tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/conservative-party-5523/articlesConservative Party – The Conversation2024-03-21T13:23:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2262612024-03-21T13:23:08Z2024-03-21T13:23:08ZHow seriously should we take a plot to replace Rishi Sunak with Penny Mordaunt? The answer lies in the Tories’ own recent history<p>During John Redwood’s 1995 challenge to John Major’s leadership of the Conservative party, his campaign team came up with the slogan, “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/leadership/lead95.shtml">No change, no chance</a>”. It was sure to appeal to Tory MPs rightly fearing for their seats. </p>
<p>But, since a recent opinion poll had given Labour a lead of almost 40 points – and the only available instrument of change was Redwood, rather than someone electable – a more honest pitch would have been: “No chance either way, but let’s at least lose with a right-wing leader.”</p>
<p>Slogans can be used more than once, and if speculation about an <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/penny-mordaunt-replace-sunak-tory-leadership-b2513677.html">initiative</a> to replace Rishi Sunak with Penny Mordaunt is well founded, “team Penny” could be confident that they would be reviving Redwood’s refrain on behalf of a more plausible contestant. Whatever her political abilities, Mordaunt (unlike Redwood) seems to be personable, presentable – and pretty nifty with an oversized ceremonial sword.</p>
<p>Why, as an apparently balanced individual, would Mordaunt want this job? First, having served as prime minister for a few weeks is still a positive embellishment to the average CV. </p>
<p>Even being Conservative leader in opposition is probably helpful in the eyes of prospective employers. That would be enough to justify a temporary sacrifice of sanity before Mordaunt takes the plunge back into <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/penny-mourdant-splash-appearance-resurfaces-diving_uk_62d02ebce4b0eef119c33a75">reality television</a>.</p>
<p>The no change, no chance argument also makes sense for Mordaunt personally, since she is scheduled to <a href="https://theconversation.com/annihilation-in-the-red-wall-an-exit-for-a-top-leadership-contender-and-a-parliamentary-party-stuffed-with-southerners-and-oxbridgers-how-losing-the-next-election-could-shape-the-conservatives-206652">lose her seat</a> at the next election. Having to leave her current cabinet position of leader of the House of Commons would not cause her excessive grief.</p>
<p>Given the havoc which can be expected after the next general election, and the roster of far-right aspirants who have been limbering up to succeed Sunak, for Mordaunt it is almost certainly now or never. </p>
<h2>Would a change give them a chance?</h2>
<p>But would yet another change of leader help the Conservatives? In one respect, it almost certainly would. Sunak’s tenure was doomed not least because right-wing MPs were always determined to deny him the chance to establish governing authority.</p>
<p>If Mordaunt became leader at the invitation of the party’s ultra-nationalists, she would have a much better chance of creating an illusion of party unity. They’d all have to just keep quiet about the fact that she is essentially the same person the parliamentary party rejected two years ago, when MPs decided she was <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/20/tory-leadership-vote-truss-mordaunt-sunak-boris-johnson-pmqs/">less enticing</a> than Liz Truss. </p>
<p>Mordaunt’s family background, meanwhile, is sufficiently interesting to attract sympathetic media intrusion, without featuring any multi-billionaires. An additional advantage is that few people know what she stands for, and probably never will. </p>
<p>A Google of the would-be saviour’s name readily yields “Penny Mordaunt coronation” to commemorate her best-known service to king and country. Unfortunately, Mordaunt’s own coronation is a highly improbable scenario. </p>
<p>The Tories would first have to prise out the incumbent, which is likely to be a messy business since there is little sign of Sunak doing a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/20/leo-varadkar-step-downs-as-irish-prime-minister-in-shock-move">Leo Varadkar</a> and resigning.</p>
<p>Equally, even if Mordaunt proves to be a passable poster-person, she will have to choose a ministerial team. With heavy debts to pay on her right flank, the ensuing line-up could be unedifying. </p>
<p>Lord Johnson to displace Cameron from his Foreign Office haunt? <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/boost-liz-truss-penny-mordaunt-tory-leadership/">Truss at the Treasury</a>? Such prospects might inspire a dramatic switch in the UK’s net migration figures, but at an unacceptable cost.</p>
<h2>The heart of the problem</h2>
<p>Although the current speculation is not entirely far-fetched, the bottom line is that if the Conservatives go for Penny, they are still in for a pounding. After the next election, almost anything is possible from a party which is an unwitting gift to public entertainment, and can’t stop itself giving. By the end of the next parliament, the Tory leader could equally be Nigel Farage or someone who is currently at prep school.</p>
<p>When historians look back on the farcical unravelling of a once-great party, they will alight on 1997 as the time when it all started going wrong. <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01366/">One person, one vote</a> in leadership elections is a worthy idea in theory, but should never have been extended to a frivolous body of people like Conservative party members.</p>
<p>Even more alarming than the number of leadership contests is the post-1997 tendency of all Conservative MPs, however unqualified, to consider standing for a job which became impossible in 2016, if not before. Michael Howard – rejected in 1997 and acclaimed six years later – tried in vain to get rid of a system which had allowed the party faithful to elevate Iain Duncan Smith.</p>
<p>For the Tories, there is now no navigable route back to common sense. Even if the final choice of leader is once again entrusted to MPs, they will (as in the fateful instance of Boris Johnson) feel constrained to select the person who is most appealing to the grassroots.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for Sunak, he cannot pass a vote of no confidence in his party and install a new one. Despite the speculation, as in the case of Major, they are probably stuck with each other until the electorate sends them on their (<a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/mps-standing-down-next-election">very</a>) separate ways.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226261/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Garnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mordaunt is predicted to lose her seat at the election so it’s now or never for her – but the path to victory is laden with obstacles.Mark Garnett, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2256202024-03-13T14:47:19Z2024-03-13T14:47:19ZThe abuse of Diane Abbott by a top Tory donor should have us all thinking about how we normalise racism against women MPs<p>Yet again a black woman in British public life has been subjected to racist and sexist abuse. This may be shocking, but it is not surprising. </p>
<p>When Tory donor Frank Hester said that looking at Diane Abbott “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/11/biggest-tory-donor-looking-diane-abbott-hate-all-black-women">makes you want to hate all black women</a>” his comments were extreme. Yet they were hardly out of the ordinary.</p>
<p>Likewise, the reluctance of some parliamentary colleagues to address the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68542621">racial and gendered nature of the comments</a> is sadly unsurprising, as was the slowness with which the prime minister responded, only belatedly and after pressure from ministers, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/12/conservative-donor-frank-hester-comments-diane-abbott-racist-wrong-no-10-rishi-sunak#:%7E:text=No%2010%20and%20Conservative%20ministers,MP%20%E2%80%9Cshould%20be%20shot%E2%80%9D.">admitting the remarks were racist</a>. </p>
<p>Whether you love or loathe Abbott (who has been suspended from the parliamentary Labour party for her <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65374104">own comments on race</a>) this is more than a story about a single individual.</p>
<p>All politicians in the UK are facing increasing levels of violence, harassment and abuse. Data from the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.13070">representative audit of Britain</a> survey shows that in 2019, 49% of parliamentary candidates indicated that they had suffered some form of abuse, harassment and intimidation while campaigning. This is a rise of 11 percentage points compared with 2017. </p>
<p>However, evidence also shows ethnic minority women face exceptional dangers in public life. Variation in experiences of harassment and intimidation is enormous: 63% of ethnic minority women candidates reported experiencing abuse compared with 38% of ethnic minority men, 34% of white men and 45% of white women. </p>
<p>The intimidation experienced by ethnic minority women also sometimes originates <a href="https://renewal.org.uk/archive/vol-29-2021/inconvenient-voices-muslim-women-in-the-labour-party/">within their own political parties</a>. Muslim women in both Labour and the Conservatives have spoken up about this problem. </p>
<p>On top of this, black women experience specific forms of anti-black racism combined with misogyny. African American scholar Moya Bailey coined the term “<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.18574/nyu/9781479803392.001.0001/html">mysogynoir</a>” to describe this phenomenon in the US, but the UK also abounds with examples. For example, in 2016, Dawn Butler, another black woman Labour MP, revealed that she had been <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-35685169">mistaken for a cleaner by a fellow MP</a>. She said this was just a single example of “so many incidents” in parliament.</p>
<p>And although headlines often ostensibly celebrate “diversity” in politics, campaign press coverage also <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1940161216673195">subjects minority ethnic women to extreme scrutiny</a>. This renders figures such as Abbott hyper-visible, at the same time as being exceptionally negative in tone and narrowly focused on ethnicity and gender. </p>
<p>Untangling the relationship between these forces is extremely tricky. While black and minority ethnic women MPs are uncomfortably visible, the ethnic minority women that all MPs are supposed to represent actually face a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1332/251510821X16739744241737">crisis of representation</a> in parliament. </p>
<p>They are very rarely spoken about in parliamentary debates, and when they are, it is usually by white men and in relation to an extremely narrow range of issues, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/fgm-5898">female genital mutilation</a> and trafficking. There is less debate about how race and gender permeate many other aspects of minority ethnic women’s lives.</p>
<h2>Taking black and ethnic minority women MPs seriously</h2>
<p>While Frank Hester’s comments are therefore deeply concerning, they should not be viewed as an exception. Racial and gendered inequalities are still rife in British politics, and they hit black and ethnic minority women the hardest. </p>
<p>We cannot treat examples like this as isolated incidents or as being the work of “bad apples”. Instead, we need to take heed of clear patterns in the data and ask uncomfortable questions about political institutions. What would it take to eliminate these dynamics from political parties, parliament and the press?</p>
<p>Perhaps one way to start is to listen to, and take seriously, the words of people like Abbott herself. In response to Hester’s remarks, she <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/mar/12/minister-calls-tory-donor-frank-hesters-diane-abbott-comments-completely-unacceptable-but-refuses-to-go-further-uk-politics-live">revealed</a> how vulnerable she feels when just travelling around her constituency. </p>
<p>“For all of my career as an MP I have thought it important not to live in a bubble, but to mix and mingle with ordinary people,” she said. “The fact that two MPs have been murdered in recent years makes talk like this all the more alarming.”</p>
<p>When his comments were exposed, Hester admitted that he had been “rude about Diane Abbot in a private meeting several years ago” but insisted that his comments “had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin”. The character of Hester’s apology itself speaks to the normalisation of abuse and incivility, as well as racism and sexism. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1767248542651781271"}"></div></p>
<p>Abbott and others have told the public before that they are frightened and that they are unable to do their jobs because of the dangers involved. If we start to take them seriously, we resist both the normalisation of incivility in public life and the comfortable notion that politics is now a level playing field.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225620/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Orly Siow has previously received an ESRC scholarship for research on press coverage of Black and ethnic minority women as political candidates.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sofia Collignon received funding from the British Academy /Leverhulme and was part of the ESRC -funded research team behind the Representative Audit of Britain survey. </span></em></p>Frank Hester’s words are only the latest extreme example of the constant discrimination black and ethnic minority women face when they enter public life.Orly Siow, Associate Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies, Lund UniversitySofia Collignon, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213582024-03-06T17:14:56Z2024-03-06T17:14:56ZHow the 1984 miners’ strike paved the way for devolution in Wales<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577265/original/file-20240222-24-1zfxh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2000%2C1310&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Miners from different collieries gather in Port Talbot in April 1984.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alandenney/2457055287">Alan Denney/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>March 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the start of the <a href="https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/miners-strike-1984-5-oral-history">miners’ strike</a>. In Wales, particularly within the south Wales coalfield, it was more than an industrial dispute. This was a major political event that reflected deeper cultural and economic changes. </p>
<p>These changes, alongside discontent at the emphasis of the then-UK prime minister <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cje/article/44/2/319/5550923">Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government</a> on free market economics, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-strikes-how-margaret-thatcher-and-other-leaders-cut-trade-union-powers-over-centuries-186270">stifling trade unions</a> and reducing the size of the state shifted how many Labour heartlands viewed the idea of self-government for Wales. This was due to Thatcher’s actions hitting at the heart of many working-class Labour voters’ existence, leading to threats to livelihoods and communities. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/what-thatcher-did-for-wales/">Many started feeling</a> that some of the devastation wreaked by Thatcherism could have been avoided had there been a devolved Welsh government. That government would, in all likelihood, have been Labour controlled, acting as a “protective shield”.</p>
<p>Instead, by the time of the May 1979 general election (five years before the miners’ strike), Wales was a nation divided. Only weeks earlier, it had overwhelmingly <a href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP97-113/RP97-113.pdf">rejected</a> the Labour government’s proposal to create a Welsh Assembly, which would have given Wales a certain degree of autonomy from Westminster.</p>
<p>Many Labour MPs, such as Welshman Neil Kinnock, had vehemently opposed devolution and favoured a united British state. However, it was now this state, through a National Coal Board overseen by a Westminster Conservative government, that was aiming to further close Welsh coal mines. </p>
<p>The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was both a political and workplace representative for miners and their communities. For a politician like Kinnock, balancing party and local interests was difficult. </p>
<p>Thatcher’s Conservative party won a large majority at the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/m09.pdf">1983 election</a> and the Ebbw Vale MP, Michael Foot, had been Labour leader during its defeat. His left-wing manifesto had been <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8550425.stm">dubbed</a> the “longest suicide note in history” by Gerald Kaufman, himself a Labour MP. It led to Foot’s resignation and the election of Kinnock as the leader of the opposition. </p>
<p>As a miners’ strike looked more likely, the national context made Labour party support for the strike problematic. Despite his political and personal ties to the NUM, Kinnock <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/509387">disagreed</a> with its leaders, such as Arthur Scargill, and their strategies for the strike. However, the Labour leader supported the right of the miners to defend their livelihood. </p>
<p>In a period of difficult deindustrialisation across nationalised industries, Labour was caught between unstoppable economic restructuring and job losses that affected its traditional voters.</p>
<h2>Thatcherism and Wales</h2>
<p>Gwyn A. Williams, a Marxist historian, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/When_was_Wales/QUJ0QgAACAAJ?hl=en">described</a> Welsh people as “a naked people under an acid rain”. This acidity had two main ingredients: Thatcherism and the “no” vote for a Welsh Assembly in 1979. </p>
<p>According to this analysis, the absence of devolution in Wales had left it exposed to the vagaries of Conservative governance in Westminster. The dangers of this were illuminated during the miners’ strike and in high unemployment rates of <a href="https://www.gov.wales/digest-welsh-historical-statistics-0">nearly 14% in Wales</a> by the mid-1980s. </p>
<p>However, it would be a fallacy to argue that Wales was a no-go zone for the Conservatives, even after the strike. In the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/m11.pdf">1987 general election</a>, although their number of MPs dropped from the 1983 high of 14 to eight, they were still attracting 29.5% of the Welsh vote. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of Margaret Thatcher with her hands raised in front of a union flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Was Margaret Thatcher one of the unwitting architects of Welsh devolution?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/levanrami/43795237465">Levan Ramishvili/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It would take several more years of Conservative policies such as the poll tax, the tenure of John Redwood as secretary of state for Wales (1993-95) and the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13689889808413006">scandal-riven sagas</a> of the party during the 1990s for them to gain zero seats in Wales in 1997. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the strike, and the febrile atmosphere of the period, had carved out a Welsh distinctiveness to anti-Conservative rhetoric. Several organisations and conferences during the 1980s laid the groundwork that shaped new questions about Welsh nationhood. They contributed to the swing towards a narrow “yes” vote in the 1997 Welsh devolution <a href="https://law.gov.wales/constitution-and-government/constitution-and-devolution/executive-devolution-1998-2007">referendum</a> offered by Tony Blair’s Labour government, which came to power in 1997.</p>
<p>In February 1985, Hywel Francis, a historian and later Labour MP for Aberafan, published an article in the magazine, <a href="https://banmarchive.org.uk/marxism-today/february-1985/mining-the-popular-front/">Marxism Today</a>, suggesting that the miners’ strike was not merely an industrial dispute but an anti-Thatcher resistance movement. </p>
<p>Central to his argument was the formation of the <a href="https://archives.library.wales/index.php/wales-congress-in-support-of-mining-communities">Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities</a> the previous autumn, which formalised some of the “unexpected alliances” heralded by the strike. The Congress coordinated the demonstrations and activism of some of the diverse groups that both supported the miners and simultaneously resisted many of the policies of the Thatcher government. These included trade unionists, religious leaders, the women’s peace movement, gay rights campaigners, as well as Labour members and Welsh nationalist activists. According to Francis, the latter two realised that “unless they joined, the world would pass them by”.</p>
<p>The congress aimed to stimulate a coordinated debate about Welsh mining communities, moving the narrative away from picket-line conflict and towards a democratic vision of Wales’s future. </p>
<p>While the strike ended only a month after Francis’s article, and the organisation itself dissolved in 1986, the congress had bridged many chasms in Welsh society. It showed old enemies in Labour and Plaid Cymru that solidarity could reap more benefits than the overt tribalism that had blighted the devolution campaign of the 1970s. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A large modern building with a large roof that juts out." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Senedd in Cardiff.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cardiff-wales-united-kingdom-06-17-2335002765">meunierd/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Legacy</h2>
<p>In 1988, the campaign for a Welsh Assembly was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/manchester-scholarship-online/book/29790/chapter-abstract/251892249?redirectedFrom=fulltext">established</a> in Cardiff by Siân Caiach of Plaid Cymru and Jon Owen Jones of Labour. It was a direct descendant of this collaborative ethos, feeding an altogether more mature debate around Welsh devolution than had been seen in the 1970s. </p>
<p>For example, Ron Davies, an arch-devolutionist in 1990s Labour, <a href="https://www.iwa.wales/wp-content/media/2016/03/acceleratinghistory.pdf">had voted “no”</a> in 1979. This was predominantly because he saw devolution as a Trojan horse for Plaid. </p>
<p>However, seeing the consequences of the miners’ strike and Thatcherism on his constituency of Caerffili drove him towards a drastic re-evaluation of devolution as being a protective buffer for the people of Wales. He became leader of Welsh Labour in 1998, eventually joining Plaid in 2010.</p>
<p>Historian Martin Johnes <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-16315966">has described</a> Thatcher as an “unlikely architect of Welsh devolution”. Indeed, her inadvertent <a href="https://www.iwa.wales/agenda/2013/04/we-voted-labour-but-got-thatcher/">help</a> in orchestrating the Welsh Assembly rested in the forging of Labour and Plaid Cymru cooperation, with the miners’ strike as a watershed movement. </p>
<p>The strike remains a vivid memory in many Welsh communities. It stands as a reminder to 21st-century politicians that today’s Senedd (Welsh parliament) was built on cross-party cooperation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The strike saw different political factions uniting, which eventually led to a more collaborative form of politics in Wales.Mari Wiliam, Lecturer in Modern and Welsh History, Bangor UniversityMarc Collinson, Lecturer in Political History, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2248522024-03-01T02:39:56Z2024-03-01T02:39:56ZBrian Mulroney, champion of free trade, brought Canada closer to the U.S. during his reign as prime minister<p>Brian Mulroney — Canada’s 18th prime minister who has <a href="https://twitter.com/C_Mulroney/status/1763337379165934039">died at age 84</a> — will be remembered for many things, but his most significant decision during two terms in office was to link Canada’s future with the United States.</p>
<p>Unlike Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s Liberal prime minister <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-trudeau-say-worse-things-better-men/">who had a rocky relationship with several U.S. presidents</a> during the 1960s, ‘70s and '80s, Mulroney was an unabashed Americanophile. </p>
<p>After all, he <a href="https://www.tourismebaiecomeau.com/histoire?lang=en">grew up in Baie-Comeau</a>, Que., a town founded by a wealthy American industrialist — Robert Rutherford McCormick — to produce cheap newsprint for New York and Chicago papers. Mulroney would at times reminisce that as a child he sang songs for McCormick to earn small monetary rewards. </p>
<h2>Negotiated Free Trade Agreement</h2>
<p>Mulroney’s admiration for American capitalism was evident in his political polices. Within a year after being <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/archives/brian-mulroney-wins-stunning-landslide-victory-in-1984-1.4675926">elected with a large majority in 1984</a>, Mulroney stated he wanted to negotiate a free trade agreement with the United States. </p>
<p>Shortly after that, Mulroney hosted then U.S. president Ronald Reagan for what was called the <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/history-through-our-eyes/history-through-our-eyes-march-17-1985-the-shamrock-summit">“Shamrock Summit”</a> in Québec City. The two leaders, both of whom were proud of their Irish heritage, took to the stage at the summit and famously launched into a rendition of <em>When Irish Eyes Are Smiling</em>.</p>
<p>While some Canadians may have cringed at the sight of the two men warbling together, Mulroney’s close relationship with Reagan was a political asset for the Progressive Conservative leader.</p>
<h2>A second majority</h2>
<p>Mulroney and Reagan signed the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement on Jan. 2, 1988. Mulroney campaigned on the deal during Canada’s general election in November of that year and won a second consecutive majority. Some international media outlets dubbed Mulroney “<a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/brian-mulroney-ex-canadian-pm-and-father-of-north-american-free-trade-ba03b008">the Father of North American Free Trade</a>” in stories about his death.</p>
<p>The Mulroney years marked the end of a two-decade reign by the Liberals under Lester Pearson, Trudeau and John Turner. Mulroney shifted Canadian policy to the right when he negotiated the Free Trade Agreement. Other controversial policies — the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/crown-corporation#Privatization">privatization of Crown corporations</a> like Air Canada and Petro-Canada, and the <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/history-of-the-gst/article_1b750dd8-dab3-5292-adbb-76cb681df763.html">introduction of the goods and services tax (GST)</a> — would last and not be undone when the Liberals returned to power under Jean Chrétien in 1993.</p>
<p>Mulroney, more than any modern day prime minister, sought to atone for the actions of his predecessor Trudeau in constitutional reform.</p>
<p>Investing enormous political capital in the <a href="https://www.historymuseum.ca/blog/meech-lake-accord-fails/">Meech Lake Accord</a> and then the <a href="https://www.constitutionalstudies.ca/2019/07/charlottetown-accord/">Charlottetown Accord</a>, Mulroney tried to increase the jurisdiction of the provinces, reform the Senate and recognize Québec as a distinct society. He wanted to extensively change the Constitution and correct what was not done, or in his view done poorly, in the patriation of the Constitution in 1982 and the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. </p>
<h2>Constitutional reforms failed</h2>
<p>After pitched battles across the nation, both accords failed to meet the constitutional bar for ratification. In fact, the collapse of the accords — which had raised expectations in Québec — revived Québec separatism and <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/mulroney-dismissed-bouchard-s-influence-as-meech-lake-accord-withered-records-1.1742812">led to the rise of the Bloc Québécois</a>.</p>
<p>The failure of the accords was a lesson subsequent prime ministers — Chrétien, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau — took to heart. None has dared to even hint at any kind of constitutional reform.</p>
<p>When in power, Mulroney led the Progressive Conservatives. After retirement from politics, Mulroney never felt at home at the renamed Conservative Party of Canada that was born with the <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/5-things/flashback-friday-on-this-day-in-2003-pcs-and-alliance-united-as-conservatives-1.2607589">merger of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance in 2003</a>. </p>
<p>During one of his last major public events in June 2023, Mulroney sat on stage with Justin Trudeau at St. Francis Xavier University, the Nova Scotia institution from which Mulroney graduated. Mulroney <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/brian-mulroney-defends-trudeau-parliament-gossip-trash-1.6882315">praised the incumbent</a> to such an extent that Trudeau said: “It’s… embarrassing when you’re speaking about me in such glowing terms.” </p>
<p>Mulroney leaves a perplexing legacy. A charismatic politician who led his party to two majority governments. A prime minister who made major and lasting changes to Canada’s economy. A successful business leader before and after his years in politics. </p>
<p>Yet, he was also a prime minister who failed to bring in constitutional reforms that seemed within his grasp and a leader who unleashed political turmoil in his home province that has had a lasting impact on the Canadian political landscape decades after he left office.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Klassen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The death of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney will lead to a wide examination of his legacy. A lasting policy of the Mulroney regime is free trade with the United States.Thomas Klassen, Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2244792024-02-27T16:32:40Z2024-02-27T16:32:40ZLee Anderson’s Islamophobia 101: how the Conservatives dodge responsibility for the prejudice that is rife in their ranks<p>Despite the furore, the recent attack on London mayor Sadiq Khan by the now-suspended Conservative MP Lee Anderson should come as no surprise. In much the same way, neither should we be surprised at prime minister Rishi Sunak’s failure to call out what Anderson said as being anything other than blatant Islamophobia. When it comes to the Conservative party, we have been here before. For them, this is Islamophobia 101.</p>
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<p>The recent controversy began when Anderson – who was until very recently the party’s deputy chairman – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/23/tory-mp-lee-anderson-claims-islamists-have-got-control-of-sadiq-khan">told GB News</a> that Sadiq Khan had “given our capital city away to his mates”. As he went on, “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan, and they’ve got control of London”.</p>
<p>Since then, Anderson has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/26/lee-anderson-stands-by-attack-on-sadiq-khan-and-launches-fresh-broadside">doubled down</a>, adding: “when you think you are right, you should never apologise because to do so would be a sign of weakness”.</p>
<p>Anderson has lost the whip, but beyond that the message coming out of the Conservative party has been tempered. Sunak has <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/lee-anderson-sadiq-khan-islamophobic-racist-islamist-london-tories-b1141445.html">failed to even acknowledge</a> Anderson’s comments as Islamophobic, let alone condemn them as such, <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-storm-lee-anderson-rant-islamophobia-b1141641.html">saying instead:</a> “I think the most important thing is that the words were wrong, they were ill-judged, they were unacceptable.”</p>
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<h2>The Conservatives’ problem with Islamophobia</h2>
<p>In recent years, the Conservative party has struggled to disentangle itself from various allegations that it is Islamophobic. In 2018, the Muslim Council of Britain presented the party with <a href="https://drchrisallen.medium.com/a-summer-of-islamophobia-considerations-of-the-lessons-learned-9d7b85b05014">a dossier detailing near-weekly incidents</a> involving various party members. </p>
<p>For those such as the former party chair Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the dossier was merely the tip of the iceberg. Noting how experiences of hate and discrimination are notoriously under-reported <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservatives-islamophobia-tory-party-racism-baroness-warsi-a8394271.html">she claimed at the time</a> that Islamophobia is “widespread [in the party]…from the grassroots, all the way up to the top”.</p>
<p>In the same year, former prime minister Boris Johnson referred to Muslim women who choose to wear the full-face veil as “letterboxes” and “bank robbers” <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/05/denmark-has-got-wrong-yes-burka-oppressive-ridiculous-still/">in an article for the Telegraph</a>. He dismissed the comments as little more than a gaffe but the allegations prompted the then home secretary Sajid Javid to ask his rivals during a BBC Conservative leadership debate <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/18/sajid-javid-puts-rivals-on-the-spot-over-tory-party-islamophobia">to commit to an external investigation into Islamophobia</a>, whoever the next leader might be. All, including Johnson, agreed. </p>
<p>Once Johnson had secured the party leadership however, the investigation was <a href="https://theconversation.com/islamophobia-in-the-conservative-party-key-points-from-the-inquiry-on-discrimination-161532">shifted away from Islamophobia</a> onto discrimination more widely. Doing so enabled the party to distance itself from the very reason why such an investigation was deemed necessary in the first place: claims of widespread Islamophobia.</p>
<h2>Quibbling over definitions</h2>
<p>Another way the Conservatives – and indeed others – have chosen to deny allegations of being Islamophobic is to claim that they do not have a definition for Islamophobia and therefore cannot assess whether comments such as Anderson’s are Islamophobic. Such a premise is of course a farcical, straw man argument.</p>
<p>Like all other discriminatory phenomena – from racism to homophobia – plenty of definitions have been put forward that could be adopted by the Conservatives. They could simply look to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims, which in 2018 made history by putting forward the first working definition of Islamophobia in the UK. In its report <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/599c3d2febbd1a90cffdd8a9/t/5bfd1ea3352f531a6170ceee/1543315109493/Islamophobia+Defined.pdf">Islamophobia Defined</a>, it posited that “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”.</p>
<p>Despite this definition being adopted by Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and various local governments across the country, the Conservative party announced it was not intending to adopt the definition on the basis that <a href="https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/factsheets/islamophobia-defined/">further consideration was necessary</a>.</p>
<p>Continuing to deny the existence of an appropriate definition is, at this point, a convenient way to avoid being accused of being Islamophobic. As I put it in my 2020 book <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-33047-7">Reconfiguring Islamophobia</a>, all the debate around definitions achieves is to afford detractors permission to do nothing about the problem itself.</p>
<h2>Attacks on Sadiq Khan</h2>
<p>Opposition parties were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/23/tory-mp-lee-anderson-claims-islamists-have-got-control-of-sadiq-khan">immediately critical</a> of Anderson’s comments. But while the Labour party Chair Anneliese Dodds described them as “unambiguously racist and Islamophobic” and the Liberal Democrat London mayoral candidate Rob Blackie castigated the MP for “spreading dangerous conspiracy theories”, it is interesting that no one has highlighted how attacking Khan specifically is becoming an alarmingly common political tactic.</p>
<p>This was nowhere more evident than during Zac Goldsmith’s 2016 London mayoral campaign. Branded “disgusting” at the time, Goldsmith published a piece in the Mail on Sunday with the headline: “Are we really going to hand the world’s greatest city to a Labour Party that thinks terrorists are its friends?”. Goldsmith went on to paint rival Khan as a security risk, claiming he had past links with extremists and that he supported Islamic State. Sound familiar?</p>
<p>So too does the Conservative party have a history of laying claim to Islamist extremists infiltrating other parts of British society. Michael Gove, during his time as education secretary, launched an investigation into claims “Muslim hardliners” were taking over state schools in Birmingham, despite the letter that made the allegations being immediately dismissed as a hoax by the police. In 2015, Theresa May, while home secretary, took it even further, launching <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/19/new-counter-extremism-strategy-revealed-theresa-may">a campaign against “entryist” infiltration</a> across vast swathes of the public and third sectors by Islamist extremists.</p>
<p>While there should be no hierarchy when it comes to hate or discrimination, the reality is that when it comes to Islamophobia, the scrutiny directed at other forms of prejudice is undeniably absent. What can be said and alleged about Muslims in political (and public) spaces cannot be said about other religious groups and communities.</p>
<p>It should be shocking that the prime minister cannot even acknowledge Anderson’s comments as Islamophobic – but it isn’t. It’s just another example of the sheer disregard and utter contempt that is shown by political leaders towards this problem.</p>
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<p><em>Far-right parties and politicians are mounting election campaigns all over the world in 2024. Join us in London at 6pm on March 6 for a salon style discussion with experts on how seriously we should take the threat, what these parties mean for our democracies – and what action we can take. Register for your place at this <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/social-science-perspectives-on-the-far-right-tickets-838612631957?aff=theconversation"><strong>free public session here</strong></a>. There will be food, drinks and, best of all, the opportunity to connect with interesting people.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224479/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Allen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has suspended the MP over his comments about Sadiq Khan but has conspicuously failed to acknowledge the Islamophobia at the heart of the scandal.Chris Allen, Associate Professor, School of Criminology, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2236662024-02-16T11:56:33Z2024-02-16T11:56:33ZWellingborough and Kingswood byelections: it’s never been this bad for the Conservatives, and it could still get worse<p>Writing about Conservative byelection calamities has become something of a standard Friday practice for me. But the party’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-68313404">defeat in Wellingborough</a> in Northamptonshire was particularly brutal. </p>
<p>The Tory vote share was a mere 25% and the Conservative to Labour swing of 28.5% was the second biggest in modern electoral history. Only <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Dudley_West_by-election">Dudley West in 1994</a>, with a 29.1% swing, was bigger. That result was the clearest first demonstration that Labour would oust the Conservatives by a huge majority at the 1997 general election. Politics is on repeat. </p>
<p>The loss of Kingswood in South Gloucestershire was on a smaller (16.4%) swing, but is equally ominous for Rishi Sunak. Apart from in 1992, whichever party Kingswood chose over the half-century of its existence (it is about to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-constituency-boundaries-are-being-redrawn-to-make-them-more-equal-but-it-wont-save-the-conservatives-221256">split</a> into other constituencies) also formed the government.</p>
<h2>An unprecedented year of byelections</h2>
<p>The Conservatives have an increasingly unhappy knack of creating unnecessary and unwelcome (for them) contests. Since 2022, the Conservatives have now lost six byelections to Labour, on an average swing of 21%. </p>
<p>Byelections used to be prompted mainly by deaths. During this parliamentary term however, nine contests in Conservative-held seats have been products of resignations, sometimes after behaviour by the resigning MP that could most generously be described as “controversial”. Another was forced by a recall petition and three necessitated by deaths. Eight of the nine byelections following resignations were lost, as was the recall petition contest and one of the three caused by death.</p>
<p>The Kingswood contest was at least precipitated by a resignation on principle. Chris Skidmore <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67895246">resigned</a> as an MP, angered by his government’s issuing of more oil and gas exploration licences.</p>
<p>Wellingborough’s byelection was caused by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/peter-bone-kicked-out-of-parliament-for-violence-and-sexual-misconduct-how-recall-petitions-work-220102">recall petition</a> lodged against Peter Bone under the Recall of MPs Act 2015. Bone, who was found to have bullied and exposed himself to a member of his staff, was suspended from the House of Commons for six weeks, triggering a petition signed by 13% of electors (10% is the threshold needed to hold a byelection). </p>
<p>Electors disillusioned by the Conservatives have had unprecedented opportunities to vent their displeasure. The net effect has been the biggest loss of seats during a parliamentary term since the 1960s. </p>
<h2>Looking towards a general election</h2>
<p>Is there any brighter news for the Conservatives? Amid the wreckage, the party could point to modest turnouts in both byelections, 38% in Wellingborough and 37% in Kingswood. But low byelection turnout is common. And the results are more a consequence of the Conservative vote dropping – Labour is not piling on the votes. </p>
<p>It is a huge leap of faith to assume the stay-at-homes were all Conservative-leaners who will show up at the general election. Conservative optimists could point to their Kingswood vote share being above that obtained in the constituency at general elections during the party’s wilderness years of 1997, 2001 and 2005. But the opposite was true with Thursday’s pitiful performance in Wellingborough.</p>
<p>The lingering Brexit bonus for the Conservatives may be neutered by the entry of Reform UK. Richard’s Tice’s outfit is no Ukip in its heyday or the Brexit Party, both of which offered a clear and popular core aim. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/16/reform-uk-wellingborough-kingswood-by-election-richard-tice/">Reform winning</a> 13% of the vote in Wellingborough and 10% in Kingswood is an achievement worth noting, if unlikely to be replicated come general election day. The Conservatives won three-quarters of the Brexit Leave vote in 2019. Reform UK will act as a repository for disaffected Brexiteer Tories in particular. </p>
<p>No party has ever won an election when trailing its main rival on the economy. Even without Thursday’s news that the UK fell into a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-68297420">recession</a> in 2023, the Conservatives are well behind Labour on economic stewardship. </p>
<p>It has been 45 years since the less popular leader of the “big two” won the election (Margaret Thatcher trailed James Callaghan in 1979) and Sunak <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48452-sunak-vs-starmer-2024-how-have-attitudes-changed-since-the-pm-took-office">trails</a> Keir Starmer, albeit not as badly as his party <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48607-voting-intention-con-21-lab-46-7-8-feb-2024">lags behind Labour</a>.</p>
<p>For the Conservatives, the one constant is that further trouble may be imminent. The party has removed the whip from Blackpool South MP, Scott Benton, who is appealing his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/14/blackpool-mp-scott-benton-faces-commons-suspension-over-lobbying-scandal">35-day suspension</a> from the Commons over a lobbying scandal. If Benton loses his appeal, a recall petition will follow, potentially triggering a byelection in a seat classed as marginal, but on all current evidence a seaside stroll for Labour. </p>
<h2>Rochdale embarrassment</h2>
<p>There could be a very brief respite for Sunak – who may now face pointless calls for a new Conservative leader – as we head towards the farce of the Rochdale byelection on February 29, a contest Labour has managed to lose before it really started. The party <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/rochdale-by-election-why-labour-cant-replace-azhar-ali-and-what-happens-if-he-wins-13070586">dropped support</a> for its official candidate, Azhar Ali, after leaked audio revealed Ali’s anti-Israel conspiracy theory comments regarding the October 7 Hamas attack. </p>
<p>Starmer’s initial ill-judged move to shore up Ali was absurd. Rochdale is thus high on the embarrassment scale for Labour, but as an issue affecting the outcome of the general election, it is negligible. </p>
<p>After an exceptional Brexit election in 2019 – no election in the past century has ever been dominated by a single issue to that extent – the 2024 general election will be decided by the economy, cost of living, perceptions of competence and leadership. Normal politics in other words. And on all the dials, Labour appears way ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Tonge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Disillusioned Conservative voters have had a string of opportunities to make their voices heard.Jonathan Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2208742024-01-10T16:52:25Z2024-01-10T16:52:25ZRishi Sunak’s reputation for being tetchy has been seen in previous prime ministers – and it doesn’t end well<p>There are few more high-profile and pressurised jobs than leading a country. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the pressure appears to be getting to British prime minister Rishi Sunak.</p>
<p>Lagging behind in the polls and with an election inexorably looming this calendar year, Sunak has recently garnered a reputation for being <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/im-not-tetchy-says-tetchy-rishi-sunak-tetchily_uk_657ac0b8e4b00e36d2d64df3">tetchy</a>. He has appeared <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/times-tetchy-rishi-sunak-lost-31719623">irritable</a> when asked fairly basic questions during press conferences about his policies and his government’s general record in office.</p>
<p>In December, he became <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLyUbWdU69g">spiky with journalists</a> asking about his Rwanda deportation plan at a press conference that he himself called on the very same subject. In November, he suddenly cancelled a meeting with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/nov/27/greek-pm-slams-rishi-sunak-for-cancelling-planned-meeting-at-no-10#:%7E:text=Parthenon%20marbles%20row%3A%20Rishi%20Sunak%20cancels%20meeting%20with%20Greek%20PM,-This%20article%20is&text=Greece's%20prime%20minister%20has%20criticised,antiquities%20erupted%20with%20renewed%20vigour">Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis</a>, apparently irritated by the latter speaking publicly about the Parthenon marbles. In this case, Sunak passed up on the opportunity to discuss immigration with a key ally in what was seen as a move motivated by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/nov/30/british-museum-will-continue-parthenon-marbles-talks-despite-fallout">petulance</a>. </p>
<p>In historical terms, Sunak’s behaviour is perhaps not surprising. Plenty of other prime ministers have shown themselves to have a short fuse. In fact, this is perhaps to be expected when an embattled premier is under extreme pressure and appears backed into a corner from a number of different directions. That doesn’t however, make it a good idea. </p>
<p>An obvious historical comparison for Sunak’s current predicament is <a href="https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/an-unsuccessful-prime-minister">John Major</a>, who spent much of his final term dealing with a barrage of crises. These included <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/20419058221127468">Black Wednesday</a>, when the UK was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, and a <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/conservatives/fate-john-major-government-reminder-boris-johnson-perils-sleaze-975736">litany of sleaze scandals</a> engulfing his MPs. He led a poisonously divided cabinet of ministers, several of whom Major described as “bastards” in a hot-mic moment <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1993/jul/25/politicalnews.uk">following a TV interview</a>. </p>
<p>Major’s government was eventually destabilised to such a degree that he decided to resign as leader of his party and run for re-election to the position in 1995, all while still in the job as prime minister.</p>
<p>In such hostile circumstances, Major was evidently tetchy. He became increasingly irritated by the tabloid press and its coverage of his party. His aides apparently used to hide the newspapers from him to avoid him seeing what was being written about him. This was of course the pre-internet era, when that was possible.</p>
<h2>Lessons (and warnings) for Sunak</h2>
<p>Major has since acknowledged that he became too thin skinned during this period. He admitted to being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jun/12/john-major-leveson-inquiry-press-coverage">antagonised</a> by how former allies had turned on his <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-18409681">premiership in the press</a>.</p>
<p>Major’s over-sensitivity became a problem that gnawed away at his premiership, arguably distracting from his core strategy and preventing him from focusing on practical governance. This could be said to have contributed to the sense of drift and crisis that ensued up to 1997. It has been alleged that Major had an inclination towards <a href="https://conservativehome.com/2013/10/24/the-best-and-the-worst-of-john-major/">score settling and the bearing of grudges</a>, which is never a good use of a person’s time and energy.</p>
<p>He even fell out with media mogul <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/28/john-major-rupert-murdoch-newspapers-national-archives">Rupert Murdoch</a> who, until that point, had been a staunch ally of the Conservatives. As Major slid from favour, Murdoch’s broadly right-wing media empire eventually switched allegiance to Tony Blair’s New Labour. Sunak has not yet lost this battle but can hardly afford to risk replicating Major’s mistakes. </p>
<p>Labour prime minister Gordon Brown was also accused of being <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/wider-tragedy-of-gordon-brown-new-labour-murdoch-press-and-state-of-our-demo/">irascible</a> during his time in office.</p>
<p>Brown lacked the personal skills and charm of his predecessor Tony Blair and was often depicted as being something of a control freak – even paranoid about protecting his own public image. But that didn’t stop him becoming a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/nov/29/politicalcolumnists.gordonbrown">target for mockery</a>. </p>
<p>Once Brown’s image had shifted from the prudent “iron chancellor” of the Blair era to the grumpy and irritable prime minister, his poll ratings <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gordon-browns-ratings-in-freefall-wh82p0qbb0r">took a nosedive</a>.</p>
<h2>No room for error</h2>
<p>In the age of intensive media attention, tetchiness is even riskier behaviour. It is too easy to be caught off guard and generate negative headlines. Every grimace and every curt reply can be turned into a clip or screenshot that can be instantly used as social media fodder. </p>
<p>The Labour opposition has already started to do just this, clearly recognising an opportunity in Sunak’s apparently easily tested temper.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1734974853034148338"}"></div></p>
<p>Sunak, Major and Brown all became prime minister in the middle of a term, having inherited the top job without a mandate of their own. Both Major and Brown ended up being the tail end of longstanding administrations. They may have become tetchy partially because of the difficulties involved in running a dying administration. But few would argue that their tetchiness was not also a source of problems.</p>
<p>More experienced political operators like Margaret Thatcher, Blair and David Cameron often seemed to deal with pressure far better, at least in terms of maintaining calmer, less irritable public images. All notably benefited from strong media-management advice, most notably from Bernard Ingham in the case of Thatcher and from Alastair Campbell in the case of Blair. These figures were dominant in their respective administrations, with the capacity to manage and mould their PM’s public image better than various others have done since. Maybe Sunak should take note.</p>
<p>While some may empathise with prime ministerial demands to constantly respond to what are sometimes mischievous questions, that’s ultimately the nature of political power. No British prime minister has a right not to be asked questions and scrutinised. It’s a key part of the job. Indeed, the voting public fully expect them to be able to answer for the decisions made on their behalf. </p>
<p>Mid-term successors like Sunak, despite senior cabinet-level experience, have ultimately been thrown in at the deep end. They assume power in chaotic circumstances in the face of growing public scepticism. This extremely challenging scenario explains Sunak’s attitude but that doesn’t make it understandable to voters. Major and Brown never won back the public and both lost elections – something Sunak should remember the next time he is asked a tricky question.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Williams is a member of Amnesty International and UCU.</span></em></p>John Major admitted to be too thin-skinned when his government started to crumble.Ben Williams, Associate Tutor in Politics and Social Sciences, Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205852024-01-05T15:01:41Z2024-01-05T15:01:41ZShould we believe Rishi Sunak’s hint that the election will be in October? What the evidence tells us<p>So now we know. After weeks of speculation, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67883242">“working on the assumption”</a> that a general election will take place in the second half of this year. That’s just a few months before the latest possible date of January 28 2025. </p>
<p>The choice of an autumn election does make sense for Sunak and the Conservatives. With the polls showing the Labour opposition on a <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48017-voting-intention-con-22-lab-45-29-30-nov-2023">stable and substantial lead</a>, it makes sense for the Conservatives to buy some time. The idea would be to try to make inroads into Labour’s lead before setting an election date. </p>
<p>Much rests on the fate of the economy. A year ago, Sunak promised to halve inflation, grow the economy and get debt falling. Independent analysis shows that inflation has halved, but <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/rishi-sunaks-five-pledges-one-year">less success on economic growth and falling debt.</a> </p>
<p>Between now and the autumn, Sunak will hope that the economy shows signs of recovery. An autumn election will also give voters time to feel the economic benefits of the tax cuts that are anticipated in the spring, which could potentially provide the Conservatives with a boost in the polls. </p>
<h2>Why ‘autumn’ means ‘October’</h2>
<p>There are other reasons why an autumn 2024 election makes sense. During the post-war period, October has proven to be a popular month for elections – even though the last time an election was held in October was 1974. Although over recent decades, most general elections have taken place in the spring, between 1950 and 1974, four of the nine elections were held in October, with only one taking place in May. </p>
<p>No post-war general election has been held in August, September or November. If an election is held in the autumn, October would seem the most likely month if history is anything to go by. </p>
<p>There is also the British weather to consider. While there isn’t strong evidence to show that voters are less likely to turn out in bad weather, it is very much the received wisdom in the UK that this is the case, and given the decision comes down to Sunak, he may not think it worth risking winter weather. This would imply October over, say, November or December. </p>
<p>Historically, turnout in October elections has been similar to turnout in spring elections – and turnout is a major factor for the Conservatives. Age is now the most significant predictor of voting behaviour in UK general elections and <a href="https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/age-and-voting-behaviour-at-the-2019-general-election/#:%7E:text=Overall%2C%20the%20relationship%20between%20age,for%20Labour%20and%20the%20Liberal">age is linked to turnout</a>. </p>
<p>The group most likely to vote for the Conservatives are those aged 65 and over – which is also the group most likely to vote at all. A higher overall turnout should therefore be a strategic goal for the Conservatives. </p>
<p>The 18-24 group is most likely to vote Labour but least likely to vote overall so an October vote is again a sound move. With hundreds of thousands of students returning to universities away from home in the autumn, and potentially not yet registered to vote at their term-time address, there is potential to minimise the younger vote.</p>
<h2>A clash with the US election</h2>
<p>An October election would mean the UK vote would take place just weeks ahead of the US election on November 5. The prospect of two of the world’s leading democracies going to the polls within weeks of each other is an exciting one for election enthusiasts. </p>
<p>On the other hand, there is the prospect of two new administrations coming into power around the same time, needing to find their feet quickly in an unstable geopolitical environment, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/176d4b78-1e9a-45c9-8c3c-a74e758ec22f">following two elections that may be heavily influenced by polarisation and misinformation.</a>.</p>
<p>With the eyes of the world focused on a potentially divisive US election, Sunak may feel that a low-key campaign plays in to his hands, focusing on re-electing the incumbent to ensure stability. </p>
<h2>Don’t rule out a spring election yet</h2>
<p>The date for the election is not yet set in stone, however. Following the repeal of the <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06111/">Fixed-term Parliaments Act</a>, the choice of election date lies in the hands of the prime minister. </p>
<p>The rollercoaster of British politics in recent years has shown us that much can change in six months. It would therefore be unwise to rule out a spring election, even after Sunak’s heavy hint.</p>
<p>The Labour opposition has accused Sunak of <a href="https://news.sky.com/video/general-election-sir-keir-starmer-says-rishi-sunak-is-squatting-in-downing-street-13042181#:%7E:text=Sky%20News-,General%20Election%3A%20Sir%20Keir%20Starmer%20says%20Rishi%20Sunak%20is%20'squatting,and%20months%20in%20Downing%20Street.'">“squatting” in Downing Street</a> and claims he is running scared, knowing that the polls show him on course for a loss. Sunak may therefore instead opt to call Labour’s bluff, signalling an autumn election in public but preparing for a May election in private. Sunak’s words do leave the door open for a spring election, as “working assumptions” can easily be changed.</p>
<p>Those who still think <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/uk-heading-for-a-may-general-election-is-the-worst-kept-secret-in-parliament-labour-13038533">May is a possible election month</a> will point to the announcement of an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67826928">earlier than expected spring budget date</a>. Headline-grabbing tax cuts, along with some positive economic forecasts may embolden the prime minister to take a gamble and move sooner rather than later.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220585/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gemma Loomes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are reasons to hold off until the autumn – but there are other clues that still point towards May.Gemma Loomes, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2203092024-01-02T16:50:02Z2024-01-02T16:50:02ZWhy David Cameron’s past and present relations with China could be Rishi Sunak’s first big political headache of 2024<p>Almost immediately after being appointed as foreign secretary, David Cameron’s ties with China generated difficult headlines for Rishi Sunak’s government. </p>
<p>Cameron’s warmth towards China during his own time as prime minister prompted Luke de Pulford, the director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, to argue that Sunak had scored an own goal in appointing him. </p>
<p>Cameron’s time in office has been described as a “golden era” for UK-China relations. But now, in a very different political climate, de Pulford has accused the new foreign secretary of “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/15/concerns-as-china-welcomes-david-camerons-return-as-foreign-secretary">shilling for the UK’s biggest security threat</a>”. Catherine West, Labour’s shadow minister for Asia and the Pacific, has also said Cameron has questions to answer over what role he has played since leaving office in a Chinese <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/david-cameron-uk-faces-fresh-scrutiny-over-chinese-built-sri-lankan-city/">infrastructure project in Sri Lanka</a>.</p>
<p>Cameron’s position on China during his tenure as prime minister evolved from ambivalence to active embrace. Looking back, 2015-16 in particular was an active period in UK-China relations. A state visit by President Xi Jinping in 2015 not only provided Cameron with a chance to take him to his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0aLemrUtSo">local pub</a> but gave a clear signal of just how valued China was as a partner for the UK.</p>
<p>The implications of this for the UK now, in an era of considerably cooled relations, will be complex for the government and others to navigate. As foreign secretary, Cameron is in a position of considerable formal power when it comes to foreign policy, yet his party takes a very different view on China than it did during his time in office. </p>
<p>Sunak has leant into that position, for example, by removing China’s role in the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a9a34ea3-649f-4a47-a4c8-ee269e07eccc">Sizewell C nuclear power station</a>, which is to be constructed in Suffolk. </p>
<h2>The ups and downs of UK-China relations</h2>
<p>When the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition came to power in 2010, its opening offer on foreign policy, the <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a78da21ed915d0422065d95/strategic-defence-security-review.pdf">strategic defence and security review</a>, and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-national-security-strategy-a-strong-britain-in-an-age-of-uncertainty">national security strategy</a>, did not spend all that much time dwelling on China. The policies merely noted China’s continuing economic rise and argued that the UK should engage with it to resolve common problems. </p>
<p>China was bundled into a broad, rather vague category of “rising powers” that the UK would aim to engage with more closely. It was important, but not so important as to warrant its own category.</p>
<p>This “bundling in” may also go some way to explain the first seminal moment of Cameron’s relationship with China – <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18084223">his 2012 meeting with the Dalai Lama</a> in London. </p>
<p>By hosting the Tibetan leader, Cameron triggered great upset in Beijing, which placed relations with the UK in a “deep freeze” for nearly 18 months. Cameron would ultimately relent, shifting his position on Tibet to more closely align with Beijing’s. He publicly rejected the idea of Tibetan independence and <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2013-05-08/debates/13050835000003/DebateOnTheAddress?highlight=chinese%20government%20aware%20policy%20tibet%20recognise%20tibet%20part%20china%20not%20support%20tibetan%20independence%20respect%20china%27s%20sovereignty">acknowledged China’s sovereignty</a>.</p>
<h2>Warming up</h2>
<p>By November 2013, relations between China and the UK had opened up again and a rapid convergence between the two countries was in evidence. This peaked in the autumn of 2015 when Xi made his state visit to the UK. </p>
<p>At a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/joint-press-conference-david-cameron-and-president-xi-jinping">joint press conference</a>, Cameron declared that China and the UK shared strong economic, diplomatic, and “people-to-people” links. He advocated for deeper cooperation on areas such as health, climate change and extremism and opened formal ties with China on infrastructure spending. He declared that the UK and China “share an interest in a stable and ordered rule” in international affairs.</p>
<p>Within a month, the Cameron government had published an <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-security-strategy-and-strategic-defence-and-security-review-2015">updated strategic defence review</a>, which was much more expansive than the 2010 document had been on UK-China relations. It declared that it was the government’s “ambition for the UK to be China’s leading partner in the West”. </p>
<p>This would be achieved through a close economic relationship in particular, but also deeper diplomatic and security ties between the two countries. </p>
<h2>Cooling down</h2>
<p>Ultimately, this developing relationship would be derailed by the EU referendum of June 2016, and Cameron’s exit from office. Subsequent governments led by Theresa May and Boris Johnson were focused on handling Brexit, but were also seemingly more sceptical of relations with China than Cameron had been.</p>
<p>Several issues, including the question of democracy in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and Chinese espionage activity in the UK, have caused Conservative MPs to increasingly embrace a hawkish perspective on China. While Liz Truss was more clearly China-sceptic than Sunak, none of the prime ministers who have followed Cameron in office have been close to his level of dovishness on the topic.</p>
<p>The risks to the UK government, then, are twofold. Cameron’s ties with China have the potential to aggravate tensions with backbench MPs who are already restive. His party is currently divided over any number of other issues and primed to fall out over any number of others. The possibility of a dispute over the new foreign secretary’s position on China adding further inflaming tensions in the Conservative party are high.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a noticeable gap in intentions between senior members of the government risks sending confusing signals to China. This is a problem for slower burning issues such as the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19427786211045404">debt burden</a> being incurred by countries that have accepted Chinese investment via the belt and road initiative. </p>
<p>Cameron’s own advocacy for projects in countries like Sri Lanka, now dealing with the legacy of the initiative, may muddle messages. There is also the possibility of confusing messaging if a major crisis erupts – over the upcoming Taiwanese election, for example. </p>
<p>Beijing may now expect a softer approach where none is on offer. Cameron may appear to signal a less assertive response to a crisis where it was not intended. Miscalculation is always a risk in international crises and if Beijing perceives its western backers as internally divided, it may seek to capitalise for its own geopolitical gain. </p>
<p>Together, then, the legacy of Cameron’s relationship with China in office poses significant risks for both the Conservative Party, and for UK-China relations. Navigating these risks will be a challenge for all concerned. </p>
<p>For his part, greater clarity from Cameron on what he thinks UK-China relations should look like may provide some breathing space – but that may also simply serve to highlight these divisions. Ultimately, it will be up to Cameron’s current boss, Rishi Sunak, to try and resolve these tensions – ideally, before a major crisis breaks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220309/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Oliver does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The foreign secretary wanted to embrace Beijing when he was prime minister but times have changed.Timothy Oliver, Lecturer in British Politics and Public Policy, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186712023-12-18T16:17:17Z2023-12-18T16:17:17ZVictorian Britain had its own anti-vaxxers – and they helped bring down a government<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565425/original/file-20231213-31-19s6sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C3663%2C2886&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/tr7x4acf/images?id=chsz86gd">E.E. Hillemacher/Wellcome Collection</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the 1906 UK general election results <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1906/jan/15/electionspast.past">rolled in</a>, it became clear that the Conservative party, after 11 years in power, had suffered one of the most disastrous defeats in its history. Of 402 Conservative MPs, 251 lost their seats, including <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/arthur-james-balfour">their candidate for prime minister</a>, defeated on a 22.5% swing against him in the constituency he had held for two decades. </p>
<p>Rising food prices, unpopular taxes and an opposition that promised to spend heavily on an expanded welfare state all contributed to the <a href="https://liberalhistory.org.uk/history/1906-election/">Tory downfall that year</a>. But something else had tipped the opposition Liberal landslide over the edge – compulsory vaccination. </p>
<p>Anti-vaccination campaigner <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/1/2374/1566.1">Arnold Lupton</a> had taken Sleaford in Lincolnshire for the Liberals on a 12% swing and immediately started his parliamentary campaign to abolish compulsory vaccination against smallpox, a public health policy that had been in place in England and Wales since 1853 (with Scottish and Irish legislation following suit in later years). </p>
<p>Hardly a single Conservative MP was an anti-vaccinator, but 174 of the 397 Liberal MPs in the new parliament signed Lupton’s petition. </p>
<p>Their attempt at changing the law was unsuccessful, but this flexing of parliamentary muscle by the anti-vaccinators persuaded the new Liberal government that the most expedient option was to reach a compromise with its backbench rebels.</p>
<p>In 1907, the law was changed to permit quick and easy opt-out by parents. Vaccination of all babies against smallpox remained theoretically compulsory until 1946, but in practice, it was now optional. A five-decade-long campaign, in the streets, the courts and finally parliament, had resulted in victory for the opponents of vaccination.</p>
<p>This is a sobering story for those of us who are researchers, medical professionals or public health activists campaigning against the spread of vaccine hesitancy in the modern world. </p>
<p>The success of vaccination in saving millions of lives, not just from <a href="https://theconversation.com/eradicating-smallpox-the-global-vaccination-push-that-brought-the-world-arm-to-arm-162091">smallpox</a> but a host of other diseases, seems so obvious that the case scarcely needs to be made. And yet it does, as just a cursory glance at social, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/09/gb-news-censured-after-naomi-wolf-compared-covid-jab-to-mass-murder">even at times mainstream</a>, media will reveal. </p>
<p>In response to this tide of dangerous disinformation, vaccine advocacy work often focuses on issues such as the lack of <a href="https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/lack-high-school-education-predicts-vaccine-hesitancy">public comprehension of scientific concepts</a> of “relative risk” and “efficacy”, and the connections of the anti-vaccine activists to more general conspiracy theories and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9111101/">extreme religious</a> or <a href="https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4670453/1/Alarcon-etal-2023-The-far-right-and-anti.pdf">political movements</a>. </p>
<p>The conclusion of many vaccine advocacy pieces is often that we must simply educate the public better while simultaneously cutting the flow of disinformation, yet this has often proved to be an uphill struggle. Why? Can vaccine advocates learn anything from the historic defeat of 1906?</p>
<h2>Social media of the Victorian era</h2>
<p>A recently published resource of Victorian anti-vaccination <a href="https://academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/llc/fqad075/7330453">“street literature”</a> seeks to contribute to this effort by providing free access to 3.5 million words from 133 documents, ranging from short pamphlets to longer publications over the period 1854-1906.</p>
<p>What the 133 sources have in common is that they were all produced for public consumption, designed to strengthen or maintain the beliefs of the converted while reaching out for new converts. Existing outside the conventional publishing industry, this street literature was the social media of the Victorian era.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Etching of children being vaccinated in East London in a crowded, chaotic room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565150/original/file-20231212-25-cw1fnh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565150/original/file-20231212-25-cw1fnh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565150/original/file-20231212-25-cw1fnh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565150/original/file-20231212-25-cw1fnh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565150/original/file-20231212-25-cw1fnh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565150/original/file-20231212-25-cw1fnh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565150/original/file-20231212-25-cw1fnh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children being vaccinated in East London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/fmrb5a8p/images?id=dnmduxyq">Wellcome Collection</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Computational analysis of these texts reveals anti-vaccination themes that are very similar to those of today. For instance, doubts about the effectiveness of vaccines, what they’re made of and their safety, feature prominently. </p>
<p>Other common themes include complaints that civil liberties are infringed by compulsory vaccination, alongside conspiracy theories of government cover-ups, general distrust of the medical profession, and an orientation towards alternative medicine. </p>
<p>What changes is the detail. For instance, fear of the inadvertent introduction of syphilis, tuberculosis and skin diseases, as very occasionally happened in Victorian times, may be compared to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/under-40s-can-ask-their-gp-for-an-astrazeneca-shot-whats-changed-what-are-the-risks-are-there-benefits-163571">blood clots</a> issue with the COVID vaccine. </p>
<p>Other more spurious scare stories, such as an association between vaccination and tooth decay or mental illness have their parallels in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/autism-and-vaccines-more-than-half-of-people-in-britain-france-italy-still-think-there-may-be-a-link-101930">discredited autism claims</a> of the present day. Likewise, modern conspiracy theories about big pharma have their Victorian parallel in allegations of medical profiteering from vaccination fees.</p>
<p>This study of the Victorian anti-vaxxers shows us that there are indeed recurrent fears more than two centuries old. But it also teaches us that some of the motivations of vaccine hesitancy stem from social, political and religious beliefs that are equally deep in time and often deeply held. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A calf being used to make vaccines." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565148/original/file-20231212-21-thvmg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565148/original/file-20231212-21-thvmg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565148/original/file-20231212-21-thvmg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565148/original/file-20231212-21-thvmg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565148/original/file-20231212-21-thvmg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565148/original/file-20231212-21-thvmg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565148/original/file-20231212-21-thvmg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The use of cattle to produce vaccines was one of the first biotechnology industries but drew fire from anti-vaccination activists on grounds of animal cruelty.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ju78dfph">Wellcome Collection</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9728709/pdf/homoeopathphys132846-0032.pdf">William Tebb</a>, one of the most prominent anti-vaxxers of Victorian times campaigned with equal energy on a whole raft of causes, from women’s suffrage to the abolition of slavery via vegetarianism, animal rights and mystical religion. </p>
<p>For Tebb and many of his followers, these were intimately connected causes. To reach the root of the problem, we need to untangle these connections in sensitive ways that go beyond conventional public engagement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218671/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The project described in this article is funded by the UK Economic & Social Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Sanderson received funding from the UK Economic & Social Research Council for this project. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Deignan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Victorian anti-vaccine literature shows that the fears and concerns remain largely the same today.Derek Gatherer, Lecturer, Biomedical and Life Sciences, Lancaster UniversityAlice Deignan, Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of LeedsChris Sanderson, PhD Candidate, ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2198872023-12-15T14:54:55Z2023-12-15T14:54:55ZMark Drakeford: what the resignation of Wales’ first minister means for the country and the Labour party<p>This week, Mark Drakeford announced his <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67702232">resignation</a> as Wales’ first minister after five years as leader. Back in 2018, Drakeford built his <a href="https://skwawkbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/manifesto-english-print.pdf">leadership bid</a> on a platform of “21st-century socialism”. As the manifesto reveals, the mantra was rooted in the ideas of “the radical tradition of Welsh socialism”, which would drive the creation of “a more equal, fair and just society”. </p>
<p>While it’s difficult to assess his legacy so soon, it is worth reflecting on whether these initial aims have been achieved. And what does Drakeford’s departure mean for the future of Wales and the Labour party?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1734924883669197043"}"></div></p>
<p>Arguably, the COVID-19 pandemic was the defining feature of Mark Drakeford’s tenure. During this period, Drakeford raised the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/04/covid-crisis-makes-mark-drakeford-most-recognisable-leader-in-22-years-of-welsh-devolution">profile</a> of devolution in Wales to the rest of the UK. His measured and cautious approach to the pandemic was <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/sunday-times-declares-mark-drakeford-comfortably-the-most-popular-uk-leader/">popular</a> and a <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/democracy-uk-voting-reform-votes-28283666">stark contrast</a> to that of Boris Johnson. </p>
<p>This popularity was reinforced when Drakeford led Welsh Labour to a decisive victory in the 2021 Senedd <a href="https://research.senedd.wales/research-articles/election-results-2021-what-s-changed/">election</a>. It further extended the party’s more than 100 years of electoral dominance in Wales.</p>
<p>In June this year, Drakeford <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/more-senedd-members-among-mark-drakefords-top-priorities-for-next-12-months-as-conservatives-blast-out-of-touch-plans-12910448">emphasised</a> Senedd reform as one of his <a href="https://www.gov.wales/senedd-reform">priorities</a>, including increasing the number of Senedd members. That is potentially a hard sell to the public, but Drakeford saw it as a “once in a generation” opportunity.</p>
<p>While the Welsh pandemic response appeared to be popular, Drakeford’s government is certainly not immune to criticism. Serious questions hang over the consequences of certain Welsh government COVID <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/welsh-government-coronavirus-covid-mistakes-21107573">measures</a>. To compound this, the rejection of a Wales-specific COVID inquiry has led to <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/first-minister-urged-to-right-a-wrong-and-commit-to-wales-covid-inquiry/">accusations</a> that Drakeford is shying away from scrutiny.</p>
<p>More recently, the Welsh government has faced significant <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/swansea-20mph-welsh-government-confusing-27941424">backlash</a> over its <a href="https://theconversation.com/wales-residential-speed-limit-is-dropping-to-20mph-heres-how-it-should-affect-accidents-and-journey-times-210989">policy</a> to drop the residential speed limit to 20mph, which appears to have led to <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/discontent-grows-towards-mark-drakeford-28157637">concern</a> even within Labour ranks.</p>
<p>When it comes to achieving 21st-century socialism, five years on and in nearly all measures – health, poverty, education – Wales is struggling. The Welsh government’s ambitions have been hamstrung by a lack of <a href="https://www.gov.wales/written-statement-welsh-government-response-uk-autumn-statement-2023">funding</a>, the confines of Wales’ devolved powers and the extreme circumstances of a global pandemic. And while these constraints cannot be ignored, the rhetoric of 21st-century socialism is not being met in reality.</p>
<h2>Wales and Westminster</h2>
<p>Drakeford’s legacy leads to questions concerning the future relationship between Welsh and UK Labour. Central to Drakeford’s <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13691481231158296">rhetoric</a> during his tenure was to position Welsh Labour as the <a href="https://policymogul.com/key-updates/31452/mark-drakeford-s-speech-to-the-labour-party-conference">defender</a> of Welsh interests against a harmful Conservative government. </p>
<p>With the potential of Labour governments in both Cardiff and London, this line of argument may soon come under pressure. Starmer has been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67608097">clear</a> that the economy is simply not in a position for public spending to be significantly increased. </p>
<p>The Welsh and UK parties are also <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/welsh-labour-deputy-leader-says-she-doesnt-want-policing-devolved-to-wales/">at odds</a> when it comes to the future of the union and the UK constitution.</p>
<p>If a Starmer government takes a different view on the constitution, or if the spending taps are not turned on sufficiently, would the new Welsh Labour leader seek to build a closer relationship with Starmer? Or, if competing agendas emerge, will the “<a href="https://sochealth.co.uk/the-socialist-health-association/sha-country-and-branch-organisation/sha-wales/clear-red-water/">clear red water</a>” between Welsh and UK Labour become choppier? Any new Welsh Labour leader will need to deal with these potential issues.</p>
<p>The phrase “clear red water” is a legacy of Drakeford’s that stretches back to before he became first minister. As special advisor to former first minister Rhodri Morgan in 2002, Drakeford coined it to mark the Welsh approach to policy making as distinct to new Labour, based on classic Labour principles and rooted in nationally bounded <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0952076712455821?casa_token=5-5e05bH1v4AAAAA%3AZQj1ky-kb3Jk61ha3dZnmfO03wBy0VRDXNRTY0X3aeixkdm3xV_51PRz4HHdnCqlkNF-Ui_pX5iO">politics</a>. </p>
<p>The saying has almost become a cliché by now, but if Labour wins the next general election, Drakeford’s successor will need to take inspiration from its purpose of emphasising the distinctive needs of Wales. </p>
<p>Drakeford made people across the UK take notice of Wales and devolution during the pandemic. Whichever phrase is deployed next – 21st-century socialism, clear red water, the Welsh way – the next Welsh Labour leader will need to fight Wales’ corner within their own party.</p>
<h2>The future of 21st-century socialism</h2>
<p>Drakeford stressed throughout his time as first minister that 21st-century socialism could only be achieved through practical action. His methodical and calm <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/14/england-chaos-boris-johnson-wales-mark-drayford-wales-legacy">approach</a> to governance has won him supporters both within and beyond the Labour party. </p>
<p>However, whether due to the nature of devolution, the lack of funding, the impact of the pandemic or the limitations of Welsh Labour’s programme for government, the 21st-century socialism Drakeford promised has not materialised.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/universal-basic-income-wales-is-set-to-end-its-experiment-why-we-think-thats-a-mistake-218206">Universal basic income: Wales is set to end its experiment – why we think that’s a mistake</a>
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<p>It is unlikely that the next leader will articulate their vision in the same way as Drakeford, who tried to root himself within Welsh Labour traditions. But if they are serious about pursuing progressive policies, they will need to be bold in tackling the challenges plaguing Wales today. </p>
<p>They will need to be innovative in their approach to public policy and the economy, and forthright in demanding adequate funding from the UK government, no matter which party is in power at Westminster.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nye Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What does the future hold for Wales and Welsh Labour in the wake of Drakeford’s resignation?Nye Davies, Lecturer in Politics, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2176242023-11-13T17:33:35Z2023-11-13T17:33:35ZSuella Braverman: how much of a threat is sacked home secretary from the backbenches? What the polling tells us<p>We’ve had many indications over the past few years, but recent events are perhaps the most significant yet of the difficult electoral coalition the Conservatives are trying to bridge as they fight to hold onto power. </p>
<p>The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has opted to end the tenure of Suella Braverman as home secretary, a politician who has made a career out of seeking to appeal to the cultural right wing of the electorate and the party. </p>
<p>At the same time, Sunak has appointed former prime minister David Cameron as foreign secretary. This is likely in an attempt to appeal to the traditional, more culturally liberal centre right of the party.</p>
<p>Removing Braverman is, by itself, unlikely to move the needle on Conservative support among the public in either direction. <a href="https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1724071651829043487">Snap polling</a> shows that most people (57% to 20%) think sacking her was the right thing to do. This is true even among Conservative voters, though to a lesser extent (44% to 39%). </p>
<p>Polling from <a href="https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1722995360547717503">before she was sacked</a> suggests that this is a consistent pattern – although people who voted Conservative in 2019 thought she should stay. The intervening days of protests in London do not seem to have bolstered her support.</p>
<p>Some of the positions Braverman seemed to think spoke to the nation are also actually very unpopular. Neither Conservative nor Leave voters agree that homeless people living in tents are making a <a href="https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1721946989556863301">“lifestyle choice”</a>, for example.</p>
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<p>And, even if they are aligned with her on such views, we <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-labours-plan-to-rewrite-brexit-might-not-be-as-politically-risky-as-it-sounds-214920">already know</a>, that ordinary voters have <a href="https://twitter.com/LukeTryl/status/1723676105612161252">more important things</a> on their minds, such as the cost of living, the NHS and climate change. In terms of electoral salience, these drown out the cultural issues which Braverman has made the focus of her tenure at the Home Office.</p>
<p>That is not to say, however, that her position on the pro-Palestine protests wasn’t popular. Indeed, <a href="https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Sky_Israel-Palestine_231108_W.pdf">polling suggests</a> most (by 50% to 34%) felt the protests over remembrance weekend should be banned. That’s especially true for people who voted Conservative in 2019 (80% to 12%).</p>
<h2>Outside the tent</h2>
<p>The danger for Sunak in releasing Braverman of her duties is less among the public and more within his own party. The public might agree with Braverman’s position on protests specifically, but are less likely to support her attacks on the police.</p>
<p>Braverman is, however, <a href="https://conservativehome.com/2023/11/06/our-cabinet-league-table-cleverly-goes-top-for-the-first-time/">far more popular than Sunak</a> among the latter group. And while it’s unlikely Braverman has enough backbenchers to seriously endanger Sunak, they are loud. We can expect them to make their positions heard and the one thing the public does not warm to is a divided party.</p>
<p>And what about David Cameron? In 2018, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=question_1#/survey/da17e415-de87-11e8-b1b9-719078e1b17c/question/0bff76f0-de88-11e8-8fe3-b72cd9fa6afe/politics">when YouGov polled</a> whether people would support Cameron returning, more than 50% were opposed, including 39% who strongly opposed (and 32% who were strongly opposed among Conservative voters).</p>
<p><a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/11/13/8bdf8/1">Snap polling</a> now suggests little has changed: 38% of the public think the decision was a bad one (with 24% on board and 38% saying “don’t know”). That includes 35% of Conservative voters (though 36% say the decision to bring Cameron back was a good one).</p>
<p>So, when the dust settles, all this may shift the electoral geography slightly, increasing support in the traditional Conservative heartlands (the <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/red-wall-blue-wall-tory-coalition-hold">“blue wall”</a>). But the Conservatives’ travails are long in the making and are structural. </p>
<p>Without a clear plan – and upturn in fortunes – on the cost of living and healthcare, it is possible that this is another chapter in the Conservatives’ Westminster drama that fails to resonate with the public. Instead, Sunak’s concern will be less with the public and more with his own party – those on the backbenches and in Conservative meeting rooms across the country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217624/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Devine receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council</span></em></p>Rishi Sunak’s former home secretary thinks she is speaking for the silent majority but most people disagree with her on key points – or have other things to worry about.Daniel Devine, Lecturer in Politics, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2167982023-11-02T16:23:39Z2023-11-02T16:23:39ZNew Labour dominance in the 1990s is now weakening the Conservative voter pipeline<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557095/original/file-20231101-28-isf2g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=868%2C7%2C3562%2C1482&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/people-head-avatar-set-different-smile-1737052175">Shutterstock/Olga_Lots</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At first glance, this quote, attributed to Winston Churchill, appears to fit the evidence in Britain. A survey conducted during the 2019 general election reported in our recent book showed that 23% of respondents under the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/search?q=%20Brexit+Britain">age of 30 voted Conservative and 55% voted Labour</a>. In contrast, 59% of the over 65s voted Conservative and only 13% voted Labour.</p>
<p>However, a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between age and voting in Britain over a period of 55 years from 1964 to 2019 shows that growing older does not directly affect support for the Conservatives. At the same time, it does appear to influence Labour voting. As voters get older they are a bit more likely to support Labour but not the Conservatives. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379423001178">paper which presents these findings</a> is part of a special issue of the journal Electoral Studies, being published in memory of our late colleague, political scientist Harold Clarke, who edited the journal for many years.</p>
<p>How is this rather counter-intuitive finding explained? The answer is that the relationship between age and voting is more complex than many people think. Political behaviour can certainly be affected by life-cycle effects – that is, people changing their politics as they grow older. But this is not the whole story. There are two additional aspects of age-related voting which need to be considered.</p>
<h2>Election campaigns</h2>
<p>The first is what is described as a period effect. This refers to the fact that specific election campaigns can influence age-related voting. </p>
<p>For example, the 2019 election took place after three years of political turmoil following the referendum on UK membership of the European Union. In the event, Boris Johnson’s slogan “Get Brexit Done” proved very effective and the Conservatives won an 80-seat majority.</p>
<p>This was very different from the 2017 election in which a barnstorming campaign by the newly elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and a stumbling campaign by prime minister Theresa May resulted in a Conservative minority government. These campaign-related differences can affect the relationship between age and voting independently of life-cycle effects.</p>
<h2>Generational effect</h2>
<p>The second factor which needs to be considered are cohort effects. These arise from the fact that each new generation has different socialisation experiences which influence their political beliefs and voting behaviour. </p>
<p>For the most part children in their early teens do not pay much attention to politics. As they grow older, they become politically aware so that their attitudes and behaviour are formed in late adolescence and early adulthood. As this happens, they are influenced by the economic and political circumstances of the time.</p>
<p>This means, for example, that voters who came of age politically in the relatively affluent 1960s are likely to look at the world differently from those who came of age in the turbulent 2010s. This is different from a life-cycle effect because <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691613796%20/the-silent-revolution">research shows</a> that once acquired these attitudes and values remain relatively stable over time as people grow older, even when their social and economic circumstances change.</p>
<p>It turns out that separating life-cycle, period and cohort effects is a tricky exercise. But when it is done, it shows something rather surprising. </p>
<p>For Labour there are no discernible cohort effects but there are life-cycle and a few period effects. This means that to win elections, Labour needs to do well on the key issues such as the management of the economy and have a leader who is viewed positively by voters. </p>
<p>For Labour, these factors have a more powerful impact on voting than age. In addition, it helps the party to have a significant group of voters who identify themselves as loyal supporters. These measures change more rapidly over successive elections than age does, and so are more important.</p>
<p>For the Conservatives, there are very strong cohort effects and a small number of period effects – but no life-cycle effects. In other words, ageing alone does not account for people turning towards the party. It is more about cohort differences. And this has greatly weakened support for the party over time. </p>
<h2>Local party infrastructure in decline</h2>
<p>The Conservatives have traditionally relied on a strong cohort of voters who were socialised in their formative years by family, communities and social ties to be loyal supporters. They would generally support the party because they learned to do so when they became politically aware in their youth. </p>
<p>The problem is that this source of support has now greatly weakened, so that new cohorts, such as the one socialised during the austerity years following the 2010 election, cannot be counted on to identify with the party. In fact, they are very opposed to it.</p>
<p>There are a number of reasons why the socialisation mechanisms underlying Conservative support have declined in this way. It appears from the data that the era of Labour dominance between 1997 and 2010 weakened many of the normal processes of socialisation which the Conservatives relied on previously. </p>
<p>Far fewer people learned to support the Conservatives during this period. In that respect New Labour changed the political landscape.</p>
<p>A second factor is the decline in the Conservative party as a voluntary organisation in the community. In the 1950s the party had the largest grassroots membership of any party in Europe. A large, well-organised grassroots party with a significant youth movement is an excellent mechanism for socialising people into lifelong support for the party, but <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Footso-ldiers-Political-Party-Membership-in-the-21st-Century/Bale-Webb-Poletti/p/book/%209781138302464">this has now disappeared</a>.</p>
<p>With each election relying on short-term forces such as issues and voter evaluations of leaders, rather than longer-term forces anchored in family and community attachments, general elections in the future will become more volatile and unpredictable. And if the Conservatives lose the next general election on the scale of their 1997 defeat it may be a very long time before they can hope to win again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216798/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC. </span></em></p>Fewer people are being ‘socialised’ into Conservative voting since the dominance of New Labour in the 1990s.Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2160262023-10-20T12:23:37Z2023-10-20T12:23:37ZAstounding byelection losses are about more than Tory MPs’ conduct – the party has a big general election problem<p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/71d1d0b8-a134-4d83-8de6-8b6d197abb1c">Byelection results</a> in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire represent new lows for a Conservative government that will soon be obliged to confront its mortality. </p>
<p>Even allowing for the capacity of byelections to produce startling results, the scale of collapse was jaw-dropping. The swing of 23.9% in Tamworth was the second largest Conservative-to-Labour shift we have seen, as a 19,634 majority was removed. Only 53 seats were safer for the Conservatives than Tamworth at the 2019 general election. </p>
<p>With a 20.5% swing from the Conservatives to Labour, Mid Bedfordshire was not far behind in the “wow” stakes. It lay among the Conservatives’ 100 safest seats, a constituency held by the Tories since 1931. </p>
<p>These reverses are part of a sustained pattern. Since June 2021, there have been four Conservative byelection losses to Labour on an average 19.8% swing, accompanied by four Conservative defeats to the Liberal Democrats, on even bigger swings, averaging 29.5%. </p>
<p>Combined, these eight Conservative byelection losses represent the second largest total ever seen in a period of less than two-and-a-half years. </p>
<p>Only the period that saw 13 byelection reverses for Harold Wilson’s Labour government between September 1967 and December 1969 offered a more concentrated session of defeats – and Labour duly lost the 1970 general election.</p>
<p>The circumstances triggering some recent byelections did not help the Conservatives. Tamworth was the seat vacated by Chris Pincher, the former Conservative MP who resigned over sexual misconduct and whose downfall also <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-resignation-how-the-prime-ministers-tumultuous-week-played-out-186607">triggered the end of Boris Johnson’s term as prime minister</a>. </p>
<p>Mid Bedfordshire was up for grabs after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/14/nadine-dorries-failure-to-resign-officially-as-mp-frustrates-sunaks-attempt-to-reset-tories">Nadine Dorries’s repeated threats to resign</a> finally came to fruition amid increasing vocal complaints from her constituents that she was failing to represent them. </p>
<p>But these individual circumstance don’t explain it all. The fact is that Conservatives electoral problems are more general. </p>
<p>What about the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, it might fairly be asked? The Conservatives indeed <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66264317">held that seat</a> last July. Yet local circumstances pertained in a way they will not in a national contest. </p>
<p>In any case, even the Uxbridge win came at the cost of 6.7% swing to Labour. A repeat of that at the national level would probably see the Conservatives, friendless beyond their own ranks at Westminster, removed from government.</p>
<h2>When is a byelection not ‘just a byelection’?</h2>
<p>But these are merely byelections, it might be contended. Yes, but it is beginning to feel like 1996 again, the year before Labour last swept to power. </p>
<p>That year, the old South East Staffordshire constituency (which became Tamworth in 1997) saw a very similar Conservative to Labour swing (22%). We knew what was coming in the general election.</p>
<p>The Conservatives could until recently hold onto the view that they were still very much in the game. Local election leads for Labour (five points in 2022, nine in 2023) were far less than those in opinion polls. But those big leads have now materialised in byelections. </p>
<p>Equally as ominously, Keir Starmer’s lead over Rishi Sunak as preferred prime minister <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/710316/prime-minister-voting-intention-in-great-britain/#:%7E:text=Prime%20Minister%20preference%20in%20the%20United%20Kingdom%202020%2D2023&text=Approximately%2020%20percent%20of%20people,leader%20of%20the%20Labour%20party.">has expanded</a>. Remember that the less preferred candidate has not prevailed since Margaret Thatcher beat Jim Callaghan way back in 1979.</p>
<p>Conservative hopes for a conference bounce have not materialised. When your biggest conference announcement is what you are cancelling – <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-decision-to-curtail-hs2-and-embrace-cars-means-for-the-uks-cities-214873">in this case HS2</a> – it’s not a great look. Stopping trains and boats will not win elections. </p>
<p>It is not true that the mood at the Conservatives’ gathering in Manchester was gloomy. It was far livelier than might have been anticipated given the polling gloom – but in a “the band played on” type of way. </p>
<p>Labour’s conference in Liverpool was, perhaps unsurprisingly, buoyant. The party stopped issuing passes at 18,500, with capacity reached and was turning away would-be exhibitors. A palpable sense of expectation was evident, unusual in a party which has managed to lose seven of the last ten general elections. </p>
<p>The Liberal Democrats’ conference in Bournemouth focused on converting their 91 second places in 2019 into victories. Realisation of such ambitions will overwhelmingly hit the Conservatives given 80 of those second places lie in Tory seats.</p>
<p>Yet perhaps the most important domestic political event during conference season took place away from the throbbing halls. Labour’s byelection capture from the Scottish National Party of Rutherglen and Hamilton West offered Keir Starmer a much clearer route to an overall majority via Scottish gains than had hitherto been the case in the years of nationalist impregnability.</p>
<p>Although pencilled in for next September in Liverpool, Labour might not be needing another conference. October 10 2024 looks the <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/general-election-october-2024-lord-hayward-inflation-drop-rishi-sunak-b1083290.html">likeliest election date</a> for a variety of reasons, in which case the campaign will be well underway. </p>
<p>Much can happen in the meantime of course but Labour is relentlessly closing off opportunities for Conservative attacks. Almost all the evidence suggests the electorate is, to adjust a recent conference slogan, likely to take a long-term decision for a rather different future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Tonge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The results represent more than just dissatisfaction with local MPs – the national picture has shifted.Jonathan Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2149122023-10-04T16:09:33Z2023-10-04T16:09:33ZWhat Rishi Sunak scrapping HS2 – and promising a new ‘Network North'– means for the north of England<p><em>UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has confirmed he is cancelling phase two of the long-standing high-speed rail network project, High Speed 2 (HS2). This comes two years after the government <a href="https://theconversation.com/hs2-leeds-branch-cancelled-what-will-this-mean-for-the-north-of-england-expert-qanda-172177">scrapped</a> the eastern Leeds branch of the project.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67005036">In a speech</a> to the Conservative conference in Manchester, Sunak promised that “every single penny” from the £36bn he says will be saved by scrapping the Manchester leg of the rail network will, instead, be spent on hundreds of transport and connectivity projects around the country. Included in those he listed were revamped motorways, resurfaced roads, new stations and keeping the £2 bus fare in place for the whole of the country.</em></p>
<p><em>We asked the University of Liverpool’s Tom Arnold, an expert on regional policy and infrastructure at the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place, to explain what this means for the north of England.</em></p>
<p><strong>Sunak has said HS2 in the north will be replaced with a new project, dubbed Network North. What is your initial reaction?</strong></p>
<p>At this stage it is unclear what Network North actually is. Is it a replacement for the previously announced (and since significantly downgraded) Northern Powerhouse Rail? Or is it a more comprehensive plan of rail, metro, bus, road and active travel projects? </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/find-out-about-every-new-transport-project-in-your-region">list of projects</a> includes many schemes that have previously been announced, such as a West Yorkshire mass transit system, which was promised in the <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1062157/integrated-rail-plan-for-the-north-and-midlands-web-version.pdf">Integrated Rail Plan</a> published in 2021. </p>
<p>No one who has followed <a href="https://twitter.com/JenWilliams_FT/status/1709484736131858941">the constant churn</a> in transport infrastructure policy in northern England over recent years will have any faith that many of these schemes will be delivered. Perhaps there will be more detail to follow, but at the moment it looks like yet another hastily announced and cobbled together list of proposed projects rather than a coherent longterm plan.</p>
<p><strong>Sunak made a point of saying that the north needed regional connectivity, not to London, but between the east and west of the country. Was this not the purpose of Northern Powerhouse Rail? And how can that project continue without the Manchester leg of HS2?</strong></p>
<p>Northern Powerhouse Rail, initially conceived in 2015 and developed by Transport for the North, was planned on the basis that HS2 would be delivered in full. As a network, its purpose was to connect the core cities of Manchester and Leeds in particular, but also Liverpool, Sheffield, Warrington and Hull. </p>
<p>The extended HS2 station at Manchester Piccadilly was central to the Northern Powerhouse plans, in that that station was already accounted for in the HS2 budget. In other words, simply moving all the money from HS2 to Northern Powerhouse Rail – or other pieces of rail infrastructure across northern England – doesn’t work. Because Northern Powerhouse Rail being built was contingent on HS2 being built.</p>
<p><strong>To begin with, HS2 was a rail project. But it had long since evolved into a tool for the government’s levelling-up agenda. What is the significance of the Northern Powerhouse to regional economies?</strong></p>
<p>Any kind of infrastructure projects is never just about the infrastructure. There’s always a vision of what kind of geography or economy a government is trying to create. </p>
<p>In the life course of HS2, that vision changed quite a lot. It was really David Cameron’s government who took the project on, emphasising that it was about re-balancing the UK economy and growing the core cities of northern England. Cameron’s commitment was to ensure that Leeds and Manchester were better connected to London, but also – and more importantly – better connected to the Midlands. </p>
<p>Getting from Leeds to Nottingham or Derby takes a lot longer than it should do. So too, from Manchester to Birmingham. HS2 was intended to enable people to travel and work between these cities, to take cars off the road and to minimise domestic flights. </p>
<p>Since 2016, however, this focus on cities – in terms of the benefits HS2 would bring – has shifted. Since the EU referendum, the messaging of successive governments around infrastructure has refocused on towns and coastal areas – on post-industrial communities. </p>
<p>This is not why HS2 has been cancelled, but it did help to lay the groundwork for the government to say that what people actually care about is being able to drive into their town centre and park for free. That shift has also suggested that cities like Manchester and Leeds are seeing a lot of development, so they’re fine.</p>
<p>This, of course, is false. Manchester is <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d8e26f6ed915d5570c6cc55/IoD2019_Statistical_Release.pdf">one of the most deprived local authority areas</a> in the country, despite all the high-rise developments being built. So too, in Liverpool and the other cities of the north. </p>
<p>If you look at the HS2 business case, the best return on investment was the Manchester to Birmingham leg, not the Birmingham to London leg. That’s because it would have brought these cities closer together, reaping economic benefits as well as improving people’s quality of life. </p>
<p>Anyone who travels around regularly on the northern rail network, or the Midlands rail network – as I do on a weekly basis – knows it is a miserable experience. The trains are frequently over capacity and they’re frequently late. </p>
<p>This costs people their jobs. It costs businesses contracts. It makes us all worse off. Lack of consistency in infrastructure decision making affects business confidence and <a href="https://www.productivity.ac.uk/news/diane-coyle-at-the-treasury-committee-long-term-perspectives-and-large-scale-investments/">puts off potential investors</a>. </p>
<p>It tells potential investors that the UK is not a reliable nation. There will be businesses who have been planning for years of investing in Manchester. They have based their investment decisions on what successive governments have said was going to happen. We are now many years along from the initial announcement of HS2. What does that do to international confidence in investing in a place like Manchester? </p>
<p>It damages the confidence the local electorate has in its government too. HS2 was not, in itself, going to solve deprivation in Manchester or Liverpool. These are long-term, entrenched problems. But the cities of the north of England are poorer than they should be. They are not as productive as cities of comparable size in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. </p>
<p><strong>How much political damage will this wreak ahead of the election?</strong></p>
<p>HS2 has never been a popular project, even in the cities that were set to benefit from it. Support from politicians has been vociferous, from the electorate, less so. But that is the case for almost every big infrastructure project. </p>
<p>When the M25 – London’s orbital motorway – was being planned in the 1950s and 1960s, many people hated the idea. They didn’t want to spend all that money on what they thought was a white elephant project. Now, though, no one would suggest we get rid of it. </p>
<p>With Sunak <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a16d70c6-2880-4d1b-8574-8b9a2c741d11">cancelling HS2</a>, people may look at the flip-flopping, at the delays, at the promises made over successive years and think that they can’t believe anything this government says. </p>
<p>Whether that’s building Northern Powerhouse Rail or investing money in buses, trams, local train networks or better roads. The decision to cancel HS2 will not be popular. And this government only has itself to blame.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Arnold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Infrastructure development in Northern England has been increasingly muddled in recent years. Few will be convinced by Sunak’s new pledge to fix this.Tom Arnold, Research Associate in Public Policy, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2144232023-10-04T15:44:40Z2023-10-04T15:44:40ZRishi Sunak packages U-turns as challenges to consensus politics – an improbable effort to rebrand as the candidate for change<p>The party conference speech is traditionally an important moment for political leaders. It enables them to set the agenda, rally the core membership and supporters around key themes, and speak to the wider audience of electors. </p>
<p>The Conservative party has now had five different party leaders giving conference speeches as prime minister at this time of year since 2015. This is the third party leader to give a speech in the past three years. </p>
<p>Rishi Sunak’s <a href="https://youtu.be/32lebdCymaw?t=3044">first party leader speech</a> may indeed be his only one if the election is called before October 2024 and he is removed from office and the leadership.</p>
<p>Having lost the 2022 party leadership contest to Liz Truss, then, after her brief tenure, becoming party leader and prime minister without any further general or party leader election, Sunak has no electoral mandate to draw on. </p>
<p>With a general election within a year, the party conference speech offers the opportunity to set out a narrative and present personal credentials to party and the electorate. Takeover prime ministers do, however, struggle to build electoral coalitions, and their <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-take-over-prime-ministers-without-a-popular-mandate-1916-2016/">tenures are shorter, often ending in failure</a>.</p>
<p>The stakes were therefore high for Sunak – as they were for <a href="https://theconversation.com/liz-truss-what-her-conservative-party-conference-speech-revealed-191917">Truss a year before</a>. With net approval rates hovering around the same level as Boris Johnson at his lowest and with the party between 15 and 20 points behind Labour in the national polls, the outlook is bleak.</p>
<h2>The optics</h2>
<p>In a surprise move, Sunak was introduced on to stage by his wife Akshata Murty. He then spoke from a prepared text for almost an hour. </p>
<p>After trailing the speech as a reset, Sunak continued to play the <a href="https://theconversation.com/political-leaders-need-a-grand-narrative-rishi-sunaks-is-a-story-of-decline-213940">decline theme</a> in arguing that the British political system is “broken”. He presented himself as the change candidate after “30 years of a political system that incentivises the easy decision, not the right one”.</p>
<p>The speech was seeking to establish Rishi 2.0 in the eyes of the electorate, after a year of attempting to stabilise the party and pursuing <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64166469">five rather limited pledges since the start of the year</a>. There was little mention of the pledges apart from the claiming progress. </p>
<p>Evident, however, was an attempt to pit Sunak against consensus and vested interest. There is even a suggestion that <a href="https://unherd.com/2023/10/the-brutal-death-of-manchester-toryism/">Dominic Cummings was called in from the cold</a> to advise on shifting the dial and recommended Sunak make some big noisy moves to convince that he is an agent of change. </p>
<p>U-turns on the HS2 high-speed rail project and net zero timelines were therefore presented as a challenge to “consensus politics”. In proposing the alternative, £36 billion from the cancellation of the Birmingham to Manchester HS2 line will be redirected to a number of other transport schemes serving the region instead.</p>
<h2>Health and education: supply and demand</h2>
<p>A couple of well-trailed policy announcements caught the eye. On health, he promised a free vote in parliament on raising the legal smoking age by a year, each year. This move would mean that a current 14-year-old would never be able to legally buy cigarettes, a move <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/13/new-zealand-passes-world-first-tobacco-law-to-ban-smoking-by-2025">adopted in New Zealand in December 2022</a>. </p>
<p>Sunak acknowledged that restricting choice was not conservative, but weaved it into his narrative of making hard long-term decisions. </p>
<p>On education, in another well-trailed announcement A-levels will be replaced with a new advanced British standard, combining T and A levels ensuring that five subjects are taught to 18, including maths and English.</p>
<h2>What about the economy?</h2>
<p>On the economy, Sunak defended his approach from the tax-cutting wing of the party, sticking to his fiscally conservative line while merely hinting that they may be on the cards. “I know you all want tax cuts,” he told the party conference audience before insisting that at the moment, bringing down inflation represented the best “tax cut” available.</p>
<p>But there were no big announcements on the economy. The goal seems instead to continue on this path, claiming the UK has shown hints of a strong recovery and that growth will follow.</p>
<h2>Values, values, values</h2>
<p>The Conservative party is now very much, <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/state-conservative-party">as political scientist Tim Bale notes</a>, a populist radical-right party with little pragmatism or ability to build consensus left. </p>
<p>This was most evident in Sunak’s defence of his immigration policy, when he hinted that he might be willing to go further in removing the UK from its international obligations towards refugees – a direction that would please the right of the party.</p>
<p>There was also the customary announcement of a crackdown on those claiming welfare benefits through ill-health. Pressing the populist button, he claimed, too, that it was common sense to say that “a man was a man and a woman is a woman”. </p>
<p>Sunak also repeatedly stressed family values and insisted that the UK was not a racist country but a multi-ethnic democracy. It was, he said, the Conservative party that made his ascent to prime minister happen (though it had not voted for him as party leader).</p>
<p>Much of this, together with the emphasis on his own political journey seeking to introduce his story to the electorate, was designed to strengthen his position with the right of the party, balancing the aspirational and contemporary with the traditional.</p>
<h2>Dividing lines</h2>
<p>While Sunak attacked the Labour party and Keir Starmer as lacking ideas, this speech attempted to create dividing lines – and not just with the opposition. </p>
<p>Without mentioning his predecessors, Sunak was setting up battles with a wide range of players on both HS2 and net zero. This may be a tactic to pit himself against the establishment or the prevailing consensus so that his claim to representing “change” can garner credibility. </p>
<p>However, Sunak is no outsider. He has been part of government throughout many of the years he is now critiquing. He will struggle to convincingly rail against such forces when he has been an integral part of the narrative.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214423/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Bennister does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A prime minister who has been an MP for nearly a decade now wants to challenge 30 years of ‘vested interests’.Mark Bennister, Associate Professor, University of LincolnLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2139402023-10-02T10:49:48Z2023-10-02T10:49:48ZPolitical leaders need a grand narrative – Rishi Sunak’s is a story of decline<p>During a January 2023 speech on <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-making-2023-the-first-year-of-a-new-and-better-future-4-january-2023">“building a better future”</a> the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, insisted that “we can change our country’s character. We can reverse the creeping acceptance of a narrative of decline.”</p>
<p>Months later, this narrative has manifested in Tory malaise and division, low approval ratings, and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ebc33f14-6af9-4c76-acba-46dde8e2b73d">collapsing buildings</a>. Sunak recently <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-interior-minister-braverman-we-need-pragmatic-approach-net-zero-2023-09-20/">watered down</a> his climate change mitigation policies, and refused to “speculate” on the <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/hs2-rishi-sunak-refuses-to-answer-questions-on-rail-projects-future-in-series-of-tough-local-radio-exchanges-12971461">future of rail project HS2</a>. The Sunak government is seemingly unable to reverse a harmful narrative or maintain its own.</p>
<p>Writing in The Times, columnist and former Conservative MP <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-needs-to-change-the-narrative-fast-tzdhn67mp">Matthew Parris observed</a> that “the best and often only way to rebut a narrative is with a bigger narrative”. But political leaders are successful when they present a grand narrative and find a way to connect themselves to it. Simply finding a bigger narrative is not enough – political leaders must be compelling characters within their narrative. </p>
<p>Illustrating the risks of failure, the loss of a Conservative majority in 2017 was attributed to Theresa May <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1369148120910985">“performing neither the narrative nor the persona”</a>.</p>
<p>In a celebrated <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFPwDe22CoY">keynote speech</a> at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004, Barack Obama remarked that: “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story … that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFPwDe22CoY">Commenting on that speech</a>, author Michael A. Cohen notes that “what makes a great political speech is if you can somehow fold your story into this larger American story”. </p>
<p>Sunak’s big chance to follow suit will be at his first party conference speech as leader and prime minister. <a href="https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/the-downing-street-years-margaret-thatcher?variant=40026188939342">In the words of Margaret Thatcher</a> – a figure of admiration for Sunak – this is an opportunity to “inspire the party faithful as well as ease the worries of the doubters”.</p>
<p>But the challenge is daunting and the stakes high. Sunak must counter the existing narrative of a <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/crumbling-britain">“crumbling Britain”</a>. He must also repair inconsistencies between his self-proclaimed narrative of a “man of the people” and his own present circumstances. While he attempts to convince struggling voters that he understands their difficulties, he is reasonably portrayed as wealthy and out of touch. </p>
<h2>Contradictions in Sunak’s narrative</h2>
<p>Effective narratives run on empathy. The audience (in this case, the voting public) must feel able to personally connect with the narrative and the narrator. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1545426650032111616">campaign video</a> for his unsuccessful first leadership election bid, Sunak begins with the words: “Let me tell you a story”. It was a story about himself, his family and how Britain “gave them and millions like them, the chance of a better future”.</p>
<p>It is difficult to align yourself with a revival narrative, or an everyman narrative, from a position of privilege. Sunak upgrading the local electricity network to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-pays-to-upgrade-electricity-grid-to-heat-his-private-pool-b2299169.html">heat his private pool</a> at the height of the energy and cost-of-living crises certainly didn’t help project empathy. Nor did asking a homeless man if he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVHJXdcN7R0">worked in a business</a>.</p>
<p>It’s possible that Sunak’s wealth and privilege may render him singularly incapable of connecting to a bigger narrative at this moment in British history. </p>
<p>Sunak has failed thus far to rebut a narrative of decline. He has been unable to create a convincing new narrative for the country (the “renewal”) or for himself (the “everyman”), much less connect the two. </p>
<h2>A narrative of decline</h2>
<p>Sunak’s team has already attempted to construct a narrative of his premiership – one of a sensible, cautious man cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor, Liz Truss. As argued in an <a href="https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/10/25/rishi-sunaks-first-job-clearing-up-the-mess-he-helped-make">article in The Economist</a>: “There is just one problem with this narrative. Mr Sunak is a cause of the problem as well as the solution…helping tidy up a mess that he helped create.”</p>
<p>Instead of establishing a new story, Sunak has instead made himself a key character in the narrative of decline he sought to escape. It might have been possible to construct a narrative of Tory revival early in Sunak’s premiership, but if it was in evidence, it was short lived. Local election losses in May were followed by a crisis over <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/01/crumbling-concrete-threatens-hospitals-homes-schools/">collapsing school buildings</a> over the summer. </p>
<p>The IMF recently published a <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/07/11/cf-United-Kingdoms-Long-Run-Prosperity-Hinges-on-Ambitious-Reforms">report</a> highlighting Britain’s “challenging economic outlook” and “weak potential growth”. Public services are not forecast to return to <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/autumn-statement-2022-public-services">pre-pandemic levels of performance</a> before the next election. Resignations and scandals have also <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-much-trouble-is-sunak-in/">continued in Sunak’s government</a>.</p>
<p>At the Conservative Party conference, Sunak will have another opportunity to seize the political initiative. He may follow the example of Thatcher: when faced with a decline narrative, she chose not to reverse it but to embrace it – and blame it on her opponents. </p>
<p>Harnessing themes of decline can bring significant benefits. Political scientist <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362223348_Make_Us_Great_Again_The_Causes_of_Declinism_in_Major_Powers">Robert Ralston argued</a> that narratives of decline “resonate because they acknowledge the pain inflicted by events, point blame, and outline paths forward for healing and renewal”. Thatcher acknowledged widespread crises and mistakes and presented herself as the person to fix them. Narratives of decline are thus part of every politician’s playbook.</p>
<p>In explaining why Truss was unsuccessful with the same strategy, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/17/truss-thatcher-britain-decline-conservatives/">Ralston pointed out</a> that Thatcher was, unlike Truss, a convincing political outsider who “successfully blamed the incumbent Labour Party for Britain’s problems”. </p>
<p>By contrast, 13 years of Conservative incumbency means that Sunak – like Truss before him – is very easily implicated in any decline he might exploit. Moreover, acknowledging (much less sharing) the public’s pain has never come easily to Sunak. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Sunak has attempted to play the outsider, having been vindicated for his <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/09/27/doomster-rishi-sunak-right-trussonomics/">warnings against “Trussonomics”</a>. More recently, in his <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-net-zero-20-september-2023">speech on net zero</a>, Sunak pledged “to change the way our politics works”. </p>
<p>Whatever Sunak decides, reversing the narrative of an impending British collapse or leveraging decline to his advantage, his search for a grand narrative is already replete with incongruities. In the end, the stark realities outside Westminster may force him to acknowledge decline and his role within it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The prime minister has acknowledged that a narrative of national decline is setting in – but he has been unable to disentangle himself from it.Alex Prior, Lecturer in Politics with International Relations, London South Bank UniversityClara Eroukhmanoff, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, London South Bank UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2127412023-09-05T15:15:03Z2023-09-05T15:15:03ZPoverty in Britain is firmly linked to the country’s mountain of private wealth – Labour must address this growing inequality<p>Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66634187">has said</a> that a Labour government would not raises taxes on wealth, capital gains or higher incomes. She does not, she says, see “the way to prosperity as being through taxation.” </p>
<p>Britain is asset rich. National wealth – a mix of property, business, financial and state assets – stands at almost <a href="https://wid.world/news-article/world-inequality-report-2022/">seven times</a> the size of the economy. That is double the level of the 1970s. </p>
<p>This has not come about as a result of investment and productivity growth. Instead, much of this private-wealth mountain is <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">unearned</a> – the product of windfall gains, resulting from state-driven <a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/the-missing-billions/">asset inflation</a>, the mass sell-off of former public and commonly held assets (from land to industries) and the exploitation of corporate power. As philosopher and civil servant John Stuart Mill quipped during the Industrial Revolution, it’s “getting rich while asleep”.</p>
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<p><em>The Conversation is partnering with <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">HowTheLightGetsIn</a>, the world’s largest philosophy and music festival, which returns to Kenwood House in London on September 23-24. On Saturday 23, we will host a discussion on how to restructure society for <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-common-good-16017">the common good</a>. <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/programme?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">Explore the full programme here</a> and don’t miss getting <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/festival-passes?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">20% off tickets using the code CONVO23</a></em></p>
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<p>This has widened the wealth gap. The top tenth of Britons now holds nearly half of the UK’s <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/totalwealthingreatbritain/april2018tomarch2020">private wealth</a>. The <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006">poorest half’s share</a>, meanwhile, has never exceeded one-tenth. </p>
<p>As a former US supreme court justice <a href="https://www.newgeography.com/content/004253-concentrated-wealth-or-democracy-not-both">Louis Brandeis</a> famously declared – a century ago – it was possible, in the US, to have either democracy or great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few – but not both. </p>
<p>Britain today badly fails Brandeis’s democracy test. Yet, the Labour party’s leaders have <a href="https://theconversation.com/keir-starmers-first-conference-speech-as-labour-leader-was-a-serious-affair-heres-what-you-need-to-know-168788">no declared plans</a> – at least, as yet – to close this gap.</p>
<h2>Radical thinking</h2>
<p>In its early history, Labour drew on a number of radical, egalitarian thinkers to develop the case for a greater level of equality including via <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-enclosure-how-land-commissions-can-lead-the-fight-against-urban-land-grabs-167817">common ownership</a> of assets. As Britain’s first professor of sociology, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/hobhouse-liberalism-and-other-writings/introduction/DE180F13230FC78763861C9804E41EC4">Leonard Hobhouse</a> put it:</p>
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<p>Some forms of wealth are substantially the creation of society and it is only through the misfeasance of government that such wealth has been allowed to fall into private hands.</p>
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<p>Historian and Christian socialist <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/tawney-richard-h">Richard Henry Tawney</a>, meanwhile, warned that assets used simply to extract payments from others, and not to perform a positive role, allowed “property without function”.</p>
<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/attlee00kenn">Clement Attlee</a>, who became prime minister immediately after the second world war, accepted that poverty was essentially due to inequality and excessive private ownership. He set out to reduce wealth inequality through a mix of higher taxes, nationalisation of key industries and a commitment to collectivism. </p>
<p>The course of poverty and inequality is ultimately the outcome of the conflict over the spoils of economic activity. It also traces the interplay between rich elites, governments and societal pressure. </p>
<p>Largely <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-post-war-drive-for-a-more-equal-society-help-with-todays-cost-of-living-crisis-185743">as a result</a> of Attlee’s policies, Britain achieved <a href="https://ifs.org.uk/living-standards-poverty-and-inequality-uk">peak income and wealth equality</a> and a low point for (relative) poverty in the late 1970s. This period turned out to be the high water mark of egalitarianism. </p>
<p>Since then, these gains have been overturned, amid a return to the <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">high-inequality politics</a> of the pre-war era. Child-poverty levels <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-average-income-for-financial-years-ending-1995-to-2020/households-below-average-income-an-analysis-of-the-income-distribution-fye-1995-to-fye-2020">have doubled</a>. A small financial and corporate elite has seized a growing share of economic gains.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/london-is-a-major-reason-for-the-uks-inequality-problem-unfortunately-city-leaders-dont-want-to-talk-about-it-212762">London is a major reason for the UK's inequality problem. Unfortunately, City leaders don't want to talk about it</a>
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<p>Former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s governing philosophy of a private “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/05/thatcher-property-revolution-undone-plunging-home-ownership/">property-owning democracy</a>” brought a shift from collectively to individually owned wealth. It ushered in a string of policies, from the discounted sale of council homes to the sale of cut-price shares through rolling privatisation. </p>
<p>Yet the key outcome of that philosophy has been an erosion of Britain’s common wealth base. A towering <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">nine-tenths</a> of the national asset pool is now privately-owned while the share that is in public ownership has fallen from around 30% in the 1970s to one-tenth today. </p>
<h2>Rising inequality</h2>
<p>The property-owning dream is bypassing the current generation. The number of <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/housingandhomeownershipintheuk/2015-01-22">first-time home-buyers</a> now stands at less than half its mid-1990s rate. </p>
<p>The public’s ownership of <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/investmentspensionsandtrusts/bulletins/ownershipofukquotedshares/2020">corporate Britain</a> has shrunk and is largely confined to the rich and affluent. More than a half of shares in the nation’s quoted companies are owned overseas <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/investmentspensionsandtrusts/bulletins/ownershipofukquotedshares/2020">up from 8% 60 years ago</a> – largely by giant US asset management companies and sovereign wealth funds. They are displacing the share once held by UK pension and insurance funds.</p>
<p>Labour today remains largely silent on the critical distinction between new wealth creation that contributes to the common good, and extraction that serves the powerful few. In 1896, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/manual-of-political-economy-9780199607952?cc=gb&lang=en&">defined</a> economic activity as either the “production or transformation of economic goods” or “the appropriation of goods produced by others.” </p>
<p>Such <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-economic-growth-alone-will-not-make-british-society-fairer-or-more-equal-202388">appropriation</a> or extraction was widespread in the Victorian era but less prevalent in the post-war decades. Today, it is once again common practice. </p>
<p>Wealth surges that are not linked to new value creation have a malign socioeconomic impact, including upward redistribution from those without to those with assets. Many large companies have been turned into <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">cash cows</a> for executives and shareholders. House price rises benefit existing property owners, at the expense of all renters. </p>
<p>Taxation is one way of rebalancing – if only marginally at current rates – these gains and losses. However, Labour has been eroding its historic mission of greater equality. </p>
<p>As Labour prime minister between 1997 and 2007, Tony Blair’s ambitious commitment to cut poverty ultimately failed because Britain’s model of extractive capitalism was allowed to continue unchecked. </p>
<p>On the day of Thatcher’s death in 2013, he <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-22073434">said</a> he’d always aimed to build on her achievements, not reverse them. He bought into the argument that surging rewards at the top were deserved and that poverty had nothing to do with the process of wealth accumulation. </p>
<p>History cannot be clearer, though. Poverty levels soared during the 1980s because of the sharp rise in the share of national income accruing to the rich, a trend that left less for everyone else. </p>
<p>Current Labour leader Keir Starmer has said that the fight against poverty requires more than “<a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/why-sir-keir-starmer-wants-to-smash-through-the-class-ceiling-with-vision-for-scotland-4254496">tinkering at the edges</a>.” A successful strategy would require a new set of embedded pro-equality measures. Yet, like Blair, he appears to be downgrading the anti-inequality goal. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">HowTheLightGetsIn</a>’s theme for London 2023 is <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/the-big-ideas">Dangers, Desire and Destiny</a>. The two-day festival on September 23-24 covers everything from politics, science, philosophy and the arts and attracts a host of speakers including Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer prize-winners, political activists and world leading thinkers.</em></p>
<p><em>Alongside the Conversation’s curated event <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-common-good-16017">The Common Good</a>, expect to see Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Ruby Wax, Michio Kaku, David Baddiel, Carol Gilligan, Martin Wolf and more lock horns over a packed weekend of debates, talks and performances. <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/programme?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">Explore the full programme here</a> and don’t miss out on <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/festival-passes?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">20% off tickets using code CONVO23</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stewart Lansley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The UK Labour Party used to radically advocate for common ownership. But as private wealth in Britain benefits from ever greater tax breaks, anti-inequality sentiment is waning.Stewart Lansley, Visiting Fellow, School of Policy Studies, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2124932023-08-30T15:07:30Z2023-08-30T15:07:30ZIs Rishi Sunak a lame duck? With MPs divided and rebelling, a sense of decline hangs heavy in the air<p>The notion of a lame duck leader is most commonly associated with the United States. The term refers to a president who will soon be succeeded in office – a situation that most commonly applies at the end of a second (<a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-22/">and final</a>) term, before the president has left office but after their successor as been chosen by the electorate. </p>
<p>Since US presidential elections are held in November but the new leader doesn’t assume office until the following January, there is a period in which the president can struggle to pass legislation. This might be due to resistance from a congress running down the clock or because salience is shifting from their programme to that of their successor.</p>
<p>The UK system is different, but Rishi Sunak also appears to be struggling to get much done. The parliamentary timetable finished unusually early on a number of days in late <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-06-29">June</a> and early <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-07-05/debates/22070575000002/NorthernIrelandAct1998NorthernIrelandAssemblyAndExecutive">July</a>. The government, in the words of one opposition MP, <a href="https://twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1676265788007653377">“doesn’t really have a programme</a>”.</p>
<p>And with an election guaranteed to take place by the end of January 2025, the sense that the clock is running down on a government that has reached the end of its term is hard to avoid. So might Sunak also be called a lame duck? </p>
<h2>Lame duck in Westminster</h2>
<p>There are a number of factors that make it difficult for Sunak to enact a wide-ranging legislative agenda. The Conservative parliamentary party is highly pluralistic, which makes it difficult to design and pass legislation at the best of times. </p>
<p>The differences in perspective and philosophies within the party have been laid bare by recent turmoil, including the lack of consensus over who should lead after the downfall of Boris Johnson and the chaos of Liz Truss’s brief tenure at the helm. </p>
<p>The last election in 2019 was fought and won almost exclusively on the issue of Brexit, but that issue <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/education/trackers/the-most-important-issues-facing-the-country">no longer dominates the political agenda</a>. The party is now bogged down in its differences over <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/sunak-tories-climate-change-net-zero-b2392717.html">climate change</a> and <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/rishi-sunak-facing-major-tory-rebellion-over-online-safety-bill_uk_63c1075ce4b0fe267cb8b548">online regulations</a>. </p>
<p>The public can see that there is an urgent need for houses to be built, yet MPs appear to be against that happening <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/05/sunak-backs-down-on-housebuilding-targets-after-pressure-from-tory-mps">in their own constituencies</a>, causing even more disagreement about the path forward. </p>
<p>A strong leader might be able to paper over the cracks and push ahead but Sunak has made <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-times-conceded-tory-rebels-small-boats-2285657#:%7E:text=Within%2520weeks%2520of%2520becoming%2520prime,to%2520stop%2520small%2520boat%2520crossings.">concession after concession</a> to his rebelling backbench MPs, particularly on the <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/rishi-sunak-oil-gas-licenses-north-sea/">right of the party</a>.</p>
<p>While the reasons for the divisions are debatable, the government’s lack of progress, even by its own standards, is somewhat clearer cut. Sunak outlined five priorities at the start of the year – including “stopping the boats” and reducing NHS waiting times – and there is <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-five-pledges-nhs-inflation-immigration-b1050833.html">little room for optimism that these will be met</a>. </p>
<p>Voices both <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/16/michael-gove-highlights-civility-over-culture-wars-in-speech-to-natcon">within</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/03/us-pollster-frank-luntz-urges-tories-to-ditch-culture-wars">outside</a> the party have lamented the shift towards fighting “culture wars” rather than producing policy. The idea seems to be to ride an “us” against “them” narrative into the next election campaign. </p>
<p>But there is little to suggest such tactics are <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2021-05/culture-wars-in-the-UK-how-the-public-understand-the-debate.pdf">cutting through with the public</a>. The use of such a distraction tactic adds to the evidence that the Conservative party currently lacks a holistic programme for government.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Sunak’s personal polling reached <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunaks-approval-ratings-fall-to-lowest-level-since-becoming-prime-minister-12922962#:%7E:text=A%2520survey%2520from%2520YouGov%2520showed,25%2525%2520with%2520a%2520favourable%2520one.">-40%</a> this summer while the Conservatives trail Labour by some <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/985764/voting-intention-in-the-uk/">20 percentage points</a> in the latest voting intention polls. As the election approaches, polling of this kind could drive attention towards Labour and its proposals for government.</p>
<h2>There’s still time</h2>
<p>All this said, a legislative block does not have to be quite so terminal for a struggling leader in the UK as it might be in the US. </p>
<p>Sunak still has a working majority <a href="https://members.parliament.uk/parties/commons">of 62 seats</a> in parliament so better party management would go a long way to helping his overall position. And unlike a US president who has served two full terms, Sunak can (and clearly intends to) fight the next election. He very much still has skin in the game and an incentive to perform better than he has so far. </p>
<p>Nor is the opposition currently offering anything radically different. Attention has not (yet) shifted from Sunak to Keir Starmer and the latter is giving Sunak plenty of room to shape policy through his willingness to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jul/06/keir-starmer-free-school-meals-labour-leader-teachers-pay-rise">“wait and see”</a> on key policies, while coming under fire for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/04/u-turns-labour-keir-starmer-tuition-fees-income-tax">diluting or abandoning previous pledges</a> he made to secure the Labour leadership.</p>
<p>And while the merits of the culture war tactic are questionable, it is evidence that the government has no intention of going down without a fight. Sunak has gambled on promoting controversial figures such as the Conservative party’s deputy chairman <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/who-is-lee-anderson-profile-mp-b2390068.html">Lee Anderson</a> to help orchestrate that election campaign, demonstrating a collective desire to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-minister-the-world-has-moved-on-boris-johnson-2023-06-11/">“move on</a>” from his predecessors and put distance between his and previous Conservative governments. </p>
<p>Even so, without a clear programme, and measurable success, Sunak may be engulfed by wider circumstances which further limit his policy options. For example, a deteriorating economic situation might suggest that there exists no prospect of large-scale tax cuts or spending giveaways prior to the election. </p>
<p>Even if the public were to forgive him for failing to meet his five pledges, a lack of progress on them in the very near future could leave him without any room for manoeuvre when the official election campaign kicks into gear.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Kirkland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With his own MPs blocking his every policy, Sunak doesn’t appear able to get much done.Christopher Kirkland, Lecturer in Politics, York St John UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2099022023-07-21T11:15:22Z2023-07-21T11:15:22ZByelection losses are terrible for the Conservatives – but there are glimmers of hope<p>It says much of the Conservatives’ current plight that a win of just 495 votes is being <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-66181315">hailed with relief</a> inside the party.</p>
<p>The Conservatives narrowly avoided a total wipeout in the July 20 trio of byelections, successfully defending Boris Johnson’s former seat in Uxbridge and South Ruislip with the election of Steve Tuckwell. The unpopularity of London Labour Mayor’s Sadiq Khan’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66264893">expansion of the ultra low emissions zone</a> (Ulez) undoubtedly contributed to the Conservative defence of Uxbridge.</p>
<p>But the party’s losses in Somerton and Frome in Somerset, and Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire, are notable. </p>
<p>So far in this parliamentary term, the Conservatives have had to defend nine seats. They have now held three. </p>
<p>The win in Uxbridge followed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/03/old-bexley-and-sidcup-byelection-louie-french-mp-tories-retain-seat">Old Bexley and Sidcup</a> in 2021, after the death of former cabinet minister James Brokenshire. The other was in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-60254176">Southend West</a> in 2022, a race uncontested by the other main parties following the murder of previous MP David Amess.</p>
<p>Of the six losses, four have been to the Liberal Democrats, on a staggering average 29% swing. The byelection in Somerton and Frome, after the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65941710">resignation</a> of Conservative MP David Warburton following allegations of misconduct, marked another win for the Liberal Democrats.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-resignation-why-rishi-sunak-cant-afford-to-lose-more-than-one-of-three-impending-byelections-207588">Boris Johnson resignation: why Rishi Sunak can't afford to lose more than one of three impending byelections</a>
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<h2>Historic Labour win</h2>
<p>Selby and Ainsty was the Conservatives’ second byelection loss to Labour during this term, and it was significant.</p>
<p>The result was worse for the Conservatives than their previous loss to Keir Starmer’s party in <a href="https://theconversation.com/wakefield-and-tiverton-and-honiton-byelections-even-boris-johnson-loyalists-will-now-be-worried-for-the-next-election-185722">Wakefield</a>. That saw “only” a 12.6% swing to Labour, barely guaranteed to give the opposition an overall majority. </p>
<p>But Selby and Ainsty was one of the Conservatives’ safest northern seats, a 20,137 majority lost on a huge 23.7% swing. Voters seem to have been unimpressed by their MP, former Cabinet Office minister Nigel Adams, standing down when he did not receive a peerage. He’s now been replaced by Labour’s Keir Mather, who at 25 is the youngest member of parliament. </p>
<p>Turnout in Selby was down by 20,000. The Conservatives can hope that most of those 20,000 were their followers who will turn up on general election day, but it’s a leap of faith.</p>
<h2>Echoes from history</h2>
<p>This is all reminiscent of when the Conservatives last crashed out of office in 1997. During the 1992-97 <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/m14.pdf">parliament</a>, the Conservatives lost all eight seats they defended in byelections: four to the Liberal Democrats, three to Labour and one to the SNP. </p>
<p>The average swing from the Conservatives to Labour and to the Liberal Democrats then was a whopping 23% – almost identical to the Selby and Ainsty swing – a clear portent of the looming and catastrophic Conservative defeat in 1997, their worst ever. </p>
<p>The Conservatives are now braced once again for the worst. Thirty-six MPs, including six former cabinet ministers, have announced they will be standing down at the next election, even though the contest is surely more than a year away. </p>
<p>For a while, some clung to the hope that Sunak and Starmer’s popularity ratings were close enough to give them a chance. No leader trailing on the question of “who do you think would make the best prime minister?” has won a general election since Margaret Thatcher in 1979. But Sunak now <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/710316/prime-minister-voting-intention-in-great-britain/">trails the Labour</a> leader by ten percentage points.</p>
<h2>What the future holds for the Conservatives</h2>
<p>The bad news is far from over for Sunak. It seems highly likely the eight-week <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66261825">suspension</a> from the Commons of Conservative MP Chris Pincher for allegedly groping two men will trigger a byelection in Tamworth this autumn. Under the Recall of MPs Act, only 10% of constituents need to sign a petition to generate the contest. And we saw what happened to the 20,000 Conservative majority in Selby. </p>
<p>An autumn byelection would be most unwelcome for a Conservative Party attempting a relaunch at its conference in Manchester in October. And at some point, Nadine Dorries will end the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/14/nadine-dorries-failure-to-resign-officially-as-mp-frustrates-sunaks-attempt-to-reset-tories">longest resignation in political history</a> and step down from her Mid-Bedfordshire seat. Cue another byelection. </p>
<p>Still, there are three glimmers of hope, however faint, for the current government.</p>
<p>One is that inflation is finally <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/will-inflation-in-the-uk-keep-rising">beginning to fall</a>, which may help reduce the current level of strikes. More working days were lost in the final quarter of last year than at any time since the 1980s. </p>
<p>Two is that the Conservatives have one final budget with which to put more money in people’s pockets. While tax cuts might be too blatant an electioneering ploy, we might expect a rise in tax thresholds.</p>
<p>Three is that the issue shaping the Uxbridge and South Ruislip result shows the problem Keir Starmer has in developing policies. The Labour leader’s only big new idea at last year’s party conference in Liverpool was a “new green economy” and he has been in retreat from it since. Everyone agrees with green policies until they are affected by them, and the reaction to Ulez in Uxbridge suggests elections may still trump the environment.</p>
<p>Sunak insists the result in Selby shows the general election is not a <a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/defiant-rishi-sunak-says-uxbridge-general-election-not-done-deal/">“done deal”</a>. But the expectation remains overwhelmingly of a Labour government in autumn 2024. The debate is whether it will have an overall majority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Tonge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More byelections could be on the way.Jonathan Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2075882023-06-13T11:59:22Z2023-06-13T11:59:22ZBoris Johnson resignation: why Rishi Sunak can’t afford to lose more than one of three impending byelections<p>The turmoil in the Conservative party unleashed by <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnsons-claims-about-being-forced-out-of-parliament-are-simply-false-heres-why-207490">Boris Johnson’s abrupt resignation</a> from parliament has triggered three separate byelections. The first is in the former prime minister’s London seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where he had a majority of just over 7,000 votes in 2019 with Labour in second place. The second is <a href="https://twitter.com/nadams/status/1667512301698596864?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">Nigel Adams’s</a> constituency of Selby and Ainsty, a safe North Yorkshire Conservative seat with a majority over Labour of more than 20,000. The third is Nadine Dorries’s seat of Mid Bedfordshire, which has a majority over Labour of just under 25,000 votes, making it a very safe seat.</p>
<p>Byelections are not generally thought to be a good guide to a party’s performance in a subsequent general election. Certainly, one can find examples of parties doing exceptionally well in byelections but not sustaining the success in a subsequent general election. The classic example of this is the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/15/newsid_2543000/2543507.stm">Liberals’ 1962 win in Orpington</a>. It was the first victory for the party outside the celtic fringe and the party leader, Jo Grimond, claimed that it was a major breakthrough. However, the party won only nine House of Commons seats in the 1964 general election.</p>
<p>More recently Labour retained Peterborough in a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48532869">byelection in June 2019</a>, even though it lost just over 17% of its vote share in comparison with the previous election in 2017. The Conservatives lost almost 26% of their vote share, much of it captured by the Brexit party. So while Labour held on to the seat this result proved to be no guide to the general election in December of that year, which the party lost badly.</p>
<p>However, the argument that byelections are no guide to general elections is not true if one looks at a lot of them. To see this, we can examine the Conservative party’s performance in all 474 byelections held in the UK since 1945 and compare them with its performance in subsequent general elections. A large majority of these byelections involved no change of party, something which occurred in 367 (77%) of the contests held over this period.</p>
<h2>Byelections over the years</h2>
<p>The chart shows net gains in byelections since 1945 for the Conservatives compared with net gains in House of Commons seats in subsequent general elections. The relationship between these is very strong (<a href="https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-readers/publications/statistics-square-one/11-correlation-and-regression">r</a>=0.70). The <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7529/">data</a> for this exercise comes from the House of Commons library.</p>
<p>To illustrate this with an example, during the Labour government of 1974 to 1979 there were a total of 30 byelections. Of these, 23 returned candidates from the same political party and the Conservatives won six of the remainder with the Liberals winning the seventh. Subsequently, Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 general election with a majority of 44 seats. A good byelection performance for the party preceded a good general election performance.</p>
<p><strong>Conservative net gains in byelections compared with net gains in seats in subsequent general elections 1945 to 2019</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531442/original/file-20230612-29-awcy9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chart showing that general election results correlate with byelection results." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531442/original/file-20230612-29-awcy9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531442/original/file-20230612-29-awcy9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531442/original/file-20230612-29-awcy9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531442/original/file-20230612-29-awcy9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531442/original/file-20230612-29-awcy9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531442/original/file-20230612-29-awcy9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531442/original/file-20230612-29-awcy9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Comparing general elections and byelections.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We can use byelection gains to predict increases in seats in the House of Commons in general elections in Britain. The modelling shows that a net win of one byelection by the Conservatives predicts an increase of 1.5% in the number of seats the party wins in a general election. This translates into just over nine extra seats in the House of Commons. Equally a net loss of a byelection reduces their House of Commons seat share by the same amount. This exercise is of course subject to errors, since the relationship is not perfect.</p>
<p>If we look at the same relationship for Labour, then it is weaker than for the Conservatives, but it is still highly statistically significant (r=0.5). This means that a net gain of one seat by the party in a byelection translates into an additional seven seats in the House of Commons. The Liberal Democrat relationship is very similar to that of Labour (r=0.51).</p>
<p>Since the 2019 general election there have been 13 byelections in Britain, eight of them with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%20List_of_United_Kingdom_by-elections_(2010%E2%80%93present)">no change of party</a>. As regards the remaining five, Labour lost Hartlepool to the Conservatives, but subsequently won Wakefield from them, so the party had a net gain of zero.</p>
<p>In contrast, the Liberal Democrats won three byelections from the Conservatives in Chesham and Amersham, North Shropshire and Tiverton and Honiton. The party did not have any byelections in its own seats, so the net gain for the party is three seats. This points to a strong revival of Liberal Democrat seats in the House of Commons after the next election.</p>
<p>Labour has a good chance of winning the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, but the other two seats are going to be tough nuts to crack. However, if either of them are captured by Labour or by the Liberal Democrats, it will be a disaster for Rishi Sunak’s government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC </span></em></p>Labour stands a good chance of taking one of three impending votes, while losing either of the other two would be very bad news for Rishi Sunak.Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2064752023-06-01T10:01:42Z2023-06-01T10:01:42ZWhat does high immigration mean for the government’s popularity? What data on voting habits tells us<p>The news from the Office of National Statistics that net migration reached a record high of 606,000 in 2022 is likely to have <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-65669832">embarrassed the government</a>, particularly the home secretary, Suella Braverman. For years, successive prime ministers have promised <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-immigration">reductions in net migration</a>, but without much success in delivering them.</p>
<p>But do these numbers actually mean anything for a government hoping to win an election?</p>
<p>The public is divided in its attitudes to immigration in Britain. That said, more people have a favourable view of immigration than have an unfavourable view. This was apparent in a <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2022-03/attitudes-towards-immigration-british-future-ipsos-march-2022.pdf">recent survey</a> conducted by Ipsos on behalf of the think tank British Future. The survey showed that 46% of respondents had a positive view of immigration and 29% had a negative view, with 18% not sure about the issue. The remaining 7% said they didn’t know how they felt.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/brexit-why-britain-voted-leave-european-union">our recent book</a> my colleagues and I modelled the determinants of voting behaviour in the 2019 general election and found that immigration played no direct role in influencing the vote. Rather, the election was dominated by the popularity of the party leaders, party loyalty, the state of the economy and also the Brexit issue.</p>
<p>If we look at the actual net migration numbers over time and compare it with support for the governing party, the relationship between them is positive, not negative. As the chart below shows, as the number of immigrants increases, so do voting intentions for the governing party. The correlation between the two is fairly strong (r = 0.49), and it applies to both Labour and Conservative governments.</p>
<p><strong>Voting intentions for the government, net migration and the unemployment rate in Britain (quarterly data 2006-2019)</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A chart showing positive correlation between government popularity and net migration from 2006 to 2020" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529346/original/file-20230531-27-7hg2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529346/original/file-20230531-27-7hg2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529346/original/file-20230531-27-7hg2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529346/original/file-20230531-27-7hg2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529346/original/file-20230531-27-7hg2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529346/original/file-20230531-27-7hg2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529346/original/file-20230531-27-7hg2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Whiteley, ONS and YouGov data</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We know that very high rates of immigration put a considerable strain on public services such as the NHS, education and housing. In addition, all the political parties and the public worry about it – though public concern about immigration has <a href="https://ukandeu.ac.uk/immigration-and-public-opinion-more-than-a-numbers-game/">declined in recent years</a>.</p>
<p>One clue to the puzzle of the positive link between immigration and government support lies in the state of the economy, in this case measured by the rate of unemployment. There is a negative relationship between unemployment and net migration into Britain (r = -0.29). In other words, as immigration increases over time, unemployment declines. </p>
<p>This is not surprising, since when Britain was a member of the European Union many workers came from the EU, particularly from eastern Europe, attracted by plentiful jobs and high pay compared with their home countries. We have recently seen the consequences for the UK job market of these workers leaving Britain after Brexit. Many positions are currently not being filled, causing shortages in the shops and adding to inflation.</p>
<p>The chart shows that unemployment rose after the start of the global financial crisis in 2008. By 2010, when the worse effects were over, net migration rapidly increased. But the government did not lose support as a result, and its popularity started to increase in 2014. The effects of the Brexit referendum are apparent in the chart as well, since net migration fell rather dramatically after the vote to leave in 2016. But during this period, government popularity did not really increase. </p>
<p>Several studies have examined the effects of immigration on employment and the wages of existing workers, and most have found either small or no effects. The Migration Advisory Committee, an independent body which advises government on immigration policies, reviewed the <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/741926/Final_EEA_report.PDF">results of recent studies</a> in 2018, and concluded that immigration did not lead existing workers to lose their jobs, and had little impact on wages.</p>
<p>People may be increasingly relaxed about legal immigration partly because it does not have damaging economic effects. But they are not as relaxed about illegal immigration.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Border Force boat carrying a small number of people in orange life vests." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528587/original/file-20230526-5088-q7wgc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528587/original/file-20230526-5088-q7wgc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528587/original/file-20230526-5088-q7wgc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528587/original/file-20230526-5088-q7wgc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528587/original/file-20230526-5088-q7wgc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528587/original/file-20230526-5088-q7wgc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528587/original/file-20230526-5088-q7wgc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People are less relaxed about small boat crossings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dover-kent-uk-april-30th-2022-2151230929">Sean Aidan Calderbank/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is important to recognise that the issue of immigration overall is different from that of people arriving illegally, although they are often conflated in public conversations. A recent YouGov poll showed that the public has a more negative attitude to asylum seekers <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/11/09/channel-crossings-rise-where-do-britons-stand-asyl">crossing the channel</a> than towards immigration in general. </p>
<p>Asylum seekers who arrive on small boats are often perceived as a threat to the security of the country and so invoke fear and anxiety among voters. There is a wealth of academic literature showing that <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/%20book/chicago/A/bo5471683.html">negative emotions such as fear, anger and anxiety</a> have powerful impacts on political attitudes and contribute to the growth in support for populism.</p>
<p>The upshot is that if incumbent parties want to be reelected they should focus on curbing irregular arrivals, while at the same time stressing the cultural and economic benefits of immigration. The government is <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-governments-plan-to-remove-asylum-seekers-will-be-a-logistical-mess-and-may-not-deter-people-from-coming-to-the-uk-201248">struggling to address this</a>, and their repeated failure to deal with the issue is hurting their credibility. </p>
<p>Labour will inherit this issue if elected next year, and may have an opportunity to reset policies in this area. But without a credible plan to deal with illegal migration, they will face the <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/which-political-party-would-be-the-best-at-handling-asylum-and-immigration">same problem</a> as the current government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206475/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC. </span></em></p>The relationship between net migration and support for the governing party is positive.Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2066522023-05-31T10:00:13Z2023-05-31T10:00:13ZAnnihilation in the red wall, an exit for a top leadership contender and a parliamentary party stuffed with southerners and Oxbridgers – how losing the next election could shape the Conservatives<p>The Conservative party is clearly in trouble. Admittedly, opinion polls are snapshots, not predictions, but few pundits would argue Rishi Sunak will find it easy to overturn Labour’s double digit lead in the next election, especially after the Tories’ poor showing in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-painful-picture-for-the-tories-forecasting-the-general-election-from-the-local-results-205364">recent local elections</a>. Even more worrying for Sunak, the severity of this trouncing appears to have been down, at least in part, to the willingness of those determined to eject the Tories from office to <a href="https://swingometer.substack.com/p/throw-the-rascals-out">vote tactically</a>.</p>
<p>It is hardly surprising that we’re beginning to see speculation about what will happen to the Conservatives in the event of a defeat at a general election, which seems most likely to take place in the autumn of 2024. Almost inevitably that has sparked debate about who might take over from Sunak should he decide to step down as leader – talk which home secretary Suella Braverman’s barnstorming speech to the recent <a href="https://nationalconservatism.org/natcon-uk-2023/presenters/suella-braverman-mp/">National Conservatism conference</a> in London has done nothing to quell. </p>
<p>The previous week, business secretary Kemi Badenoch’s decision to face down Brexit hardliners over the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill was discussed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/11/kemi-badenoch-makes-enemies-with-narcissistic-commons-appearance">through the prism of her leadership ambitions</a>. Even leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt’s impressive ability to hold up a really, really heavy ceremonial sword for a really, really long time during the King’s coronation provoked <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-14/penny-mordaunt-sword-bearer-is-the-conservative-party-s-new-political-weapon?leadSource=uverify%20wall">renewed chatter</a> about her chances for the top job.</p>
<p>But the direction the party will take if it loses next year, and who it will pick to lead it in opposition, is actually going to depend both on how many Tory MPs hang on to their seats in the wake of such a defeat – and on who they are. And that, in turn, might depend on quite how heavy defeat turns out to be.</p>
<h2>Three scenarios</h2>
<p>Here we look at three scenarios in an attempt to tease out the differences we’d expect to see in the parliamentary Conservative party. We’ve not included the seats in which MPs have announced they are resigning, because we don’t yet know who would fill these vacancies.</p>
<p>The first scenario is a Labour landslide that would leave just 106 of the current parliamentary Conservative party in Westminster. The second is a relatively comfortable Labour win, giving Keir Starmer a majority of around 60 over all other parties, including 207 current Conservative MPs. And the third is a result which means Labour is the largest party, and able to govern with the help of, say, the Lib Dems, either in the form of a confidence-and-supply agreement with a minority government or in full-blown coalition.</p>
<p>The most obvious change that any kind of defeat would bring would be the exodus from the Commons of most of those Tory MPs representing constituencies in the north of England, although this would nonetheless vary considerably according to the size of Labour’s victory. Only one northern MP would be left were Labour to win a landslide and around ten would survive in the event of a comfortable Labour victory or our hung parliament scenario. Even then, however, that would represent only a third of those Conservatives currently sitting for a northern seat. And as for holding onto the much discussed red wall, forget about it.</p>
<p><strong>How election defeat would shape party demographics</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528906/original/file-20230529-17-64r56l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A table showing how the demographics of the parliamentary Conservative party would be changed if three different election scenarios play out." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528906/original/file-20230529-17-64r56l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528906/original/file-20230529-17-64r56l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528906/original/file-20230529-17-64r56l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528906/original/file-20230529-17-64r56l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528906/original/file-20230529-17-64r56l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528906/original/file-20230529-17-64r56l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528906/original/file-20230529-17-64r56l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How parliament would look ideologically.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">T Bale/D Jeffery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Defeat would also bring about some demographic change. In all three scenarios women would make up a greater proportion of the parliamentary Conservative party, although the impact would be slightly greater in the event of a Labour landslide, with women making up almost a third of all Tory MPs. And because many of the party’s ethnic minority incumbents sit in some of its safest seats, a really bad defeat would also see them make up a greater proportion of Conservatives sitting in the House of Commons. The same incidentally goes for Oxbridge-educated Tory MPs and for current ministers.</p>
<p>Leavers would make up the majority in all three scenarios, and while the proportion of MPs associated with the anti-woke Common Sense Group (never as great as many imagine) would fall, the fall wouldn’t be that significant. As for the NIMBYs – the backbenchers who dedicate immense energy to opposing measures to encourage house building – their strength would increase slightly, especially if there were a landslide.</p>
<h2>Who would lead after election defeat?</h2>
<p>There is certainly no evidence that a post-defeat parliamentary Conservative party would flock back to Boris Johnson, regardless of the metric used. Indeed, the share of MPs who publicly backed him in last year’s second, abortive, leadership contest falls from 18% now to 11% in a Labour landslide. Even in a hung parliament the figure only rises to 14%. And in any case, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/05/29/boris-johnson-oxford-fete-henley-safe-seat-conservatives/">unless he finds himself a safer seat fairly soon</a>, Johnson’s relatively small majority means he might not be there to take up the reins again anyway.</p>
<p><strong>The post-defeat leadership contenders: who’s in with a shout?</strong> </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A chart showing how many MPs who supported various leadership contenders in the past would be left after an election defeat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528907/original/file-20230529-24-sdgt4o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528907/original/file-20230529-24-sdgt4o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528907/original/file-20230529-24-sdgt4o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528907/original/file-20230529-24-sdgt4o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528907/original/file-20230529-24-sdgt4o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528907/original/file-20230529-24-sdgt4o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528907/original/file-20230529-24-sdgt4o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Could past leadership contenders lose supportive MPs?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">T Bale/D Jeffery</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That said, the party’s swordbearer-in-chief, Mordaunt, would be in an even weaker position: not only would her paltry 7.3% of public supporters fall to just 4.7% of the PCP, she would also lose her seat in a landslide defeat. Badenoch, on the other hand, in rock-solid Saffron Walden would still be around and is already being tipped to do better than the creditable <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/kemi-badenoch-tipped-next-tory-leader-winning-big-promotion-rishi-sunak-2135159">fourth-place finish she achieved last time around</a>. The same goes for Sunak himself. Indeed, his supporters would, in our landslide scenario, comprise nearly half of the parliamentary party. Whether that might tempt him to stay on rather than skedaddle to Santa Monica, who knows?</p>
<p>Whoever is in charge, our numbers suggest that, in the event of a heavy defeat, the Tories – represented as they would be by MPs who would be still more southern, more NIMBYish, more Oxbridge than they already are – could find it more difficult than ever to argue that they truly are a <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/10166">One Nation</a> party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206652/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Bale has previously received funding for research on the Conservative Party and party members from the Leverhulme Trust and from the Economic and Social Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Jeffery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Penny Mordaunt’s seat is at risk while leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch would be sitting pretty.Tim Bale, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of LondonDavid Jeffery, Senior Lecturer in British Politics, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2053642023-05-11T15:16:51Z2023-05-11T15:16:51ZA painful picture for the Tories: forecasting the general election from the local results<p>Nils Bohr, the Nobel prize winning physicist, once said: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Electoral forecasting, the science of predicting politics, is a case in point. It’s difficult to do and easy to get wrong. </p>
<p>However, it’s a fact that many people now want to know what England’s May 2023 local election results tell us about next year’s general election.</p>
<p>All forecasting relies on projecting information from the past and for most of the time polls measuring voting intentions are subject to a lot of inertia. This means we can use last month’s voting intentions to predict this month’s, as long as some unexpected shock does not come along to disrupt things. </p>
<p>Equally, we can use voting data from the past to forecast future election outcomes. Unfortunately, the UK has seen a lot of these shocks in recent years.</p>
<p>Currently there is considerable disagreement among forecasters about the outcome of the next election. The website <a href="https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/">Electoral Calculus</a> forecasts that Labour will win 409 seats, the Conservatives 169 and the Liberal Democrats 16 seats. </p>
<p>It uses a technique known as MRP (multi-level regression post-stratification analysis). This is a big-data technique using information from many sources and was first applied to election forecasting by the <a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/%7Egelman/research/unpublished/MRT(1).pdf">American statistician Andrew Gelman</a> and colleagues.</p>
<p>In contrast, Sir John Curtice and his team, working for the BBC, produced a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65475817">national share of the vote measure</a> from the local elections that compensates for the fact that they did not take place across the entire country. They forecast that Labour would win 35% of the vote, the Conservatives 26% and the Liberal Democrats 20% and others 19%. </p>
<p>Applied to the task of predicting a general election, Curtice concluded that Labour would be the largest party, but not necessarily win an overall majority.</p>
<p>In the past <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/%20article/abs/pii/S026137941500222X">colleagues and I have argued</a> that it is better to focus on seat shares when forecasting general elections in Britain rather than vote shares. This is because a general election is won by gaining a majority of seats in the House of Commons, not a majority of votes in elections. </p>
<p>In the 1951 and February 1974 elections, the party winning the most votes did not win the most seats and so lost the election. This makes it important to focus on seats rather than votes.</p>
<h2>1974-2023</h2>
<p>The chart below shows the relationship between Conservative seat shares in the House of Commons in general elections since 1974 and the party’s share of council seats won in the local elections a year before these general elections took place. The summary line shows a strong performance in the local election correlates closely with a strong performance in the subsequent general election (r=0.67). </p>
<p><strong>Conservative seats won in general elections, and in local elections in the preceding years:</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Chart showing local election seat share tends to correlate with general election seat share." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Locals and generals since the 1970s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7529/">House of Commons Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The relationship can be used to forecast seats in the next general election. The correlation is not perfect, so using it to forecast in this way is subject to errors.</p>
<p>There are a couple of complications to this exercise. Adjustments have to be made for the fact that the local elections on May 4 took place in England, which has 533 seats in the House of Commons. </p>
<p>With no results from Scotland and Wales, and results from Northern Ireland delayed until May 18, the forecast is for the English seats rather than all 650 seats in the Commons.</p>
<p>The second complication is that nearly 18% of the council seats in the local elections were won by independents, including resident association and minor party candidates. </p>
<p>In the House of Commons there is only one MP who can be described as an independent or minor party MP in the same sense – Caroline Lucas from the Green party. Accordingly, the results have to be adjusted to compensate for this difference.</p>
<p>The Conservatives took 28.6% of the seats, Labour 33.3% and the Liberal Democrats 20.2% in the local elections. With this in mind, the prediction from the modelling is that the Conservatives will win 210 of the 533 English seats. A similar analysis for Labour forecasts that the party will win 281 seats and the Liberal Democrats 41 seats.</p>
<p>If the same proportions apply to Scotland and Wales, (which of course is a big if), then Labour would win 333 seats, and so have an overall majority of 15 seats. In this scenario the Conservatives would win 249 seats, and the Liberal Democrats 49 seats out of the 632 seats in Britain.</p>
<p>Obviously, a big source of uncertainty in this scaled-up forecast is how the parties will do in Scotland. <a href="https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/9yxa6z6y1e/TheTimes_VI_230504_W.pdf">A YouGov poll</a> conducted just prior to the local elections puts Labour on 36%, the Conservatives on 13% and the SNP on 38% in voting intentions.</p>
<p>Whether or not Labour wins an overall majority in the next election is likely to be decided north of the border. That said, if it fails to win such a majority, there is the possibility of a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition government forming on the basis of these results.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC. </span></em></p>Forecasting is a tricky art but looking back at the relationship between local elections and subsequent general elections puts Labour on course for House of Commons majority.Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2050562023-05-05T16:16:10Z2023-05-05T16:16:10ZLocal elections: Labour gains suggest the tide has turned in many marginal constituencies<p>The 2023 local council elections are potentially the last major test of public opinion before the next general election, which is most likely to occur <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2022-09-05/when-is-the-next-general-election">some time next year</a>. </p>
<p>These votes are of course shaped by local issues but national influences are never far away. The main parties have been engaging with nationwide campaign themes during the campaign, possibly as a trial run before the main event, and it’s impossible not to draw conclusions about the potential link between how the public is voting now at a local level and the verdict it will deliver at the national poll. </p>
<h2>Is Labour really on course for Downing Street?</h2>
<p>Labour has done well, as would be expected of an opposition party competing against a governing party that is facing significant problems after 13 years in power. But its performance does not necessarily indicate that it is doing well enough to win outright at the next general election. </p>
<p>On a positive note, Labour gained control of councils in Medway, Plymouth, Stoke-on-Trent and Swindon. These areas contain multiple marginal parliamentary seats that the party must gain in 2024 if it hopes to form a majority government in its own right. Signs of a shift towards Labour in these local elections is therefore heartening for Keir Starmer – although turnout at local elections is always lower than general elections and this should be factored in to any conclusions drawn from the results. </p>
<p>On the downside for Labour, it failed to take control of other target councils, namely Peterborough, Bolton, Worcester and Hartlepool. These also represent marginal parliamentary seats that it must win if it hopes to gain an outright majority in a general election. It has also failed to oust the Liberal Democrats from their control of urban councils such as Hull, while the Greens have been picking up seats and left-leaning votes from Labour in some of their urban strongholds. </p>
<h2>It don’t mean a thing if you don’t get that swing</h2>
<p>Early results from the locals suggest the swing from the Conservative would not be sufficient for an outright Labour general election win.</p>
<p>The swing has been seen as one of the most important indicators of success in this election. This is the <a href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02608/SN02608.pdf">average change in voter support</a> for political parties between elections. </p>
<p>The initial 2023 swing marks a lower level of Labour performance than recent opinion polls have suggested – a similar level of support to last year’s local elections. It would ultimately not amount to the “knockout blow” that some think is needed to show that Labour is on course for a general election win. </p>
<p>For context, Labour requires a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/02/to-win-an-outright-commons-majority-labour-will-have-to-gamble">7-8% swing</a> on its 2019 result just to become the biggest party in parliament at the next general election. It needs a swing of approximately 10% to win an outright majority that would allow it to govern alone. Such is the scale of its electoral task.</p>
<p>So on the basis of these local results, Labour’s swing of an estimated 4-5% in these elections evidently suggests progress, but not at the peak levels enjoyed by Tony Blair in the buildup to the party’s historic 1997 general election triumph. However, Starmer’s team would say they are recovering from a major electoral setback in 2019, when it took just 32% of the national vote. On that basis, a predicted 35% of the national vote, close to a double digit poll lead, and potentially 1,000 council seat gains, represent movement very much in the right direction. </p>
<h2>Conservative fortunes</h2>
<p>Ahead of these elections, Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-course-lose-1000-seats-29723467">pessimistically</a> (or <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2023/04/tories-begin-expectation-management-local-elections-in-style">strategically</a>, depending on your view) declared that his party could lose 1,000 council seats of the more than 3,000 the party was defending. This would be on top of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/03/tories-lose-over-1200-seats-in-local-elections-as-major-parties-suffer">terrible losses</a> incurred under Theresa May the last time these particular seats were fought.</p>
<p>Even with such expectation management in play, this year’s results confirm what a difficult position Rishi Sunak’s party finds itself in. Gains made by the Liberal Democrats might not equate to Labour success but they <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ousted-tories-could-make-general-election-tough-for-rishi-sunak-7rhdnb92v">do indicate the potential for Conservative failure</a>. If support for the Lib Dems is back on the rise after its years in the post-coalition doldrums, that has the potential to eat into the governing party’s vote at the national level at a time when it needs all the support it can get. </p>
<p>Sunak’s challenge going forward will be whether he has both the time and the capacity to turn this electoral decline around before the general election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205056/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Williams is a member of UCU and Amnesty International.</span></em></p>Not a knockout blow but important gains for the opposition.Ben Williams, Lecturer in Politics and Political Theory, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.