British Political Tradition Research Articles

The British Political Tradition and Constitutional Policy: The Offer of Deliberative Mini Publics

Abstract The Review of the UK Constitution was an eighteen-month project assessing the functioning of the UK constitution resulting in a set of practical, innovative, and robust recommendations. This article draws out one theme from this research, the offer of Deliberative Mini Publics (DMPs) in the process of constitutional change in the UK. Using Marsh, Richards, and Smith’s ‘Asymmetric Power Model’ as a mechanism for understanding the centralised and top–down nature of British democracy, we argue that the integration of DMPs can offer an opportunity to mitigate some of the core problems with the functioning of the UK constitution and produce better constitutional policy.

An unstable Union? The Conservative Party, the British Political Tradition, and devolution in Scotland and Wales 2010–23

Abstract While devolution in Scotland and Wales is often established as the settled will, it has been built on unsettled ground, lacking a robust system of intergovernmental relations, and sitting increasingly at odds with the central principle of parliamentary sovereignty. Examining successive UK Conservative-led governments, we evaluate devolution in Scotland and Wales through the lens of the Asymmetric Power Model and the British Political Tradition, documenting changes in the position of successive Conservative governments, from the more plurinationally sensitive respect agenda of David Cameron to the more assertive and intrusive Unionism advanced under those in post after 2016, notably Theresa May and Boris Johnson.

‘Muscular Unionism’: The British Political Tradition Strikes Back?

This article argues that shifts in the UK’s territorial management practice in the late 2010s and early 2020s, described by various terms, including ‘muscular unionism’, may be more rhetorical and ideational than substantive. The practices associated with these terms are recognisably part of the ‘British political tradition’, and the changes of the early 2020s can be viewed as reasserting traditional governance practices rather than introducing new ones. The article examines the various phenomena described as ‘muscular unionism’ and suggests that many are relatively ad hoc, low-level initiatives, often rhetorical. There is also much evidence that the UK governments of the 2020s see the ‘Millennium Settlement’, introduced in 1999, as continuing to be a core part of UK territorial management. The clearest break from historical practice comes in the overt, explicit quality of ‘muscular unionist’ rhetoric. The article then suggests that, contrary to some scholarly expectations, this muscular unionist turn may come to be an effective territorial management strategy for the UK government, as it aligns with an Anglo-British imaginary within England that continues to conflate England, Britain and the UK in terms of governance and national identity.

Claudia Jones, theWest Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian-Caribbean Newsand the Rise of a New Black Radicalism in the UK and US

In recent years, considerable scholarly attention has been paid to the Black Communist Claudia Jones as a progenitor of Black radical feminist notions of intersectionality. In Britain, Jones has also been hailed as an important part of the Black British political and cultural radical tradition. Less studied is how Jones brought a U. S. Black Left institution-building sensibility to the UK, particularly as embodied in the West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian-Caribbean News (WIG) newspaper, helping to lay the foundation for the growth of Black Power and Black Arts in the UK. In turn, Jones and WIG brought to Black radicals in the U. S. a renewed sense of Black internationalism inspired by Africa's crossroads and its diaspora in London and other major British cities.

COVID-19 and ‘the public’: U.K. government, discourse and the British Political Tradition

ABSTRACT This article presents an original analysis of the U.K. government’s discursive response to COVID-19 across the first six months of the pandemic. Two arguments are made. First, representations of the state/people relationship were vital to the state’s storying and selling of its response to this crisis. And, second, despite populist-style inflections, the state/people relationship was typically constructed around a ‘government knows best’ claim associated with the ‘British Political Tradition’ (BPT). In making these arguments the article offers three contributions: (i) empirical, via an original thematic analysis of over 120 speeches, statements and documents from the U.K. government; (ii) analytical, via a new taxonomy of ways in which ‘the public’ is imagined and represented in political discourse; and (iii) theoretical, via conceptualisation of the flexible and adaptive discourse of the BPT.

Minimum Service Levels During Strikes and the Misuse of Comparative Law

Minimum Service Levels During Strikes and the Misuse of Comparative Law Nicola Countouris (bio) In January 2023, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak1 said minimum service levels (MSL) are "present in France, in Italy, in Spain", while then-business secretary Grant Shapps2 claimed the legislation "simply brings us into line […] with many other modern European nations, such as Spain, Italy, France". On more than one occasion, UK government officials have made great use of comparative law arguments to justify the introduction of new, draconian, minimum service level obligations under the Strikes (Minimum Services Levels) Bill 2023, which at the time of writing is nearing its third and final reading in the House of Lords. Almost exactly half a century ago, in June 1973, Sir Otto Kahn-Freund, arguably the founding father of modern UK labour law, delivered a special lecture, later published as an article by the Modern Law Review, entitled "On Uses and Misuses of Comparative Labour Law". In that lecture he warned against the introduction in English law, by means of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, of a number of "specimens of attempted transatlantic transplantation" (particularly in the domain of collective bargaining, but also some affecting cooling off pauses and compulsory ballots in emergencies) stressing the high risk of "rejection" of these transplants that, the very different British legal, industrial, and political tradition, would most likely identify as a "foreign body" to be expunged. In the case of the key provisions being envisaged by the Strikes (Minimum Services Levels) Bill 2023, it would be perhaps more appropriate to recur to a different metaphor, borrowing not from the science of organ transplant but rather from the literary domain and Mary Shelley's 19th Century three volume novel Frankenstein. In this instance, it is fair to say that the UK government is practicing comparative labour law more or less in the way Dr Frankenstein practices surgery. As the following sections will discuss, the Bill brings together, into a single text and within what is already a rather tormented creature – i.e. the existing British laws on strikes - a selection of restrictions more or less present in other legal systems but that once stitched up together will invariably form a legal abomination, a hideous creature, that will not stand the scrutiny of European and international labour law standards. Poor comparators: Spain and France In a recent commentary3 published by the Institute of Employment Rights, Professor Ewing and Lord John Hendy KC already highlighted the poor choice of comparators for the UK to emulate when introducing MSL legislation. At least since 2018, Spain has been facing complaints before the ILO's Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR) in respect of the "abusive" operation of minimum service levels, ostensibly in breach of Article 3 of Convention 87. More specifically, Spanish unions CCOO and UGT have sent direct requests to the Committee complaining that "in an important number of … essential services, the Government authorities refuse to enter into dialogue with trade unions for the determination of minimum services and instead establish them in a unilateral and abusive manner" something that has "given rise to court judgments finding the determination of minimum services and the replacement of workers abusive"4. In 2023, it was once again put to the CEACR that "the rules on the determination of minimum services continue to be repeatedly violated by the government authorities, and that the CCOO cites, in this regard, 13 recent court rulings that determine, in relation to minimum services, a violation of the right to strike". The Committee has noted "with regret" the Spanish authorities' failures to engage with these allegations in the pasts, reiterating its "requests the Government to provide its comments on the allegations … on the frequent failure by the government authorities to comply with the rules on minimum services". So, to the extent that s.234B of the Bill grants a unilateral and unrestricted power to the Secretary of State to specify minimum service levels, it is safe to suggest that it seeks to transplant within the UK a provision that is already tainted by unlawfulness and incompatibility with international and regional labour standards. France is of...

Reasserting the Centre: The Brexit Doctrine and the Imperative Mandate in British Politics

Abstract Despite the outpouring of scholarship on the motivations behind the 2016 EU referendum result and the preliminary impact of Brexit on British politics, comparatively little time has been spent analysing the government(s) entrusted with implementation. This article aims to address this gap in the literature, examining government management of the Brexit process as a case study through which to illustrate the continued relevance of the British Political Tradition in British politics. It argues that through Brexit implementation, the May government initiated a process of centralisation of both policy-making influence and administrative resources within Whitehall. This process was shielded externally by appeals to the referendum result as an imperative mandate parliament was obliged to implement. Although the political landscape of May’s premiership was characterised by flux, these internal shifts towards centralisation in the executive are proposed to have had a more sustained impact through the reassertion of aspects of Britain’s ‘power-hoarding’ constitutional settlement.

The indigenous origins of UK corporate financial accountability: a comment

The British liberal political tradition, which reached its apogee in the nineteenth century, prized publicity and detested secrecy, for the latter bred injustice and incompetence (Bentham, 1827; Bi...

Thinking Imperially: The British Fascisti and the Politics of Empire, 1923-35.

This article sets out to examine what fascism actually meant to its earliest British adherents focusing on Britain's first self-proclaimed fascist group, the British Fascisti (BF). Drawing on material from the BF's newspapers, the popular press, and archival sources, it argues that its members conceived of British fascism as an imperial solution to a crisis imagined in imperial terms. They envisioned British fascism in practice as the metropolitan extension of repressive imperial violence-that is, the ability to take whatever steps deemed necessary to safeguard the law, order, and the status quo, whether on the streets of Britain or those of the Punjab. In this sense, the article maintains, the BF formed part of a broader British political tradition, one that saw the 'ethos' of Empire as a means of averting Britain's decline. It begins by introducing the BF and their ideology, moving to a discussion of how the Jewish-Bolshevik plot against the British Empire imagined by BF members reflected the colonial experiences of their leading personnel. It then interrogates the BF's proposed antidote to this anti-imperial conspiracy. By emulating the qualities and behaviour of Britain's imperial heroes and living an 'imperial' way of life, they hoped to restore Britain to greatness. It concludes with a call for further research into the overlapping histories of British fascism and the British Empire.

Post-Brexit nationalism: challenging the British political tradition?

ABSTRACT In the UK, nationalism has been gaining ground for some time, yet Brexit appears to have exacerbated these trends and given legitimation to the nationalist cause. ‘Taking back control’ from the EU was widely regarded as a means of reinforcing parliamentary sovereignty, notably over national borders, but also, importantly, of legitimising popular sovereignty, of giving a voice to those who often feel unrepresented by their political leaders. The idea of popular sovereignty is closely linked to that of nationalism: the rise of national populism can partly be explained by the crisis of representativity in liberal democracies and the desire for more direct, participatory forms of democracy. This article seeks to analyse the British government’s articulation of nationalism following the Brexit referendum in order to determine the impact that the rise of nationalism in this peculiar context might have on democracy in the UK. Will it be Westminster business as usual or may the unleashing of nationalist sentiment represent an opportunity to move beyond the current political model? The article also focuses on the Labour Party’s approach to nationalism, analysing its capacity to mark a rupture from dominant forms of nationalism and thus challenge the British political tradition.

Westminster’s Brexit Paradox: The contingency of the ‘old’ versus ‘new’ politics

The embedded nature of the British Political Tradition has created a series of pathologies about the way politics in Westminster is conducted. The endurance of the British Political Tradition emanates from its resilience to pressures for reform. Yet the rising anti-politics tide, the expression of which was vented in the 2016 European Union referendum, presents a critical challenge to the British Political Tradition. Given the political instability resulting from Brexit, this article maps the fate of previous attempts to reform the way politics is conducted in Britain. It identifies two waves of ‘new politics’ that have defined themselves against the ‘old politics’ of the British Political Tradition: the first, a series of demands for reform during the 1970s; the second, a sustained call for political reform from the 1990s onwards. The subsequent analysis reveals a link between both waves in demands for a less ‘elitist’ and more participatory style of democracy, but at the same time, a failure to dislodge the core tenets of the British Political Tradition. Given the current state of British politics, the article considers whether calls for a new form of politics in response to the climate of anti-politics, and the need for a post-Brexit settlement, will suffer a similar fate.

June 1940, Great Britain and the First Attempt to Build a European Union, by Andrea Bosco

This is a book with a strong and challenging thesis, explicitly aimed at the post-Brexit world. It is that ‘the European Union is very much the creation of the British political tradition, as opposed to the Continental one’ (p. 3). Consequently, Brexit is seen by the author (Jean Monnet ad personam Chairholder on the History of European Integration at the School of Political Science at Florence) as not only a lamentable error, but as a renunciation of Britain’s own offspring. The climax of the book is the abortive proposal in June 1940 of an ‘indissoluble union’ of Britain and France, by which ‘France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union’ (an idea briefly and unsuccessfully resurrected by the French prime minister Guy Mollet during the 1956 Suez Crisis). This well-known episode has rarely (probably never) had such historic significance attributed to it as here. It is generally considered as a desperate stratagem seized on by Churchill to try to keep a tottering France in the war following the devastating German advances the previous month. The author, Andrea Bosco, sees it in a very different light. Rather than being an ad hoc improvisation, he sees the Union proposal as the culmination of a long-maturing development of federalist ideas within the British political and intellectual establishment, and potentially the seed of a united Europe. Indeed, the federalist vision retained enough momentum to inspire post-war British sponsorship of the Western European Union, the Council of Europe and, of course, the United Nations—all beyond the scope of the present book, which presents 1940 instead as a psychological break between the British and Europe. Besides, Bosco seems to see Monnet’s European Community as the sole legitimate heir to inter-war federalism.

A changing democracy: contemporary challenges to the British political tradition

ABSTRACTA series of authors including ourselves have argued that there is a dominant, if contested, political tradition (the BPT), that is a particular conception of democracy, that underpins to institutions and processes of British politics. However, here we argue that the BPT has never been more contested or vulnerable, focusing upon three contemporary challenges, the Scottish question, the rise of anti-politics and the demands to leave the European Union (EU), culminating in BREXIT, although we recognise there are others. At the same time, we contend that the BPT still plays a key role in how the political elite reacts to these challenges; its first response remains to preserve as much of the BPT as possible in changing circumstances. As such, the key question we address here is whether we are witnessing the beginnings of a fundamental shift in the nature of British political democracy, or whether, as so often before, the BPT and its adherents will adapt to, and accommodate, these challenges.

The impact agenda and the study of British politics

This article attempts to discern the nature of impact in relation to the British politics sub-field of political studies. It reviews evidence from REF2014 to establish how political scientists working in this area understood and tried to demonstrate impact. It critically appraises how the impact agenda is affecting how research into British politics is prioritised, undertaken and disseminated, and questions whether this is a good thing for the sub-discipline. The implications of this for the shape of British politics research going forward are considered. While welcoming the possibility of a re-centring of scholarly attention on British politics, the article cautions against a retreat to the parameters of the British Political Tradition and the Westminster Model view.

The Politics of Parliamentary Restoration and Renewal: Decisions, Discretion, Democracy

An extensive literature on aversive constitutionalism and elite blockages outlines the manner in which embedded political elites will generally reject or dilute reform agendas that threaten their privileged position within a constitutional configuration. It is for exactly this reason that the same seam of scholarship frequently highlights the role of crises in terms of providing a ‘window of opportunity’ through which a significant or fundamental recalibration of a political system may be achieved. ‘The Palace of Westminster’ the Joint Committee on Restoration and Renewal (R&R) concluded in September 2016 ‘faces an impending crisis which we cannot possibly ignore’. Their recommendation was that the Palace be completely vacated for five to eight years so that a multibillion-pound programme of rebuilding work can be undertaken. This article offers the first research-based analysis of the ‘Scoping & Planning’ stage (2012–2016) and reveals the ‘hidden politics’ of R&R in the sense of how it threatens both the British Political Tradition and the position of the two main parties. This explains the nature of the very closed and secretive decision-making processes that have characterised this stage and why a number of formative decision-making points that have been deployed to frame and restrict the reform parameters.

Devolution in England, the British Political Tradition and the Absence of Consultation, Consensus and Consideration

This article explores the nature of devolution unfolding in England following on from the September 2014 Scottish Referendum. It argues that the process of devolution can best be understood as one of elite co-option. Limited attention is being paid to the interest of citizens and the nature of the process to date reveals little evidence to suggest that the existing structures of power in the British political system are being challenged. These dynamics are explained through the conceptual lens offered by the British political tradition (BPT), which stresses the importance the Westminster class places on maintaining central power and control in the context of current devolutionary pressures. This is revealed by the absence from the devolutionary agenda of any meaningful, subsidiarity-informed democratic settlement. The article concludes by suggesting that what is unfolding is a process of economic and administrative rather than democratically informed devolution which will do little to arrest the rise of ‘anti-politics’.

Nationalism, populism and the British political tradition

Nationalism, populism and the British political tradition

Is Britain Facing a Crisis of Democracy?

AbstractThis article contributes to the debate in this journal about the state of British democracy. I criticise the tendency to use a ‘demand–supply’ dichotomy in interpreting the strong distrust experienced by institutions and politicians, and especially the idea that all the blame for current problems is to be attributed to the inadequateness of the British political tradition (BPT). By referring to international data on democracy and to recent British trends in both public attitudes and institutional innovations, a more nuanced picture on the state of democracy emerges. I argue that the BPT is not incompatible with incremental changes that have already introduced innovations in the way politics works in Britain today, and that the task of empowering citizens is one of the most delicate aspects in this process of innovation.

The British Political Tradition and the Material-Ideational Debate

This article: Critically discusses recent material on the British Political Tradition (BPT) using broader discussions of the relationship between material relations, institutions and ideas as a frame for that discussion. Argues that the BPT has played a key role in shaping the institutions and processes of British politics and that it provides a key element of the context in which any attempt at change occurs. Operates as a path-dependency which constrains, but does not prevent, change; Argues that there are three path-dependencies not one, an institutional one, a discursive one and a political-economic one. Makes significant contributions to our understanding of British politics and to debates about historical institutionalism and path dependency.Recently there has been a revival of interest in debates about the British political tradition. In part, this is a reflection of the ‘ideational turn’ in Anglophone comparative politics. However, this ideational turn immediately raises two of the most important meta-theoretical debates in social science; the relationships between institutions and ideas and the material and the ideational. In our view, anyone who suggests that political traditions shape political outcomes has to take a position on these debates, although they are rarely addressed. This article seeks to address that omission. We argue that, while the predominant ideas about democracy and political practice in the UK, what we term the British Political Tradition, do affect the institutions and processes of government, these ideas exist in a dialectical relationship with those institutions and, more broadly, with the material context within which the tradition, and indeed the institutions, operate(s).

In Defence of British Politics Against the British Political Tradition

AbstractThis article explores some of the current themes round the perceived crisis in British politics in supposed an age of ‘anti‐politics’. Drawing on Bernard Crick's In Defence of Politics, it offers a critique of what is referred to as a dominant British political tradition and in so doing seeks to challenge ‘demand‐side’ accounts that ostensibly defend the traditional arena politics of the Westminster system. Instead, it argues that developments around issues such as big data, social media and freedom of information have led to a more open society in recent years. It concludes by suggesting that if traditional political institutions wish to restore a greater degree of legitimacy, they need to ‘do’ or, more particularly, ‘supply’ politics differently, adapting to these changes by seeking out new modes of openness, engagement and accountability.