Clear Blue Water? The 2019 Party Manifestos

Abstract

AbstractBrexit may have dominated the 2019 general election campaign, but it wasn't the only issue at stake. The political parties published wide‐ranging manifestos, while their appeals also rested on established ideological reputations. This article analyses the content of the 2019 manifestos and uses the latest Manifesto Project estimates to explore ideological movement in the British party system. It reports the changing policy emphases in Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat manifestos and the ideological positions of these and other political parties in 2019. It further presents new measures for parties’ positions on the cosmopolitan‐traditionalist dimension of party competition, an increasingly important divide in electoral politics. The article shows that the ideological gap between the Conservatives and Labour opened up further in 2019. It also shows how the parties’ distinctive ideological profiles, as well as their positions on Brexit, gave voters a clearer choice than in recent elections.