of which was vented in the 2016 European Union referendum, presents a critical challenge to the British Political Tradition. Given the political instability resulting from Brexit, this article maps the fate of previous attempts to reform the way politics is conducted in Britain. It identifies two waves of ‘new politics’ that have defined themselves against the ‘old politics’ of the British Political Tradition: the first, a series of demands for reform during the 1970s; the second, a sustained call for political reform from the 1990s onwards. The subsequent analysis reveals a link between both waves in demands for a less ‘elitist’ and more participatory style of democracy, but at the same time, a failure to dislodge the core tenets of the British Political Tradition. Given the current state of British politics, the article considers whether calls for a new form of politics in response to the climate of anti-politics, and the need for a post-Brexit settlement, will suffer a similar fate.
In the decade following the 2008 crisis, a populist insurgency engulfed the advanced capitalist world. Britain embodies a pivotal sphere within this wider global reconfiguration. Three core developments reshaped British politics in the two years after the Coalition: the rise of Brexit, the May government and Corbynism. Each of these political forms of course has its own history and future trajectory. But each also embodies a distinctive form of ‘post-crisis British politics’ in the sense that each emerged out of the post-crisis context and each pledged, in different ways, to initiate a far-reaching programme of social and economic reform. Whether these post-crisis reconfigurations will ultimately bring about a transformation or a consolidation of British capitalism remains an open question.
This paper considers the attitudes of members of the parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) during the European Union (EU) membership referendum held in the United Kingdom (UK) on the 23rd June 2016. First, the paper identifies the voting positions - remain or leave - of each Conservative parliamentarian in order to assess the strength of opinion within the PCP and place it within its historical context. Second, the paper uses multivariate analysis to test a series of hypotheses about the voting of Conservative parliamentarians. Through this we will aim to identify whether any associations existed between advocates and opponents of Brexit and social variables such as age, schooling, university, occupation and gender; political variables such as constituency marginality, and whether they were a minister, an ex-minister or a permanent backbencher; and the ideological variable of morality – i.e. support for or opposition to same sex marriage.
The immediate aftermath of the election saw the construction of much teleo-logical argument based on the inevitability of the Conservatives' win. Much of this assertion appeared starkly at odds with the verities of a 'neck-and-neck' race we were supposedly witnessing throughout the campaign. The failure of the vast majority of journalists, pollsters and academics to predict a Conservative overall majority was perhaps understandable. 1 Even the imported strategists assisting the Conservatives, Lynton Crosby and Jim Messina, were privately predicting the Conservatives would fall just short of a majority, believing that a 312 – 319 range was probable. 2 What was less excusable was the belief of many academics and pollsters that Labour would win more seats than the Conservatives, given the importance of economic competence and leadership in contemporary elections. 3 1 There was the occasional notable exception. The commentator Matthew Parris, for example, declared that 'The Tories are going to win—and win well', The Times, 21 March 2015. Even he retreated from this bold position during the campaign, however, and by its conclusion was talking of the Conservatives only winning circa 290 seats.
After three successive general election defeats, and three leaders since 1997, the Conservative Party finally seems to have staged a recovery during the first year of David Cameron's leadership. He has energetically sought to reposition the Conservatives ideologically, insisting on the need to depart from Thatcherism and move back towards the centre ground of British politics by promoting a more socially inclusive and compassionate Conservatism. His initial efforts seem to have been highly successful, with the Conservative Party enjoying its first sustained poll leads over Labour since 1992. However, more careful consideration suggests that the Conservative's recovery is rather fragile, and thus far dependent mainly on short-term factors. Certainly, the Party should be (and needs to be) much further ahead in the polls at this stage of the electoral cycle if it is to win the next general election. Moreover, Cameron has deliberately avoided making specific policy pledges so far, pending a comprehensive internal policy review to be completed by the summer of 2007, yet when more detailed policies are announced many of them are likely to refuel intra-party divisions between socially liberal modernizers and Thatcherite traditionalists, and this, in turn, will almost certainly alienate some of the electoral support (re)gained during Cameron's first year as Conservative leader. Consequently, a Conservative victory at the next general election remains highly unlikely.
The book explores the process of rebuilding the Conservative Party under David Cameron’s leadership since 2005. It argues that Cameron’s strategy was wide-ranging and multi-faceted and that it evolved through several stages from a coherent programme of explicit modernisation into a more diffuse set of reforms. This development was partly a result of changed thinking within the Party and partly because of the pressure of external events, especially the 2008 global financial crisis and the demands of coalition government between 2010 and 2015. It traces the different elements of the renewal strategy – leadership initiatives, ideological reconstruction, policy reappraisal and enhanced electoral appeal – and it identifies the constraints on implementing Party renewal that occurred as a result of opposition from within the Party, including the parliamentary Party and the grass roots membership. It also explores the extent to which long-standing intra-party fissures, especially over Europe, exacerbated difficulties for the leadership. The book shows that the process of renewal has been through a number of stages and that its progress has been indirect rather than linear. It suggests that, although the renewal project has been relatively successful in some respects including the return of the Conservatives to government, the extent to which it has created a new Conservative Party remains contested and the Party continues to display a dangerous disunity.
A study of rhetoric and manipulation (otherwise known as heresthetics). Rhetoric is the art of making people believe that the world is as you say it is. A recent example is Margaret Thatcher's claim that ‘there is no alternative’ to her economic policies—a claim that she persuaded many to believe was true. Manipulation, or heresthetics, is the art of arranging politics so that you win. It is connected with the number of issue dimensions in politics. If most issues that come up belong in the same dimension, so that people recognize that one bundle of beliefs and practices is ‘left wing’ and another is ‘right wing’, then powerful forces will drive political outcomes towards the favourite issue positions of the median voter. But if politics is multidimensional, it may give rise to chaos, in the technical sense that the social choice may move by successive majority votes from any position to any other and back. In the spirit of W. H. Riker, this book celebrates those British politicians since 1846 who saw further than their contemporaries, and who either succeeded or heroically failed to move majority‐rule politics to a quite new issue position. The politicians mostly discussed are Sir Robert Peel, the Duke of Wellington, Benjamin Disraeli, W.E. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Joseph Chamberlain, Enoch Powell, David Lloyd George, Margaret Thatcher, and Gordon Brown.
British politics has been crucially shaped by England's role as pioneer of capitalism, by the experience of Empire, and by the particular form of its union with Scotland, Ireland and Wales. With the decline of Empire the attempt to bridge Europe and America has become ever more central to Britain's identity, political economy and ideology. In this major new book, Andrew Gamble assesses the major transformations of British politics under Thatcher and Blair and the stark choices for the future at the start of the 21st century.
Winner of the W. J. M. Mackenzie Prize for best book published in political science in 2003.
Placing Britain’s vote on 23 June 2016 to leave the European Union (EU) in historical time raises an immediate analytical problem. What was clearly the result of a number of contingencies, starting with the 2015 general election where we can see how events could readily have turned out otherwise, the result might also represent the inevitable end of Britain’s membership of the EU seen from the distant future. This article seeks to take both temporal perspectives seriously. It aims to provide an explanation of the turn to Brexit that recognises the referendum result as politically contingent and also argues that the political economy of Britain generated by Britain’s position as non-euro member of the EU while possessing the offshore financial centre of the euro-zone and Britain’s eschewal in 2004 of transition arrangements on freedom of movement for that year’s accession states made Brexit an eventual inevitability, saving a prior collapse of the euro-zone.
Placing Britain’s vote on 23 June 2016 to leave the European Union (EU) in historical time raises an immediate analytical problem. What was clearly the result of a number of contingencies, starting with the 2015 general election where we can see how events could readily have turned out otherwise, the result might also represent the inevitable end of Britain’s membership of the EU seen from the distant future. This article seeks to take both temporal perspectives seriously. It aims to provide an explanation of the turn to Brexit that recognises the referendum result as politically contingent and also argues that the political economy of Britain generated by Britain’s position as non-euro member of the EU while possessing the offshore financial centre of the euro-zone and Britain’s eschewal in 2004 of transition arrangements on freedom of movement for that year’s accession states made Brexit an eventual inevitability, saving a prior collapse of the euro-zone.
For those who spoke on behalf of Leave voters, the result on 23 June 2016 meant the people of the United Kingdom were taking back ‘control’ or getting their ‘own country back’. However, two parts of the United Kingdom did not vote Leave: Scotland and Northern Ireland. Here, the significant counterpoint to ‘taking back control is “waking up in a different country”’, and this sentiment has unique political gravity. Its unique gravity involves two distinct but intimately related matters. The first concerns the politics of identity. The vote was mainly, if not entirely, along nationalist/unionist lines, confirming an old division: unionists were staking a ‘British’ identity by voting Leave, and nationalists an Irish one by voting Remain. The second concerns borders. The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement of 1998 meant taking the border out of Irish politics. Brexit means running the border between the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom across the island as a sovereign ‘frontier’. Although this second matter is discussed mainly in terms of the implications for free movement of people and goods, we argue that it is freighted with meanings of identity. Brexit involves a ‘border in the mind’, those shifts in self-understanding, individually and collectively, attendant upon the referendum. This article examines this ‘border in the mind’ according to its effects on identity, politics and the constitution, and their implications for political stability in Northern Ireland.
In the 2016 Brexit referendum, Scotland voted decisively to Remain in the EU, while a UK-wide majority voted to Leave. This article discusses responses to the constitutional significance of a territorially divided result, both prior to and following the referendum, including in litigation over the ‘constitutional requirements’ necessary to trigger the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU under Article 50 TEU (R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union). It considers what these debates reveal about the uncertain and contested nature of the UK’s territorial constitution, focusing on issues of constitutional security for devolved institutions and competences, and constitutional voice for the devolved territories in handling issues of intertwined competence. It argues that the Brexit episode reveals major weaknesses in the dominant reliance on political mechanisms to give recognition to the constitutional significance of devolution, which do not adequately displace continued legal adherence to the assumptions of a unitary constitution.
Preface D.Owen Introduction K.Hickson& S.Griffiths SECTION I: DID BLAIR ADVANCE SOCIAL DEMOCRACY? A.Finlayson, D.Kavanagh& J.Tonge SECTION II: LABOUR AFTER BLAIR Assessing the Impact of the Third Way J.Atkins What makes Progressive Ideology?: Lessons from the Third Way W.Leggett Response to Atkins and Leggett T.Giddens New Labour, New Liberalism and Revisionism's Second Wave S.Griffiths Response to Griffiths R.Hattersley Gordon Brown, 'Britishness' and the Negation of England S.Lee Response to Lee A.Aughey SECTION III: THE CONSERVATIVES UNDER CAMERON Built on Sand? Ideology and Conservative Modernization under David Cameron M.Garnett Cameron, Modernization and Conservative Britain P.Lynch Response to Garnett and Lynch A.Gamble Mutualism and the Reinvention of Civil Society: A Conservative Agenda? C.Ellis Response to Ellis D.Willetts SECTION IV: WHERE NOW FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS? Icarus Turns Back: Liberal Democrat Constitutional Policy M.Cole The Liberal Democrats and the Role of the State D.Brack Response to Cole and Brack A.Beith SECTION V: CROSS PARTY DEBATES Reforming Public Services: The Views of the Main Parties R.Prabhakar Response to Prabhakar N.Thompson The Continuing Relevance of Social Justice R.Plant Response to Plant D.Willetts
The 2016 referendum marked a watershed moment in the history of the United Kingdom. The public vote to leave the EU –for a Brexit’- brought an end to the country’s membership of the European Union (EU) and set it on a fundamentally different course. Recent academic research on the vote for Brexit points to the importance of immigration as a key driver, although how immigration influenced the vote remains unclear. In this article, we draw on aggregate level data and individual-level survey data from the British Election Study (BES) to explore how immigration shaped public support for Brexit. Our findings suggest that, specifically, increases in the rate of immigration at the local level and sentiments regarding control over immigration were key predictors of the vote for Brexit, even after accounting for factors stressed by established theories of Eurosceptic voting. Our findings suggest that a large reservoir of support for leaving the EU, and perhaps anti-immigration populism more widely, will remain in Britain, so long as immigration remains a salient issue.
Introducing the Core Executive Analysing the Core Executive The Core Executive in Historical Perspective The Core of the Core: Relations between the Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers, Civil Servants and Departments: the Core Executive and Policy Making Coordinating the Core Executive: the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister's Office and the Treasury Reforming the Core Executive Constraints on the Core Executive Constitution, State and Core Executive Bibliography Index
Having established the wider UK context in which it operated, this chapter now turns to examine the post-devolution Scottish Conservative Party. It finds that while the Scottish Conservatives did adapt organisationally to the external shock of devolution and the Scottish Parliament, they spent the following decade trying to repeat the same pre-1997 political strategy. Contrary to some assumptions in the literature about sub-state party demands for autonomy, the Scottish party in fact had more autonomy than it wanted or needed. This chapter finds overall that the potential for party change beyond constitutions and management charts was for the Conservatives in the gift of a leadership (Goldie and McLetchie) that chose not to attempt radical change. Faced with a significant section of the party which remained hostile to devolution, the party leadership instead concentrated on more ‘banal’ issues of everyday parliamentary business, policy-making and campaigning, giving the impression of progress without much internal struggle.
On 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom voted by a 52 to 48 margin to leave the European Union. The result of the EU referendum was the latest and most dramatic expression of long-term social changes that have been silently reshaping public opinion, political behavior, and party competition in Britain and Western democracies. In this essay, we consider the underlying social and attitudinal shifts that made “Brexit” and the rise to prominence of the populist, right-wing U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) possible. Finally, we consider what these momentous developments reveal about the state of British politics and society.
Abstract
Preface.- Chapter 1. I'm Afraid There is No Money: Five Years of Coalition.- Chapter 2. How Hard Can it Be? The Conservatives.- Chapter 3. Brand Failure: Labour.- Chapter 4. Zugzwang: The Liberal Democrats and Others.- Chapter 5. The Long and the Short of the SNP Breakthrough Richard Rose and Mark Shephard.- Chapter 6. Roads and Car Crashes: The Election Approaches.- Chapter 7. Dead Cats and Bogy Men: The National Campaign.- Chapter 8. Different Scripts Required: Election Night.- Chapter 9. Margin of Error: The Polls.- Chapter 10. Where to Drop the Bombs: The Constituency Battle.- Chapter 11. The Battle for the Stage: Broadcasting Charlie Beckett.- Chapter 12. Still Life in the Old Attack Dogs: The Press David Deacon and Dominic Wring.- Chapter 13. Variable Diversity: MPs and Candidates Byron Criddle.- Chapter 14. Out of the Blue: The Campaign in Retrospect.- Appendix 1: The Results Analysed John Curtice, Stephen D. Fisher and Robert Ford.- Appendix 2: The Voting Statistics
The Union has for over a century been one of the cornerstones of Conservative politics, but with the changes to the old union state in the last 20 years, its value has been increasingly questioned. While the Conservative Party remains committed to maintaining the Union, a new English Toryism is emerging, which has a strong continuity with an older English Toryism which was partially buried by the ascendancy of Unionism. English Tories have always considered the Union to be desirable, but it comes second in their thinking to the need to protect the sovereignty of the British state, the core of which is England and its traditional institutions. What is new about the contemporary Conservative Party is that there is within it the revival of an English Toryism which is happy to discard the older clothes of Empire and Union once so important to Conservative identity and which is unabashedly English in its focus. For an increasing number of contemporary Conservatives, there no longer seems to be any passion about defending the Union or even of continuing to think about the United Kingdom in Unionist terms.
The constitutional position of England has become the subject of intense focus following the decision by the Conservative Party to table the question of English devolution in the immediate aftermath of the Scottish Referendum. Various pundits have argued that English nationalism has become a major factor in British politics and a source of deepening territorial tension. Academic commentators have been slower to interrogate the nature and implications of these assertions and, despite the ubiquity of references to English interests and anxieties in political discourse, there is a much less extensive analytical literature on the make-up and political dimensions of the national identity of the largest people of the United Kingdom. How, then, should the political status and character of the English identity be understood and studied? Notions of a politicised Englishness reflect various, often contentious, judgements of both interpretive and empirical kinds. This article highlights the different ways in which ‘politicisation’ in this context has been characterised, and shows that each of these established perspectives yields a different sort of political response and policy approach. I finish with some observations about how politicisation might be conceptualised, and identify the elements of a more comprehensive and fluid understanding of this phenomenon.
For those who study British politics from a contemporary history or political science perspective the role of ideology is notable. British party ideology is diverse, fluid and contains contradictory strands. At certain times a particular expression dominates, usually from the podiums occupied by the party leadership. Of course, the role and significance of ideology is never the full story. The politics of personalities, internal management, path-dependent policy commitments and a host of external factors — chief of which is electoral calculus — all contribute to the story of a government. The work of Jim Bulpitt in relation to the primacy of statecraft in the domestic politics of Margaret Thatcher has been influential and widely cited within academic circles (Bulpitt, 1986). But Mark Garnett and Kevin Hickson are surely right to point out that ideology is a key contributing factor in the statecraft of elite politicians, including those at the apex of the oldest political party in Europe: ‘[W]e can see that the statecraft of the Conservative Party was not fixed but rather changed over time in the light of changed circumstances and the beliefs of the Party’s leaders. On this view, ideology has always been an integral element in Conservative “statecraft”.’ (Garnett and Hickson, 2009: 3)
Many commentators were startled by the formation of the coalition government in May 2010. Surprise was followed by the expectation that a process of ideological compromise would ensue as the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaderships sought to agree with a common policy platform. In respects, this is indeed what has occurred during their first 15 months of government. However, the task of tracing the ideological character of the coalition is much more complicated than just looking for ways in which the difference has (or has not) been split between competing sets of ideas, or merely highlighting those areas in which the coalition partners share a common vision. For it is clear that both parties are themselves, as ever, ‘coalitions’ of actors with often distinct ideas. Also, in recent years it has arguably become particularly difficult to draw clear ideological dividing-lines between the main political parties. The coalition follows an extended period in office for a Labour government which made a virtue of its ‘post-ideological’ character. Insofar as the Blair administration had a guiding philosophy this was ‘the third way’, which sought to explicitly transcend traditional ideological dividing-lines, and combine a commitment to a ‘dynamic market economy’ with a pledge to pursue ‘social justice’ (Giddens, 1998; Blair, 1998).
Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 1975 and resigned in 1990, having served 11 years continuously as Prime Minister. She became leader at a time of crisis for the party. It had lost four of the previous five general elections, its policies were in disarray after an unsuccessful term in government, and its vote in October 1974 was the lowest it had achieved at any election this century. The crisis within the Conservative Party reflected a more general sickness of the political regime which had existed in Britain since the 1940s and within whose parameters governments of both parties had worked. In the two elections of 1974 both main parties had below 40 per cent support. This was the first time either had gone below 40 per cent since 1945. This loss of legitimacy had external and internal causes. The disintegration of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 had caused inflation to accelerate. The quadrupling of oil prices in 1973 had been a trigger for the first generalised world recession in 1974, which sharply raised unemployment, and ushered in an era of restructuring and adaptation to the requirements of a more open and interdependent world economy. All the institutions and organisations which had grown up in the national protectionist era of the previous 50 years now came under scrutiny and challenge.
Specialists in Conservative Party politics examine the effectiveness of the Cameron led coalition. The contributors examine Cameron as leader and Prime Minister; the Conservatives’ modernisation strategy; the level of ideological coherence in ‘liberal conservatism’; and the impact of the coalition on a range of policy areas and on ‘New’ Labour.
The effect on the Conservative Party of being in a coalition government from May 2010 onwards was profound. It challenged the essence of the party's approach to government. It did so in two respects. First, the party was used to being in government – it was the ‘in’ party in British politics throughout the twentieth century – and to being in office as a single-party government. British Conservatism has a rich pedigree, but parties, as Robert Blake observed, rarely philosophize when in office. The party has seen itself as a practical party of government, attuned to British interests, and able to act in those interests. Power has been a necessary condition for pursuing those interests. ‘Of all the features of the Conservative Power’, wrote Richard Rose, ‘the intense concern with winning elections and holding office is the most notable.’ The party had some experience of coalition, or national government, but this was almost wholly in conditions where it could have governed alone. It was not dependent on its coalition partners to deliver a majority. Second, the party is hierarchical and the emphasis historically has been on the role of the leader. Ultimate authority has been vested in the leader, with other bodies serving in an advisory capacity. The leader has been the fount of all policy. The leader selects the members of the Conservative front bench and those who will lead the party organization. When in office, the leader has exercised all the prerogatives of the monarch's first minister. As Lawrence Lowell laconically observed at the start of the twentieth century, ‘When appointed, the leader leads and the party follows.’ Though the relationship has not been as Hobbesian as these comments may suggest, leaders have nonetheless been able to rely for much of the time on the loyalty of MPs and party activists. The party has a reputation for being prepared to axe unsuccessful leaders, but until the time comes for execution has proved loyal.
Jane Green and Chris Prosser pick apart the factors that underpinned Labour's disappointing election performance, including the ability of the Conservative and Labour parties to win votes from other parties in crucial marginal seats, and the paradoxical consequences of Labour's successful raid on the Lib-Dem vote.
The environment was David Cameron’s signature issue underpinning his modernization agenda. In opposition the ‘Vote Blue, Go Green’ strategy had a positive impact on the party’s image: the environment operated as a valence issue in a period of raised public concern, particularly about climate change, and Cameron’s high-profile support contributed to the cross-party consensus that delivered radical change in climate policy. Although the Coalition government has implemented important environmental measures, the Conservatives have not enhanced their green credentials in government and Cameron has failed to provide strong leadership on the issue. Since 2010, climate change has to some extent been transformed into a positional issue. Conservative MPs, urged on by the right-wing press, have adopted an increasingly partisan approach to climate change, and opinion polls reveal clear partisan divisions on climate change amongst public opinion. As a positional issue climate change has become challenging for the Conservatives, showing them to be internally divided, rebellious and inclined to support producer interests. This article makes a contribution to our understanding of Conservative modernization, while also challenging the dominant assumption in the scholarly literature that the environment, particularly climate change, is a valence issue.
By way of an introduction to this special issue, our aim here is to bring together and interpret some of the main themes and issues to come out of the selection of articles presented below in order to make sense of the overall fate of David Cameron’s attempted modernisation of the Conservative Party. On the basis of the evidence highlighted by each of the contributors to this issue, we make a number of arguments. First, that Cameron’s early attempts to steer the party into the centre ground of British politics can be judged to have been reasonably effective. Second, that in 2007–2008, in the context of the emergence of economic difficulties leading to the financial crisis, the party found itself at a crossroads, and it chose to exit that crossroads with a turn, across a number of policy areas, back towards a more traditional Thatcherite or neo-liberal agenda. Third, we argue that the financial crisis and the political instability it generated is not enough on its own to explain this turn to the right. Rather, these events should be seen as having acted as a catalyst for the exposure of three main fault lines in the party’s modernisation strategy: (i) its lack of ideological coherence; (ii) its potential for serious performance deficits because of a lack of consistency in the political leadership displayed by Cameron; and (iii) its vulnerability to party management problems.
The re-emergence of European integration as a difficult issue for the Conservative Party exposed the limits of Cameron’s modernisation project. In opposition, Cameron had defused the EU issue by lowering its salience but this suppressed rather than effectively addressed the issue, allowing Eurosceptics who favour withdrawal or fundamental renegotiation to shape the agenda. In office, new and familiar challenges emerged. The Eurozone sovereign debt crisis changed the dynamics of the UK’s relationship with the EU. Domestically, coalition with the Liberal Democrats and dissent from Eurosceptic Conservative MPs restricted Cameron’s room for manoeuvre, while the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) added a new dimension to the problems the EU issue poses for the Conservatives. Cameron responded by promising that if the Conservatives win the 2015 general election, he will negotiate a ‘new settlement’ in the EU and hold an ‘in-out’ referendum. This article assesses whether this position amounts to a belated modernisation of Conservative policy that might both resolve intra-party divisions and settle the question of the UK’s place in the EU.
For much of the 2010–15 Parliament the English Question was not a conspicuous feature of political debate in the UK. However, the issue of English votes for English laws (EvfEl) was thrust to centre stage by Prime Minister David Cameron in the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum, when he announced that fulfilment of the promise of further devolution to Scotland must be accompanied by an answer to the West Lothian Question at Westminster. This article analyses these events and explores their possible consequences. It argues that a reform of parliamentary procedures along the lines outlined in the report of the McKay Commission looks increasingly likely, but that this will not mark a resolution of the broader English Question, and the future of the Union remains in doubt.
This research note examines the party political basis of attitudes in Britain towards the gay marriage debate using evidence
from two nationally representative surveys. It first assesses changes in opinion towards same-sex marriage in recent years,
showing that most groups have increased their support for such a measure. Finally, it then analyses the sources of public
attitudes on the issue at two points in time, 2008 and 2012, showing consistent findings on the basis of sex, age group, education
and religious affiliation. The effects for partisanship are only significant in 2012, which may reflect the growing public
prominence and party politicisation of the issue.
Prime Minister David Cameron's ambivalence about Britain's role in the European Union stems from dilemmas within his Conservative Party. Since the nineteenth century, British Conservatism had represented a comfortable synthesis of a soft Burkean traditionalism and class-based paternalism with an effort to expand the party's appeal to the working class. Thatcher's aggressive neoliberal challenge to this tradition never truly displaced the older paternalistic sense of noblesse oblige or the preference for societal consensus and incremental change. Instead, the two elements came into an uneasy coexistence that has informed Tory ambivalence about the EU. This article argues that Cameron's gradual distancing of Britain from the EU has paralleled his championing of economic austerity at home. It argues further that Cameron's policy-making response to the post-2007 economic downturn and European debt crisis can best be understood as a reflection of unresolved tensions within British Conservative thought.
Ideology and political parties are frequently depicted as disparate entities, with scholars citing a range of exogenous and endogenous changes to demonstrate the decreasing relevance of ideology to party politics. This article moves away from such accounts by looking at the role of actors, and specifically party leaders, in contributing to perceptions of ideological decline. Through an examination of the rhetoric of Labour and Conservative Party leaders in Britain between 1946 and 1997, this article contends that politicians have engaged in, what is termed here, ‘ideological quietism’. In this sense, parties have not abandoned ideology but have made rhetorical shifts indicative of ideological decline.
This article:
This article identifies the ideological composition of the parliamentary Conservative party (PCP) in order to determine the location and numeric strength of the critics of Cameron. By constructing a data set of attitudes across two ideological divides—the social, sexual and morality divide and the European divide—the article identifies the following. First, despite Cameron's social liberal emphasis both the PCP and his ministerial team is predominantly Thatcherite—i.e. socially conservative. Second, despite numerically having a Eurosceptic PCP and ministerial team, with Europhilia now an inconsequential rump, Cameron faces a minority ‘hard’ Eurosceptic faction of rebels who oppose his ‘soft’ Euroscepticism. Third, the influx of new parliamentarians elected in 2010 may increase social liberal strength, but they are overwhelmingly Eurosceptic, with a significant tranche of hard Eurosceptics amongst them. Finally, through a process of ideological mapping of these two ideological divides the research identifies a core of 50 socially conservative and hard Eurosceptics who are the critics of Cameron.
The political theory of ideologies proposes a distinct way of conceiving of and analysing political thought, especially as it appears ‘in the wild’. Exploring the claim that there is a form or mode of thinking specific and proper to politics, and that it is the concern of the political theory of ideology, the article examines two of the leading contemporary approaches in this field: the morphological analysis of Michael Freeden and the discourse analysis associated with Ernesto Laclau. In showing how each produces a distinct object for theoretical analysis (respectively, ‘the concept’ and ‘the signifier’) the case is made for constituting a third object – the political argument – the apprehension of which requires the integration of aspects of the rhetorical tradition into the political theory of ideologies. The conclusion briefly outlines some of the possible implications, for political theory and analysis more generally, of the rhetorical conception of political thought and ideology.
In the aftermath of defeat at the general election of 2005 under the leadership of Michael Howard, Andrew Taylor suggested that the Conservative party was ‘locked into a systemic crisis’. In the aftermath of the general election of 2010, and the forming of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Andrew Gamble argued that David Cameron had stalled the possible realignment of the centre-left and created a realignment of the centre-right. Although such assertions demonstrate the progress of the Conservative party between 2005 and 2010 under Cameron, much of the existing literature focuses on themes such as modernisation or ideological and policy renewal at the expense of analysing the importance of the party leader in terms of strategic positioning. This article examines the party leadership strategy of Cameron in terms of the logic underpinning coalition entry and how this relates to realignment and attempts to construct and occupy the political centre-ground. It situates his leadership strategy within a theoretical framework by arguing that his actions can be seen as an attempted act of political manipulation consistent with Riker’s work on heresthetics. The article considers the key criteria for heresthetics as a means of showcasing Cameron as a possible heresthetician. Debates on portfolio allocation, electoral reform and key policy areas such as fiscal readjustment and tuition fees are considered in relation to attempted manipulation of the political agenda and political dimensions, as well as strategic voting and the politics of deflection and binding.
This article argues that ideology and ideological difference remain central features of modern British politics, and that ideological positioning is an important concern for political parties and is a phenomenon in need of some modelling. It engages in an analysis of ideological repositioning that parties sometimes undertake as part of the democratic competition and suggests a model that seeks to explicate the dynamics of this process. The model, codifying imperatives that need to be met by a party seeking to reposition, also highlights potential contextual considerations that affect the repositioning process. By way of illustration, the model will be employed to examine the dynamics of ideological positioning in the case of the Conservative party under the leadership of David Cameron.
This research note draws on a new survey to reveal a widespread willingness among current Conservative Party members in Britain to countenance voting for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) at future general elections. Those most likely to do so are cultural conservatives, but they are not overly right-wing on the distributional dimension of politics. They are particularly concerned about immigration and the European Union, do not feel valued or respected by their own leadership and even regard David Cameron – their own party leader and the country's prime mnister – as ideologically more remote from them than UKIP. This serves to illustrate some of the strategic dilemmas facing centre-right parties confronted by populist right challengers.