British Conservative Party Research Articles

A Survey of Climate Change Law in the United Kingdom

Abstract A detailed summative statement of the law of climate change in the United Kingdom has yet to be brought together in the legal literature. This article fills the gap by drawing UK climate change law together into an article-length outline. The law is current to 4 July 2024, when the British Conservative Party, which had been in government for fourteen consecutive years, lost to Labour in a general election.

The British Conservative Party’s drift to the right: Taking on the “deep state”

The British Conservative Party has increasingly embraced a right-wing conspiracy theory according to which a host of unrelated actors are said to be working against the best interests of ordinary British people to advance a “woke” agenda that is left-wing, anti-Brexit, pro-immigration and unpatriotic. Some conservatives, namely former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have even gone so far as to suggest that these forces form part of a “deep state”, working in the shadows against the elected government and therefore against the people themselves. They purportedly do so by advancing “cultural Marxism” – pushing a silent revolution through, rather than against, the key institutions of the British State. Through an analysis of political speeches and of reports from right-wing think tanks close to the Conservative Party, this article seeks to analyse the British government’s recent attacks on those who it has designated as the principal enemies of the people: the universities, the BBC, the police and the judiciary. These attacks are not just rhetorical but have concrete effects on the ground which may seriously undermine their independence. Whilst there is scant evidence for the apparent left-wing bias of these institutions, painting them as “woke” serves primarily as a useful populist political strategy, placing the Conservative Party firmly on the side of “the people” in the context of the culture wars” and serving as a distraction from serious economic problems.

Turning Public Opinion on Immigration: the British Conservative Party and the Expulsion of Ugandan Asians in 1972

Abstract This article examines the Ugandan Asians’ crisis of 1972, during which President Idi Amin expelled tens of thousands of Asian nationals from the country. It explains why Ugandan Asians held, against expectations and the UK government’s intention, British citizenship. Drawing on primary sources and the social science literature on ‘framing’, the article then explores how Britain’s Conservative government secured the support of an initially hostile public for its decision to allow the Asians entry to the United Kingdom. It argues that the Conservatives succeeded by framing the Ugandan Asians as middle-class, hard-working, skilled refugees, rather than as immigrants or British citizens, and Idi Amin as a murderous monster. The press played a vital role in the government’s success. The article ends by reflecting on the case’s implications for contemporary British immigration policy and the capacity of the state to generate support for open immigration.

The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association and Irish Ex-Servicemen of the First World War, 1922–1932

In 1925, the Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association (SILRA), originally founded for the relief of southern Irish loyalist refugees in Britain, created a fund for ex-servicemen resident in the Irish Free State (IFS). Populated primarily from among the ‘diehard’ right of the British Conservative Party, SILRA’s charitable work was inevitably influenced by the world view of its membership and their audience. But it also had a Dublin sub-committee that operated in very different circumstances in the IFS. This study of SILRA’s efforts to provide welfare to southern Irish veterans of the First World War highlights the extent to which conditions in Ireland – real or perceived – continued to animate British Conservatives long after the Irish Revolution (1916–23). It also adds to the growing literature on ex-servicemen in post-revolutionary Ireland through the lens of SILRA’s lobbying and fundraising.

Trusting Truss: Conservative MPs’ Voting Preferences in the (First) British Conservative Party Leadership Election of 2022

ABSTRACT This paper identifies the candidate preferences of Conservative parliamentarians in the final parliamentary ballot and the membership ballot of the Conservative Party leadership election of 2022. We code each parliamentarians’ candidate preference within a wider dataset on the parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) and test a range of hypotheses covering the following: a). personal factors relating to gender, sexuality, ethnicity and education b). political factors, relating to constituency marginality and type, as well as prior support for Johnson, and c). ideological factors, covering for example, attitudes towards Brexit, cultural debates, levelling up, economic liberalism, net zero and Covid restrictions. Our research findings demonstrate that despite common media narratives at the time of the party leadership election, variables capturing loyalty or opposition to Johnson did not structure patterns of support for candidates in either round. A parliamentarian's position on levelling up, as well as the UK's membership of, and relationship with, the European Union (based on whether they were remainers, leavers, or a member of the European Research Group) were more important in structuring support. However broader measures of ideology, as evidenced through the membership of extra-parliamentary groups, was found not to be important.

The British Conservative Party, the Scandinavian Conservative Parties, and Inter-Party Cooperation in Europe, 1949-78

ABSTRACT This article explores the links between the British and Scandinavian Conservative parties in Europe between the late-1940s and the late-1970s. Its findings show that these parties were closer to each other than has been assumed. The British and Scandinavian Conservative parties built up significant relationships with each other at the organisational level throughout the 1950s, which led to transfers of political knowledge and information mostly from Britain to Scandinavia. From the 1960s the circulation of knowledge started to flow in both directions, but it was strongest in the Swedish case. The British Conservative Party then bridged the gap between the Scandinavian Conservative parties and the West German CDU/ CSU and the Austrian ÖVP in Europe, helping to cement the parties into a new centre-right international known as European Democrat Union. This gave the British and Scandinavian Conservative parties more contacts abroad and reinforced the view that British Conservatism was not an ideological outlier in Europe. But the history of inter-party cooperation shows that the British and Scandinavian Conservatives were mostly at odds with the greater integrationist and federalist ambitions of Christian democrats. Therefore, the article offers us another way of explaining the persistence of Euroscepticism in the British Conservative Party.

Selecting Sunak: Conservative MPs’ Nomination Preferences in the (Second) British Conservative Party Leadership Election

Abstract This article utilises an original dataset covering all members of the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) to analyse the basis of support for Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt in the October 2022 British Conservative Party leadership election. The significance of our findings is that they form the basis for a new understanding of how conservatism in the UK is changing post-Brexit. Our political variables include constituency majority size, red wall status, constituency support for leave, an MP’s position in the June 2022 vote of confidence in Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative Party, ministerial status and rebellion rates on key legislation. Our ideological variables include EU referendum position and membership of the European Research Group and the Conservative Environment Network, along with whether MPs are classed as socially liberal, socially conservative or pro-levelling up. We find that candidates appealed to different, often rival, sections of the Conservative Party. In line with previous studies of this nature, social liberalism still represents a key dividing line within the party, and the European dimension of intra-party conflict has remained significant in light of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.

A leader without followers: Tory Euroscepticism in a comparative perspective

This article examines the rare phenomenon of mainstream Euroscepticism that has characterised the British Conservative Party and asks whether a similar pattern has appeared elsewhere in the EU. The study traces the long-term evolution of salience and positions on the EU issue in the manifestos of a heterogenous set of centre-right parties, paying particular attention to whether Brexit or successive EU crises have had some noticeable effect. The thesis of Tory exceptionalism is largely supported by the findings – no other mainstream conservative party in the EU has talked more, and more negatively, about the EU over a long time period. Most other centre-right parties were part of the permissive consensus on the EU and have supported, more or less openly, the integration project throughout the past 30 years. However, some parties of mainstream conservatism have shown a similar negative shift as British Conservatives did in the 2000s, such as the Austrian ÖVP, the Hungarian Fidesz, the Polish PiS and (marginally) the Dutch VVD. Being in opposition or pressured by radical right challengers does not necessarily make the mainstream right more critical of the EU. Internal organisational developments (i.e. the ascent of more Eurosceptic influences within the party) constitute the most convincing proximate explanation for mainstream Euroscepticism on the right.

Towards an uncertain future: Brexit satirised in Ian McEwan’s The Cockroach

Ian McEwan’s 2019 novella, The Cockroach, which is considered a product of “brexlit,” is a bitter satire of British politicians’ Brexit project. According to the author, the rising waves of ultranationalism, seasoned with British politicians’ unreasonable populist discourse, drifted Britain out of the European Union. In the novella, McEwan’s chosen medium in criticising Britain’s status quo ante Brexit is satire. Due to its corrective nature, satire tends to repair and/or reform prevailing ills. However, in The Cockroach, McEwan does not intent to correct the troubles brought to Britain by Brexit, which he sees as the manifestation of stark irrationality. Indeed, political humour accompanies McEwan’s exclusive satirical style, for the author was aware of the fact that the British Conservative Party’s political slogan – “Get Brexit done” – had already fulfilled its mission by the time he was writing The Cockroach. Thus, this article follows the fictional route drawn by McEwan in The Cockroach in presenting how the bilateral association of populism and jingoism can darken the future vision of a country whose parliamentary democracy has a history of almost two centuries.

Ideologies, Power and the Politics of Punishment: The Case of the British Conservative Party

AbstractRecent scholarship has underscored the limitations of a theoretical repertoire that reduces the politics of punishment to debates over punitiveness, neoliberalism or penal exceptionalism. In this paper I argue that greater understanding of the dynamic interplay between ideologies and power can provide a richer account of the complex and contradictory landscapes of contemporary penal politics. I seek to show that political parties occupy a prominent position within representative systems of government and this mediating role, at the intersection between ideology and power, is closely associated with the production of penal policy outcomes. Reflecting upon the recent history of the British Conservative Party, I conclude that the politics of punishment is shaped, not only by inter-party competition (and consensus), but the dynamics of intra-party conflict.

What’s in a name? Gender equality and the European Conservatives and Reformists’ group in the European Parliament

Far-right and populist right-wing political parties have garnered significant scholarly attention in recent years. They have acquired importance also in European political institutions such as the European Parliament (EP). We explore this issue by focusing on the European Conservatives and Reformists’ (ECR) group in the EP. We analyse its current and former main national party delegations – the British Conservative Party, the Polish Law and Justice Party, and the Brothers of Italy – and unpack the ideological underpinnings of ‘conservative’ positions of the ECR group. How is ‘conservatism’ constructed in the EP? What role does gender play in these constructions? Significantly, we locate gender equality as a key area, crucial to the identity of what it means to be a conservative party in Europe today. We combine the analysis of ECR political programs with interview and ethnographic data. The article contributes to both the study of European Union (EU) politics and to research on national conservative parties.

Emotion in British politics – a mixed methods analysis of Conservative and Labour Party speeches from 1900–2019

In recent years, an increasing ‘emotionality’ in Britain’s political discourse has been attested by many researchers and public commentators alike, regularly accusing alleged modern-day ‘populists’ of having caused this emotionalization with their unusual conduct and rhetoric. In these analyses, however, emotional speech is too often conflated with ‘populist’ speech, without offering substantial historical proof to support such claims. To scrutinize this alleged novel emotionalization of the general political discourse in Britain and to historically contextualize the influence that alleged ‘populists’ have had on it, I conducted a comparative, sequential mixed methods study of political speeches from British Labour and Conservative Party leaders (quant → QUAL), performing a manual neopragmatist discourse analysis as well as an automated dictionary analysis. With this approach, I was able to determine the distinct argumentative characteristics of the speeches and explore the discourses’ emotional quality, reporting a multitude of qualitative and quantitative differences as well as similarities between the two parties. Thus, the paper offers a (historical) overview of the general employment of emotion within political speech and consequently, argumentation used by British politicians. These findings are then used to contextualize claims about the influence that alleged ‘populists’ have had on the emotionality of recent politics.

Policy change and the failure of pro‐European agency in the British Conservative Party: A post‐structuralist analysis

AbstractUnder a post‐structuralist lens, the policy change through which Britain left the European Union in January 2020 is not only about the success of the Euroskeptic policy position at the 2016 referendum, but also about the failure of pro‐European agency in major British political parties like the Conservative and Unionist Party (CP). This article applies critical logics analysis—social, political, and fantasmatic—to deployments of pro‐European agency within the CP across three historical periods: (i) a pre‐Maastricht period, (ii) a Maastricht period, and (iii) a pre‐referendum period. I outline reasons for which key conservative agents failed to restore meaning to a policy routine for upholding British membership of European institutions. In doing so, I aim to demonstrate the capacity of post‐structuralist policy analysis to make insightful, rigorous, and useful contributions to political science and its important issue of policy change by way of comparison with more established models.Related ArticlesEnglish, Patrick, Maria T. Grasso, Barbara Buraczynska, Sotirios Karampampas, and Luke Temple. 2016. “Convergence on Crisis? Comparing Labour and Conservative Party Framing of the Economic Crisis in Britain, 2008–14.” Politics & Policy 44(3): 577–603. http://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12160.Hazakis, Konstantinos J. 2015. “The Political Economy of Economic Adjustment Programs in the Eurozone: A Detailed Policy Analysis.” Politics & Policy 43(6): 822–54. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12141.Temple, Luke, Maria T. Grasso, Barbara Buraczynska, Sotirios Karampampas, and Patrick English. 2016. “Neoliberal Narrative in Times of Economic Crisis: A Political Claims Analysis of the U.K. Press, 2007–14.” Politics & Policy 44(3): 553–76. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12161.

The abnormalisation of social justice: The ‘anti-woke culture war’ discourse in the UK

In this article, the so-called ‘anti-woke’ culture war is deconstructed through the notions of metapolitics in fascist discourses – linked to the Gramscian ‘hegemonisation’ and ‘the war of position’ – as well as the Schmittian friend/enemy distinction coupled with theories of deviance and moral panics. The appropriation of the neo-fascist culture war discourse by the mainstream right in the UK is analysed discursively, combining political discourse analysis, the discourse-historical approach and discourse-conceptual analysis. The anti-woke culture war by the British conservative party as well as rightwing media will serve to analyse how social justice struggles like anti-racism, anti-sexism and pro-LGBTQ rights are being abnormalised and positioned as extreme deviant political positions. Linked to this, so-called ‘cancel culture’ is strategically deployed by dominant groups to neutralise contestations against racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ views. Finally, freedom of speech and the right to offend is weaponised to protect racist and discriminatory language and to position these idea’s as valid opinions worthy of democratic debate.

David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the ‘populist hypothesis’ in the British Conservative Party

Brexit was often associated with a recent upsurge of populism in Western democracies, with the idea of re-engaging with the people being construed as a populist strategy to disengage from Europe. This article seeks to explore the populist hypothesis by stepping outside the dominant literature on populism to take a closer look at Peter Mair's ‘populist democracy’ as applied to two defining moments: David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum on EU membership and Boris Johnson’s process of implementing Brexit. Mair's notion encompasses two aspects—procedural and substantive populism—which seem to apply to both moments. While Cameron's long leadership (2005–2016) reveals changes in governing practices and party management which have altered the nature of the relationship between the leader and the ‘people’, Boris Johnson’s (2019–) more contemporary leadership can be described as an illustration of a new populist rhetoric in its combination of hard Brexit, anti-immigration and anti-Parliament discourse. Although both leaderships expose ingredients of Mair’s two variants of populism, the ‘populist hypothesis’ does not hold in the light of the type of leaders that Cameron and Johnson have actually turned out to be.

Governing against the tide: Populism, power and the party conference

In this article we argue that a tendency to treat populism as a ubiquitous, mechanistic characteristic of contemporary penality has impeded systematic theoretical discussion of how populist ideologies find contingent expression within national penal systems. Drawing upon an agonistic perspective we seek to show that the intersection between populism and punishment must be understood as a structured process that is shaped by struggle between actors with different types, and amounts, of political power. We illustrate these claims with reference to a historical case study of the 1981 British Conservative Party Conference; a political calendar ritual that facilitated symbolic conflict and provided an institutional point of entry for populist movements seeking to disrupt the prevailing liberal consensus on crime and secure substantive policy concessions from government.

SPEECH BEHAVIOR: COMMUNICATIVE AND PRAGMATIC ASPECT (ON POLITICAL DISCOURSE BASIS)

The article is devoted to the communicative and pragmatic aspect of an utterance. A review of the basic principles and maxims leading to successful communication is made by the author. The purpose of the investigation involved is to identify actively used speech tactics, their structural features to achieve the perlocution. The material of the research is the political speeches by D. Cameron, a representative of the British Conservative Party. Based on the investigation, some conclusions can be made. In the political discourse self-presentation and accusation / blame tactics are regarded as the most active ones created on the explicature and implicature basis.

Cognitive maps of discourses of British conservative and Australian liberal political manifestos

The research endeavors to study and determine the influence of cognitive maps on production of political manifestos discourse. The research has been conducted in the framework of Sociocognitive Discourse Studies. The results show that discourse cognitive structure of British Conservative Party and Australian Liberal Party manifestos is characterized by different sets of cognitive maps on the level of communicative strategies and somewhat similar sets of cognitive schemas on the level of communicative tactics. Applying the method of interpropositional semantic analysis, the communicative strategy and communicative tactic of comparison was identified in Australian Liberal Party manifesto. Despite the close affinity between political discourses of the UK and Australia, there are significant differences in patterns of information organization in online manifestos of the ruling parties to engage the community and enhance persuasion.

Communication strategy, change and the British Conservative Party

This paper asks how the British Conservative Party responded to changes in wider socio-political events and techno-cultural trends from 2010-20, under the leaderships of David Cameron (2005-16); Theresa May (2016-19); and Boris Johnson (2019- until the paper’s submission in 2021). Using secondary analysis of the author's earlier published work; and fresh analyses of evidence from news media and party-related archives (for example, ConservativeHome), the article aims to offer an indicative historical analysis of the party's development with a focus on key drivers of change, including Brexit and digital media in the context of the party’s communication strategy. Four key markers of analysis are used to focus the examination of several campaign case studies across a decade stretching from the 2010 general election period to the so called 'Brexit election' of 2019. The paper argues that, overall, across the decade, the party adapted to external factors, like Brexit and advances in digital communication; and a period of discontinuity in the party, from 2016 to 2019, contributed to punctuating the party’s wider evolution, following the fallout from the 2016 EU referendum and events in the run-up to the 2019 General Election.

With friends like these, who needs enemies ? The Conservative Party and the British Constitution

This article challenges the idea that the British Conservative and Unionist Party is, or has ever truly been, ‘conservative’ when it comes to the British Constitution. It emphasises not only the degree to which the party’s self-appointed role as a bastion of constitutional heritage and moderate reform has often overlapped with self-interest, but also the remarkably radical ideas that the party has been prepared to embrace from time to time. Despite frequent electoral use of the constitutional issue as means to paint its political opponents as dangerous, the modern Conservative Party has now brought itself to a position where its approach to constitutional debate and niceties has become coloured by populism, albeit a populism still cloaked in a veneer of traditionalism.