General Election Manifesto Research Articles

Liberal Democrats pledge ‘fairer long-term funding model’ for community pharmacies in general election manifesto

Liberal Democrats pledge ‘fairer long-term funding model’ for community pharmacies in general election manifesto

RPS calls for review of the medicines supply chain in its general election manifesto

RPS calls for review of the medicines supply chain in its general election manifesto

Keir Starmer's Ten Pledges and the Labour Party's 2024 General Election Manifesto

Keir Starmer's Ten Pledges and the Labour Party's 2024 General Election Manifesto

The 2024 general election manifestos are lacking on ambitions for pharmacy

The 2024 general election manifestos are lacking on ambitions for pharmacy

The Impact of Incumbent/Opposition Status and Ideological Similitude on Emotions in Political Manifestos

The study involved the analysis of emotion-associated language in the UK Conservative and Labour party general election manifestos between 2000 to 2019. While previous research have shown a general correlation between ideological positioning and overlap of public policies, there are still conflicting results in matters of sentiments in such manifestos. Using new data, we present how valence level can be swayed by party status within government with incumbent parties presenting a higher frequency in positive emotion-associated words while negative emotion-associated words are more prevalent in opposition parties. We also demonstrate that parties with ideological similitude use positive language prominently further adding to the literature on the relationship between sentiments and party status.

Brexit as a critical juncture in the politics of UK devolution: a comparative analysis of the effects of Brexit on parties’ territorial strategies

ABSTRACT In this paper, we theorize the 2016 Brexit referendum as a critical juncture in UK politics and analyse its effects on devolution using the concept of regional authority. We argue that Brexit raised the option of re-balancing the self-rule and shared rule dimensions of regional authority present in UK devolution. We generate hypotheses regarding parties’ territorial strategies and test them against a content analysis of 2015 and 2017 UK general election manifestos. We demonstrate that proposals dealing with shared rule grew between 2015 and 2017, within the context of consistency in parties’ overall territorial positioning. The governing Conservatives also offered more proposals on shared rule but not ones that increased devolved influence. Overall, they moved from favouring an increase in regional authority in 2015 to the cusp of maintaining existing regional authority and somewhat reducing it in 2017. This helps to explain whypost-Brexit UK government policy in practice maintained a primary focus on self-rule within a general approach of limiting the further growth of regional authority.

Labour early years policy

The Labour Party has recently made a series of announcements about its plans for the early years sector, which will be considered for inclusion in its next General Election manifesto. Sue Cowley looks at recent Labour policy announcements, including a report from the Council of Skills’ Advisors, which made recommendations about skills and learning under a future Labour government.

'What Did Margaret Thatcher Do?': A Survey of the Thatcher Prime Ministership's Economic and Social Policies

'What Did Margaret Thatcher Do'?: A Survey of the Thatcher Prime Ministership's Economic and Social Policies endeavors to offer a systematic, grounded and properly contextualized, but still concise, summation of the British Prime Minister's conduct in the area of domestic economic and social life. In particular it focuses on the principles and program laid out in the Conservative Party's 1979 General Election Manifesto, and then details the Conservative government's policies when in office, concentrating on the areas of monetary and fiscal policy (including central banking and revision of the tax structure); the privatization of state assets and services (extending to the outsourcing of welfare functions, and the mandating of privatization at local government level); organized labor; the welfare state; and action regarding the manufacturing and financial sectors. The paper also considers some of the larger implications of this line of policy, not least the changes in the structure of the British economy (from the positions of manufacturing and finance, to the distribution of incokme), and the ways in which Thatcher's successors modified but also significantly forwarded this legacy.

ANALISIS GEOGRAFI POLITIK DALAM PILIHAN RAYA KECIL (PRK) PARLIMEN TANJONG PIAI, JOHOR

Political geography is one of the aspects of human geography that is a larger study, but it contains more specific elements. Political geography focuses on political phenomena and focuses on the structure of the institution and how it is involved in the formation of geographical patterns and relationships. In this paper, two aspects of political geography will be explored in the by-election of the Tanjong Piai parliamentary, namely geopolitics and electoral geography. Geopolitics means the influence of power on an area in terms of ethnicity, political parties, leaders, governments, and local authorities. Election geography is a field of study on the various aspects of geography such as area, borders, population, development, and economic influence on political trends of the state. It is well known that the BN won the Tanjong Piai parliamentary seat in the 2019 by-election and the seat is won by the PH in 2018. The post-election 2018 sees the Tanjong Piai Parliamentary Election on November 16, 2019. BN/MCA candidate Datuk Seri Dr. Wee Jeck Seng won the Tanjong Piai parliamentary by-election with 15,086 votes after gaining 25,466 votes. Thus, the geopolitical aspects that will be uncovered are the influence of ethnic geopolitics, political parties, and leaders in influencing the election results and voting patterns while the geographical aspects of the electorate that will be elaborated in this paper are mapping in terms of area influence (development), border, location (urban-rural), accessible, physical (natural and man-made). In terms of geopolitics ethnicity, found both ethnic Malay and Chinese support BN/MCA ethnic Chinese caused by the candidates and the identification of a party in the by-election of Parliament for Tanjong Piai while the electoral geography, in the polling district outside the city, the majority of ethnic Malays continued strong support BN/MCA while the town/urban where the majority of ethnic Chinese took place a little swing of PH in the BN/MCA caused by the candidates, the socio-economic situation and current issues in favor of the BN/MCA. One of the main factors contributing to the Barisan Nasional’s majority in the Tanjung Piai by-election on Nov 16 was because of its candidate Datuk Seri Dr. Wee Jeck Seng himself. The charm, popularity, and service of Wee, who has been a member of the state legislative assembly of the Pekan Nenas for three years, and the Tanjung Piai MP for two terms, certainly met the level of community satisfaction there. The former Tanjung Piai MP is seen as more experienced, credible, and friendly than Pakatan Harapan (PH) candidate Karmaine Sardini. Wee Jeck Seng’s personal and BN’s machine power-assisted by PAS through the cooperation of the Muafakat Nasional is considered to be the key factor in winning the BN. Jeck Seng’s strength is also reflected in the BN and PAS’s unified machine power which was successfully consolidated through the Muafakat Nasional. This factor is significant because the UMNO and PAS machinery are seen as working hard to ensure that all white voters are cast out, despite the Tanjung Piai parliamentary seat being contested by MCA candidates. Moreover, issues of anger and frustration of the people and especially the Chinese community over the failure of the government to deal with the rising cost of living, the promise of the 14th General Election (GE14) manifesto were not met and the failure of the PH to address sensational issues played by BN also contributed to the defeating factor for PH this time. PH candidates are also seen to be caught up in the issue of their own mistakes as well as the wisdom of the BN machinery to play negative issues involving the PH Government which ultimately influences the electorate.

Labour party adaptation to multilevel politics: evidence from British general election manifestos

We are grateful to participants at the March 2018 ‘Manifesto Co-ordination in Multi-Level Settings’ workshop at Universite Libre de Bruxelles and Waseda University for feedback on an earlier version of this paper. We are also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments.

Pharmacy bodies publish joint general election manifesto

Pharmacy bodies publish joint general election manifesto

Marching to the Left? Programmatic Competition and the 2017 Party Manifestos

AbstractThis article analyses the content of the 2017 general election manifestos, and introduces the latest estimates from the Manifesto Project to explore recent ideological movements in the British party system. It reports the changing policy emphases in Conservative and Labour manifestos and the ideological positions of the major political parties in 2017. It finds that Theresa May's party produced its most left‐wing manifesto since 1964, and that Jeremy Corbyn's party produced its most left‐wing manifesto since 1992 and the election before the advent of New Labour. The article also finds that the ideological space between the Conservatives and Labour opened up in 2017, and that Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists published the most right‐wing manifesto.

The Quiet Revolution? The Labour Party and Welfare Conditionality

AbstractLabour's 2017 general election manifesto contained a pledge to ‘end the punitive sanctions regime’ in the British welfare state. Whilst the specific implications of this pledge were not elaborated, such a policy would nevertheless constitute a profound break with a welfare consensus spanning over twenty years. The depth of the suggested changes on welfare are also evident in the scale of reform proposed to disability benefits, as well as plans—confirmed in August 2018 by the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell—to pilot universal basic income. Collectively, these policies would seemingly be deeply at odds with public opinion on the benefits system, which over the course of the last two decades has significantly hardened. Yet despite the seemingly radical and controversial nature of the policy, it received very little media or public attention during the election campaign. This article explores Labour's ‘quiet revolution’ on welfare, examining whether Labour's new welfare approach is indeed a bold attempt to reshape public opinion on welfare or, alternatively, a mostly pragmatic reaction to changing social attitudes. The argument presented is that whilst there are persuasive explanations that Labour is responding to a change in the public mood, there is also evidence of a more ambitious goal at stake: the aim of reshaping, not simply responding to, public opinion on the welfare state.

An Enunciative Approach to Pathos in British General Election Manifestos

The use of pathos is a well-known rhetorical device but, from a linguistic point of view, markers of this rhetorical device remain to be defined. In speeches, prosody and intonation may be used as indicators. The use of written media however, precludes any type of interpersonal displays of emotion, and yet the rhetoric put forward in manifestos does not elude emotion. Beyond explicit references to emotions, the language used in manifestos can be aimed at triggering an emotional response in the potential voter. This paper deals with fear-appeals in four 2010 General Election Manifestos (GEMs). Through a comparative study of the UKIP, BNP, Liberal Democrat party and Conservative party (GEMs), we first provide an analysis of the construction of the notion |fear| before turning to the notion |threat| perceived as one of the triggers of fear. In this way, this paper aims at formulating hypotheses about what the selected linguistic markers reveal concerning this rhetorical device.

БОРОТЬБА ЛЕЙБОРИСТСЬКОЇ ПАРТІЇ ВЕЛИКОЇ БРИТАНІЇ ЗА ВИБОРЦІВ В 20-Х РР. ХХ СТОРІЧЧЯ

The article examines the processes of growth of the British Labour Party in the early XXth century. The reasons of Labour Party’s success on parliamentary and municipal elections in the 1920s have been analyzed. The main attention is paid to the party’s activities in constituencies and analysis of Labour Party General Election Manifestos, General Elections Results and other statistic data. The relations between the Labour Party and churches in Great Britain have also been investigated. The support of the Anglican Church and denominations in Great Britain gave the Labour Party some votes but they lost some votes of believers in the next election in 1924 because of Labour government’s failure to acknowledge Bolshevik persecution of the Christians in the USSR. The Labour attempts to win the countryside were also not so fruitful. It is emphasized that 1918 was the turning point in the formation of the Labour Party as mass, widely represented and influential parliamentary party. The reorganization of the Labour party in 1918, Representation of the People Act (1918), adoption of the “Labour and the New Social Order” party constitution have proved to be favorable for its further evolution. But some difficulties such as conflicts between left and right views in the party, absence of convincing majority, black mass-media technologies from political opponents and problems in economics of the country, seriously influenced on its abilities to win success in 1920-s.

Access to the countryside: the tragedy of the house of commons

The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (the CRoW Act) serves as an example of the way in which ideology can frequently become a casualty of realpolitik. Wider access to the countryside was a pillar of Labour Party general election manifestos from the 1950s until the introduction of the CRoW Act. This article examines the antecedents and emergence of this statute to determine whether the eventual form of the rights of access under the CRoW Act represent a missed opportunity to grant public rights over private land.

Seeking more investment to create a world‐class NHS

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) held its annual conference in April to launch its own General Election manifesto and present a wide variety of speakers from the NHS, industry, patient groups, academia and UK political parties. Joy Ogden reports on the organisation's future industrial strategy.

A qualitative inquiry into supporter representation on Scottish football club boards

Recent political initiatives in the UK have sought to increase the role of supporters in the governance of football clubs. The Labour Party included in their 2015 general election manifesto proposals to give supporters a statutory right to representation on the board of directors of their club. In Scotland, amendments to the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act (2015) have provided Scottish Ministers with a framework to develop legislation relating to supporter involvement in governance. To date, however, there has been limited research on supporter representation, and the practicability of legislation giving fans the right to a seat in the boardroom has not been investigated. The purpose of this paper is to address that gap in the literature. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 directors of Scottish football clubs. Findings show that such legislation would be imprudent given the inherent difficulty of the role and the potential disruption to board dynamics.

Parties, mandates and multilevel politics

The three main statewide British parties – Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats – all produce different versions of their manifestos in British general elections. Many policies debated in a British general election no longer apply at the subnational level, where separate devolved institutions control large areas of policy. This article therefore assesses the roles of national party manifestos at the subnational level in British general elections. It develops an original theory linking Strom’s alternative party goals to Ray’s typology of mandate/contract manifestos, advertisement manifestos and identity manifestos. It then explores a comparative overview of British parties’ general election manifestos at the subnational level, before focusing in detail on Labour’s 2010 and 2015 general election manifestos, which reflect the party’s strategic difficulties caused by devolution. The expected variation is found between the national and subnational manifestos. In some instances, multiple goals are pursued simultaneously and this is reflected in manifestos which assume elements of more than one manifesto ideal type. This supports the additional conclusion that manifestos can perform multiple functions in complex multilevel systems of government.

‘Public Foreplay’ or Programmes for Government? The Content of the 2015 Party Manifestos

This article analyses the content of the 2015 British General Election manifestos using manually derived Manifesto Project estimates and computer-assisted text analysis (CATA). It analyses the parties’ policy emphases, investigates their ideological positioning and movement, and further compares their policy agendas with voters’ concerns. It finds the three main parties moved slightly leftwards but continued to agree on the broad thrust of economic policy. It also finds that, while the economy dominated the manifestos, there was considerable differentiation in respect of other issues. Finally, the parties appeared to downplay the issue of immigration despite its importance to the public.