Conservative Member Of Parliament Research Articles

Does United Kingdom parliamentary attention follow social media posts?

News and social media play an important role in public political discourse. It is not clear what quantifiable relationships public discussions of politics have with official discourse within legislative bodies. In this study we present an analysis of how language used by Members of Parliament (MPs) in the United Kingdom (UK) changes after social media posts and online reactions to those posts. We consider three domains: news articles posted on Facebook in the UK, speeches in the questions-debates in the UK House of Commons, and Tweets by UK MPs. Our method works by quantifying how the words used in one domain become more common in another domain after an event such as a social media post. Our results show that words used in one domain later appear more commonly in other domains. For instance after each article on Facebook, we estimate that on average 4 in 100,000 words in Commons speeches had changed, becoming more similar to the language in the article. We also find that the extent of this language change positively correlates with the number of comments and emotional interactions on Facebook. The observed language change differs between political parties; in particular, changes in word use by Labour MPs are more strongly related to social media content than that of Conservative MPs. We argue that the magnitude of this word flow is quite substantial given the large volume of news articles shared on Facebook. Our method and results quantify how parliamentary attention follows public interest as expressed on Facebook and also indicate how this effect may be stronger for posts which evoke reactions on Facebook associated with laughter or anger.

‘Fall girl’: Vertical evacuation and the aesthetics of emergency

When the Conservative Member of Parliament and Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg complained on London’s LBC radio that the 72 victims of the 2017 Grenfell fire did not use common sense and simply leave the building, and that he could not understand how it had ‘anything to do with race or class’, he fell into a trap which is now at least 150 years old. This has seen the art and act of evacuating – especially tall buildings – blamed on the evacuees themselves. It is also revealing of an aesthetics of erasure which silences a classed, raced and gendered politics which has served to render certain subjects and bodies as not only victims, but culpable. The vertical evacuee has been considered too slow, too big, too indecisive, too passionate, too weak, too much, too many – too inadequate. In this paper, and in building on a wider politics of verticality and mobility, I pull on several threads of the gendered and raced geographies of high-rise vertical evacuation focusing particularly on the solidaristic movements and expressions of the workers. The paper explores the history of tall building evacuations, focusing on early high-rise factory fires, their investigation, and subsequent changes to fire regulation, building technologies and working practices in North America which affected predominantly young, female and migrant working labour.

The Death of May’s Law: Intra- and Inter-Party Value Differences in Britain’s Labour and Conservative Parties

Party competition in Great Britain increasingly revolves around social or ‘cultural’ issues as much as it does around the economic issues that took centre stage when class was assumed to be dominant. We use data from surveys of members of parliament, party members and voters to explore how this shift has affected the internal coalitions of the Labour and Conservative Parties – and to provide a fresh test of ‘May’s Law’. We find a considerable disconnect between ‘neoliberal’ Conservative members of parliament and their more centrist voters on economic issues and similarly significant disagreement on cultural issues between socially liberal Labour members of parliament and their more authoritarian voters. We also find differences in both parties between parliamentarians and their grassroots members, albeit that these are much less pronounced. May’s Law, not for the first time, appears not to be borne out in reality.

Leopard in kitten heels: The politics of Theresa May’s sartorial choices

This article discusses the clothing choices of Theresa May as a female Member of Parliament (MP) and as the second woman prime minister of Great Britain. A Conservative MP since 1997 with a conservative background growing up a Vicar’s daughter and grammar school education, Mrs May’s sartorial choices have evolved to conform with an understanding of female MP’s as proxy men and to reflect British national dress as defined by tradition. However, within this conservative persona, a discordant note is struck by her choice of shoes. Not always neutral, in this article, her choice of fabric is examined as a form of ‘everyday resistance’. Compromised as these choices are, her choice of leopard print kitten heels is suggested as a form of subaltern resistance.

“New Canadians are new conservatives”: race, incorporation and achieving electoral success in multicultural Canada

ABSTRACT Despite declarations of race's irrelevance, the Conservative Party of Canada's (CPC) stance on race-related policies under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's leadership was key to every electoral campaign it fought. Moreover, it is not despite but because of their race that racialized political elites have been incorporated into the CPC and its antecedents. Indeed, beginning in the 1990s, the inclusion of Asian Members of Parliament (MP) became for the Reform Party of Canada, a weapon in the struggle for electoral success; that is, part of an era of Conservative racial realignment. By tracing the role of Asian Conservative MP in the rise of the Reform Party since its 1987 inception and the electoral success of the CPC (2006–2015), this article explores how racialized political elites become crucial to the legitimization of the racial state when it is through a discourse of inclusion that exclusion is crafted.

Parliamentary privilege—mortality in members of the Houses of Parliament compared with the UK general population: retrospective cohort analysis, 1945-2011

Objective To examine mortality in members of the two UK Houses of Parliament compared with the general population, 1945-2011. Design Retrospective cohort analysis of death rates and predictors of mortality...

Medical innovation does not require a new law.

In the last months of the UK coalition government, the Liberal Democrats (www.libdems.org.uk) vetoed Lord Saatchi's proposed law after it had successfully had a third reading in the House of Lords and was set to go to the Commons. The Liberal Democrat Health Minister Norman Lamb said that in preventing the proposed legislation he wanted to avoid the threat that the new law might pose to patient safety. Lord Saatchi's Bill now reappears in this new parliament as the Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill, and is sponsored by a Conservative Member of Parliament. Supported by No. 10 Downing Street (www.gov.uk/government/organisations/prime-ministers-office-10-downing-street), the Bill may well become law. Many lawyers oppose the Bill in its current form. The Medical Defence Union, Action against Medical Accidents, and Association of Personal Injury Lawyers have come out against the Bill. The most crucial reason for this opposition is the erroneous idea (promulgated in ‘Are rigid management protocols stifling innovation in cancer treatment?’) that fear of litigation is preventing innovation in cancer care, by promoting ‘defensive medicine’. This idea, that scientific progress has, as Lord Saatchi claims, been ‘stopped by the law’ is wrong and illustrates a misunderstanding of the basic elements of clinical negligence law. Doctors are already given protection by the law when they innovate, as long as the treatment proposed is agreed by colleagues, is as safe as possible, and the newness of the treatment (and for example lack of knowledge of complications or follow-up data) is fully understood by the patient. Those who promote the Bill appear to be unaware that the Bolam test is satisfied even if only a very small body of reasonable medical opinion supports the treatment given and the management of the patient stands up to logical scrutiny as being rational and justifiable (the ‘Bolitho test’). The recent UK Supreme Court case of Montgomery (which deals with informed consent) is a good illustration of how the law is able to react flexibly and pragmatically to changes in the doctor–patient relationship that have occurred in recent years. The Bolam test would not prevent doctors from departing from standard practice in appropriate and justifiable circumstances. There are other legitimate concerns about the Bill, for example that it does not give patients the right to new treatment and that it may promote irresponsible innovation on vulnerable patients where their right to redress in the civil courts is expressly removed by the legislation. Experimentation without professional accountability does not empower or give a patient ‘clarity and certainty’. In his condemnation of the Bill, Sir Robert Francis QC stated that the barrier to innovative treatment is not the law of negligence but ‘overzealous bureaucracy, scarcity of resources, ethical reservations and decision making processes’ (Response of Robert Francis QC to Legislation to encourage medical innovation – A consultation). Research charities have become successful in raising money and patient awareness. Advances could easily be made by a better utilisation of knowledge, by freeing clinicians from strict management protocols, or by looking at the option of prescribing novel drug treatments outside clinical trials by different licensing arrangements. None of these depend on the Medical Innovation Bill becoming law. None declared. Completed disclosure of interests form available to view online as supporting information. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

Canada and the End of the Imperial Dream: Beverley Baxter’s Reports from London through War and Peace, 1936-1960 by Neville Thompson (review)

Reviewed by: Canada and the End of the Imperial Dream: Beverley Baxter’s Reports from London through War and Peace, 1936-1960 by Neville Thompson Daniel Gorman Thompson, Neville – Canada and the End of the Imperial Dream: Beverley Baxter’s Reports from London through War and Peace, 1936-1960. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 394. In a 1931 BBC radio broadcast entitled “That Commonwealth Feeling,” the British diplomat, politician, and writer Harold Nicolson declared that the dominions had recently “began to emerge above our horizon as something unaccountable, as something forlorn and strange and powerful; as something mysterious, compelling, imminent”(Harold Nicolson, People and Things: Wireless Talks, London, 1931, pp. 145-6). The same year as Nicolson’s wireless talk, the Statute of Westminster gave the dominions legislative equality with the United Kingdom by granting them autonomy in foreign affairs, a symbolic “end” to the imperial relationship. Yet imperialism, or more accurately an attachment to Britons, British affairs, and things British, remained centrally important for many English-speaking Canadians for another generation. Indeed, as Neville Thompson demonstrates in this wide-ranging and elegantly written book, the “imperial dream” of a shared Anglo-Canadian identity and purpose survived, if in a diminished form and for fewer and fewer people, into the early 1960s. Thompson’s medium for tracking this development is the bi-weekly London Letters column written by the Canadian journalist and British Member of Parliament Beverley Baxter for Maclean’s magazine between 1936 and 1960. [End Page 837] Beverley Baxter had a Methodist upbringing in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Toronto. The British Empire exerted a strong imaginative pull for the young Baxter. After work selling pianos and service in Europe during the First World War, Baxter stayed on in London and successfully lobbied the most famous Canadian expatriate in Britain, Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aiken), for a job in journalism. He went on to make his fortune, and never again returned full-time to live in Canada. Baxter even published an autobiography in 1935, telling the story of how he had ascended to a position of influence in the imperial metropole. Canada and the End of the Imperial Dream is a hybrid, part biography of Baxter, part analysis of the high British political history which Baxter observed from the margins as a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1935 until his death in 1964. The books’ central themes are symbolized by the two figures represented in the cover photograph, neither of whom is Baxter. Instead, we see Beaverbrook, then British Minister of Supply, and Winston Churchill standing on the deck of HMS Prince of Wales in 1941 during the Allied conference off the coast of Newfoundland which resulted in the Atlantic Charter. Far from a case of false advertising, the cover depicts the two figures whose imperial visions Baxter spent his career advancing. Beaverbrook was the more direct influence, giving Baxter his start in journalism at the Daily Express. As Baxter wrote of himself and Beaverbrook when looking back on his career in his final London Letter in 1960, they had “beat the Empire drum on all possible and even impossible occasions” (p. 355). While they sometimes fell out over other political questions, Baxter and Beaverbrook always remained simpatico over the importance for Canada of the imperial tie. It was only the debacle of the Suez Crisis and the subsequent promise of entering the European Community that finally persuaded Baxter that the imperial dream was over. In his politics, Baxter was a journalistic weathervane. Always a conservative, he variously supported and opposed the successive grandees of the British Conservative party, from fellow Canadian Andrew Bonar Law through Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Harold Macmillan. The central message he propagated throughout the period, however, was that of closer imperial union. This meant the old Joseph Chamberlain vision of imperial preference, as well as during the Second World War an imperial war cabinet and overseas conscription for Canadians. Beyond such formal manifestations of imperialism, even then somewhat dated, what Baxter really wished to convey to Canadians was the allure of English sophistication and culture. It is tempting to see Baxter’s imperial arias as simple chauvinism...

An investigation of politician mobility in the United Kingdom

This article investigates the influence of the politics of presence in the most recent parliamentary and European elections in the United Kingdom by examining the question of politician mobility. It establishes the patterns of regional relationships between the constituencies served by elected representatives and their place of birth, and takes into account age, gender and political party. It includes the issues of seat marginality and ‘career politicians’. Analytical techniques include the Nomogramma di Gandy and multiple correspondence analysis. The UK regions, outside London, which have the highest number of Members of Parliament (MPs) and Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) born per head of population are also the ones that have the least politician mobility. The south-east of England, and in particular London, have the greatest mobility. In general the patterns for MPs and MEPs are fairly similar, except in respect of age. Females were more likely to cross more than one regional boundary than males, particularly for Conservative MPs, and there was a higher differential in this regard for MEPs compared to MPs. It was concluded that while there is considerable politician mobility for both MPs and MEPs, the vast majority represent constituencies within their region of birth, or an adjacent region.

The French Euthanasia Debate

In several countries, the debate about the legalization of active euthanasia and/or assisted suicide has been going on for thirty years. Although universal considerations are brought to bear on the issue (respect for autonomy, right to privacy, and medical integrity), the cultural context influences the way in which the discussion unfolds, both in the medical community and in society at large. Whether or not a ‘‘French exception’’ truly exists, the French are fond of invoking it, in education, politics, and culture, to mention just a few. Indeed, the term does provide us with some insight into certain aspects of the euthanasia debate, and more generally the treatment of end-of-life issues, that are specific to the French context. One contingent reason adds some urgency to this analysis: the French debate may well be drawing to a close in the near future. The current president, Franc xois Hollande, has promised to take up the issue and legalize ‘‘medical assistance to end one’s life with dignity in cases of incurable diseases causing unbearable and intractable physical and psychological suffering’’ (campaign pledge number 21). In order to make a more informed decision, he commissioned Dr. Didier Sicard, the former president of the National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE), to draft a report that was delivered to the president on December 18, 2012. In this article I describe the history and the intellectual underpinnings of the French debate. The 2005 Leonetti End-of-Life Act, named for Jean Leonetti, the conservative member of parliament who authored an earlier report on the issue, was a significant turning point in a debate that can now be divided into three main stages. I shall review the period prior to the 2005 End-of-Life Act, the main provisions of the law itself, and its consequences, both in medical practice and in the ethical debate. I draw two broad lessons from this brief history. First, the euthanasia debate in France is founded on principles of solidarity and justice rather than autonomy and individual rights. Second, the paternalistic tradition in medical care does not preclude the possibility of legalizing ‘‘active aid in dying’’ in the future, if only as an ethical ‘‘exception,’’ most notably in the form of assisted suicide, as recommended in the Sicard report. On the contrary, doctors’ responsibility toward their patients as an element of the social contract—what the French call ‘‘living together’’—might support the decision to hasten death in certain situations.

H. H. Stevens and the Chinese: The Transition to Conservative Government and the Management of Controls on Chinese Immigration to Canada, 1900-1914

This article uses the political life of H. H. Stevens, a Vancouver businessman, Conservative member of parliament, and anti-Asian activist to examine the nature of the relationship between the institutions of Canadian immigration control and the political and ideological context of the time. It shows how the transition from Liberal to Conservative government after the Canadian election of 1911 provides an opportunity to examine the importance of individual and party choices in the implementation of immigration regulations. It becomes clear that the policies of control were subject to a certain amount of improvisation on the part of those responsible for implementing the system and allowed those who had strong opinions to harden the line against Chinese immigration. Further, the article reveals how differences in Liberal and Conservative attitudes on Chinese immigration are clearly not merely differences in racial outlook, but rather differences in individuals’ material position at home and their political calculations in the larger context of the British Empire.

MPs for Sale? Returns to Office in Postwar British Politics

Many recent studies show that firms profit from connections to influential politicians, but less is known about how much politicians financially benefit from wielding political influence. We estimate the returns to serving in Parliament, using original data on the estates of recently deceased British politicians. Applying both matching and a regression discontinuity design to compare Members of Parliament (MPs) with parliamentary candidates who narrowly lost, we find that serving in office almost doubled the wealth of Conservative MPs, but had no discernible financial benefits for Labour MPs. Conservative MPs profited from office largely through lucrative outside employment they acquired as a result of their political positions; we show that gaining a seat in Parliament more than tripled the probability that a Conservative politician would later serve as a director of a publicly traded firm—enough to account for a sizable portion of the wealth differential. We suggest that Labour MPs did not profit from office largely because trade unions collectively exerted sufficient control over the party and its MPs to prevent members from selling their services to other clients.

London and the English Desert. The grain of truth in a stereotype

There is a grain of truth in the stereotype that by the start of the twenty first century, England had become economically divided to the extent that it was being seen as a Greater London core, surrounded by what was becoming seen as an economic desert. By the start of this century the functional boundary of London extended far out across the south East of England, and on the main train line to the west to Bristol, and north as far as York. In this short paper a series of examples are employed to show how “Paris and the French Desert” we were taught can now be transferred to London and England in much the same way. To illustrate how such thinking is becoming part of the wider discourse, these examples are drawn from the recently published semi-autobiographical book by the ex- Conservative Member of Parliament: George Walden. In what follows his words and claims are interspersed with some evidence of how England's human geography is now actually shaped. England has become far more divided that at any time in its post-war history, but all is not well in the supposed financial oasis in the heart of that desert.

Can Reorchestration of Historical Themes Reinvent Government? A Case Study of the Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities Act of 1993

Reinventing government is rapidly becoming the orchestral theme for public sector officials who must face the music of increasing demands on, and a decline in, available resources. Generally associated with issues of productivity and efficiency, the theme of reinventing government has been extended by the Clinton administration to redefine the relationship between the federal government and local communities. Illustrative of this extension is the administration's Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities Program enacted by Congress as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. President Clinton has orchestrated the Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities Act (EZEC) as dominant themes in his administrations reinventing government symphony. This dominance is clearly enunciated in his memorandum to the President's Community Enterprise Board, which is chaired by Vice President Gore and includes the secretaries of all major departments and councils in the administration. In his memorandum, the President directs the board to implement the EZEC program so that it reflects the principles of the National Performance Review, the vice president's blueprint for streamlining and reinventing government (Clinton, 1993). The primary tones of the EZEC--enterprise zones and local community planning and empowerment--are not new melodies. The enterprise zone, with its geographically targeted tax reductions and regulatory relief, has been a federal and state refrain for almost 15 years. Community planning and empowerment are dearly repetitions of motifs that linger from the 1960's Model Cities program. Is, then, the EZEC program merely a reorchestration of earlier enterprise zone pieces composed during the Reagan-Bush years, with a Clinton spin from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society? If so, does the EZEC reinvent government? To answer these questions, the concepts of enterprise zones and of the Model Cities program, as well as the lessons learned from them, must be clearly understood. This article begins with the origins of enterprise zones in England and traces their historical development in the United States, on both federal and state levels. After presenting the history of enterprise zones, and the lessons to be learned from them, I proceed to review the lessons to be gleaned from the Model Cities program and close by addressing the question, can reorchestration of historical themes be reinventing government? The Origins of Enterprise Zones: The British ]Experiment The concept of using enterprise zones to encourage economic development did not begin in the United States, but is based on a British experiment in urban revitalization of the late 1970s. Coined as a phrase by geographer Peter Hall, and derived from the apparent economic success of enterprise-zone-type policy precedents established in Hong Kong and in Taiwan, the first public pronouncement of the zone concept is generally traced to England's Sir Goeffrey Howe, a Conservative member of Parliament. Howe's 1978 pronouncement was made in London's dockland district, an area then typical of Britain's distressed urban communities. Howe and his supporters saw the implementation of enterprise zones as a way to alleviate urban distress by allowing entrepreneurs to pursue profit with minimum governmental restrictions. This free-market approach, with its emphasis on tax and regulatory relief, stood in stark contrast to Britain's centrally planned economic development programs, which Howe felt were dismal failures. Howe was given the opportunity to implement enterprise zones when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's Conservative administration. His 1980 legislation authorized by Parliament provided for geographically targeted tax incentives and regulatory relief It provided for contractual agreements between the central government and local governments that were to establish zone boundaries and the procedures for granting these tax incentives and regulatory relief to local entrepreneurs. …

The Conservative Member of Parliament as Lobbyist for Constituency Economic Interests

Interviews undertaken in the House of Commons with 70 backbench Conservative MPs in 1983–84 examined the extent to which they pursue their own localized industrial policy strategies as part of their efforts to maintain constituency electoral support. This involves lobbying efforts directed toward ministers in support of local industries, either in defence of jobs, in promotion of new jobs, or in a variety of quests for government benefits or relaxation of restrictions. It was found that 36 of the 70 Conservative MPs could be classified as ‘constituency lobbyists’, reflecting interview evidence that they consider lobbying on behalf of local industries to be a normal and important part of their representative rôle as MPs. The hypothesis that vulnerable constituencies—vulnerable in both political and economic terms—would be represented by constituency lobbyists was tested through the construction of an index of constituency ‘security’. It was found that the more secure the constituency, the less likely is the MP to lobby on behalf of local industrial interests.

The Management of a Foreign Policy for Canadians

a year of retrenchment, sagging morale, and public criticism. Some half-dozen diplomatic missions were withdrawn, and the number of foreign service officers was reduced by about 10 per cent. George Hees, a Conservative member of parliament, asserted in Toronto on 5 February 1969 that instant communication, and the effectiveness of the news services, has greatly reduced the importance of the work carried on by our diplomatic representatives and he recommended that, with the exception of seven major capitals, trade commissioners be appointed ambassador. Prime Minister Trudeau raised more fundamental questions about the utility of the professional In answer to a question during a television interview on 1 January 1969, he commented: think the whole concept of diplomacy today as a career is a little bit outmoded. I believe much of it goes back to the early days of the telegraph when you needed a dispatch to know what was happening in country A. Whereas now most of the time you can read it in a good newspaper. In that sense I believe there is a need for a basic reexamination of the function of the diplomat. These comments by political leaders were echoed by many of the nation's principal commentators. James Eayrs, writing in the Toronto Star on 10 September 1969, called for a radical reorganization of the Department of External Affairs The name is External not Eternal. Most of its postings are expendable. Much of its work is redundant. Many of its officials are unnecessary ...

The Future of Burma

THE BLUE-PRINT FOR BURMA is a document drawn up by certain Conservative Members of Parliament and recommended by the Chairman of the Conservative Imperial Affairs Committee as a bold and constructive policy for the future of Burma.' It attempts to portray the background of the problem, defines the objective of policy, and submits proposals which may be grouped under three main headings: Political, Economic, including compensation for war damage, and Defense.