British Prime Minister Research Articles

Prime ministerial political leadership and the domestic politics of Brexit: Theresa May and Boris Johnson compared

This article explores and compares the political leadership of two successive British Prime Ministers, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, in their handling of the domestic politics of Brexit. Despite some similar dilemmas at the beginning of their premierships, their leadership delivered very different outcomes. The key argument developed here, using Richard Heffernan’s power resources model, is that the explanation for these outcomes does not only arise from a different political context and circumstances under which each prime minister pursued their Brexit policy. Rather Johnson, unlike May, made skilful use of the power resources at his command. He possessed more personal power resources and drew upon the available institutional power resources more effectively than May. As a result, unlike May, he was able to be predominant in his government’s Brexit policy. While we demonstrate the continued analytical value of Heffernan’s model, we also point to its limitations and suggest how it can be revised.

Research on British epidemic forecastBased on SIR model

Since the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 has swept the world and continues to threaten human society. Forecasting the future trend of the epidemics is very important for the prevention of COVID-19. The SIR model is an important mathematical model to forecast future epidemic in epidemiology. In a press conference from London on July 5th, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the British government will end nearly all of the coronavirus restrictions starting July 19. This paper aims to use the SIR model to predict epidemics after deregulation of social distance. The results show that as of July 8, 2021, the number of people infected will continue to increase after deregulation, reaching approximately 30000 per day. The British government should reconsider completely liberalizing epidemic control.

Introducing Myth to Foreign Policy Analysis: The Blair Poodle Myth and Its Impact on Constructions of the “Special Relationship”

Abstract This article introduces the concept of political myth to foreign policy analysis. It explains how myth can influence the construction of foreign policy events and decisions and creates a new lens that analysts can use to study this. To do that, this article draws upon conceptual literature on political myth to explain what myth is and how it shapes discursive constructions of the world. Adopting an interpretivist approach, it then uses the concept as a lens to analyze the impact that the Blair Poodle myth has had on the construction of the US–UK “special relationship” from 2002 to 2022 and considers how this has influenced the diplomatic behavior of five UK prime ministers. It finds that the myth has been integral to negative constructions of the “special relationship” over the past twenty years and has inspired political action, including protests, resignations, and more formal diplomatic engagement with the United States.

On the ritualization of commemorative practices: Paying tribute in British Prime Minister's Questions

In this paper, paying tribute is analyzed as an emergent ritual for national commemoration at British Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs). This study draws on data taken from some of the earliest audio recordings available (1978–1988) to more recent video footage (2003–2013), and Hansard, the official record of parliamentary proceedings. The diachronic interactional sociolinguistic study suggests that paying tribute constitutes a rather unusual practice in which parliamentary speakers tend to display unity across party ranks. In the older dataset, the prime minister's paying tribute is prompted by a substantial parliamentary question. By contrast, in the more recent dataset, the initial ritual answer turn slot has emerged as a locus for ritualized commemoration. The observed process of ritualization, which is accompanied by an individualization and distinction of the troops killed in action, is discussed against the backdrop of political events and as well as changes in the institutionalized procedure in parliament.

Disseminating risk communication

Abstract This paper investigates advice offered on closure signs displayed on businesses in Greece and the UK during the first lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic. By scrutinising signs photographed in London and in Athens, as well as speeches delivered by the British and Greek prime ministers at the time of the closures, our analysis shows how business owners pass on government instructions to their customers. The study thus makes an original contribution to research on the effectiveness of risk communication, revealing that while businesses in both countries supported the implementation of containment measures, the Greek signs replicated governmental messages more closely. At the same time, the analysis of advice offered by business owners to their customers in an unprecedented context of a global health crisis provides new insights into research on this speech act.

The End of the Rhetorical Line? The ‘Partygate’ Investigation into former UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson

AbstractIn dramatic and unprecedented circumstances, a former British Prime Minister has been investigated by the House of Commons Privileges Committee for breaking laws set by his own government by socialising and partying whilst the rest of the country toiled during the Covid lockdowns. The lockdown laws were clear, saying we ‘must stay at home, protect the NHS, and save lives’. Socialising of any kind was outlawed, with high fines imposed. Yet, for Boris Johnson, it was unclear whether such restrictions applied to his administration. After the submission of evidence from witnesses in Number Ten and testimony from the defendant himself, a ground‐breaking verdict that will reverberate around Westminster and the Conservative Party for months and years to come was delivered—namely, that Boris Johnson knowingly misled Parliament on multiple occasions about the social activities and that he should be held in contempt of Parliament. The fallout of this verdict will cause division within the Conservative Party and will remind voters of a lengthy period most would rather forget. This article reviews the circumstances of the committee proceedings, the evidence presented, the outcome and how this impacts negatively upon trust in politics which, prior to these proceedings, was already at a low point.

БОРЬБА ПРЕМЬЕР-МИНИСТРА ВЕЛИКОБРИТАНИИ РОБЕРТА УОЛПОЛА С ОППОЗИЦИЕЙ В 20-Е ГОДЫ XVIII ВЕКА

Robert Walpole was first elected to Parliament in 1701. At the beginning of his political career he worked in many parliamentary committees. In 1721 Walpole becomes the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. During the remainder of George I's reign, Walpole's influence steadily increased in the upper echelons of power. At this time, the principles of Walpole's interaction with the British crown, parliament and government were laid as part of the internal political struggle. The politician gradually consolidates his power at the government level, developing a new internal model of the state structure, which consisted in strengthening the power of the Whig group through a system of political control over the opposition in parliament and the ministry. The main goal of Walpole's domestic policy was to have MPs and ministers work in the interests of the Hanoverian dynasty, thereby distributing finances among their opponents in the Whig faction. In such realities, the political power of the opposition gradually decreased, and Walpole's influence over the king, parliament and ministries gradually increased. As a result, Walpole kept Parliament and the ministry on his side by supporting the Hanoverian dynasty, including through the introduction of low export duties and a reduction in the public debt. The activity of Robert Walpole was a reflection of the domestic policy of Great Britain in the 20s of the XVIII century, which showed the trends and moods that existed in the country.

Narrative fusion and layering: statecraft and the shaping of Boris Johnson’s pandemic narrative, 2020–2021

By examining the UK Prime Minister’s justifications for his government’s pandemic responses given during press conferences and during Prime Minister’s Questions from March 2020 to July 2021, this article illustrates the narrative ‘fusion’ (using the pandemic narrative to advance other elements of policy) and ‘layering’ (using the pandemic narrative to justify past policy decision) evident in the construction of Boris Johnson's pandemic narrative. The article makes the case for viewing Johnson’s COVID-19 narrative in light of broader political dynamics within UK politics, particularly adaptations of Conservative statecraft in the Brexit era that preceded the pandemic. The article argues that the narrative itself can be a product of multiple political crises and projects. Specifically, Johnson’s pandemic narrative ‘fused’ and ‘layered’ elements of two other narratives advanced during his time in office: countering challenges to the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom and justifying the withdrawal from the European Union.

Britain’s Failed Attempt at Monetary and Fiscal Exceptionalism

Abstract The autumn 2022 economic upheavals that brought down British Prime Minister Liz Truss’s government represented an ultimate extension of a high-risk exercise in British exceptionalism: the June 2016 referendum decision to leave the European Union. The ill-fated 23 September 2022 ‘mini budget’ introduced by Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, her chancellor of the exchequer – like the referendum outcome six years earlier – was a landmark gesture of national independence. ‘The most ambitious and disastrous budget in modern British history’ illustrated how the intertwining forces of politics and economics set limits on ‘go it alone’ policies. The lessons reverberate beyond the UK’s borders.

There Is a Lot More to Transplantation Surgery Than the Surgery Itself: The "Other" Sir Peter John Morris, AC, FRS.

There Is a Lot More to Transplantation Surgery Than the Surgery Itself: The "Other" Sir Peter John Morris, AC, FRS.

Investigation Into the Spread of Misinformation About UK Prime Ministers on Twitter

Misinformation presents threats to societal mental well-being, public health initiatives, as well as satisfaction in democracy. Those who spread misinformation can leverage cognitive biases to make others more likely to believe and share their misinformation unquestioningly. For example, by sharing misinformation whilst claiming to be someone from a highly respectable profession, a propagandist may seek to increase the effectiveness of their campaign using authority bias. Using retweet data from the spread of misinformation about two former UK Prime Ministers (Boris Johnson and Theresa May), we find that 3.1% of those who retweeted such misinformation claimed to be teachers or lecturers (20.7% of those who claimed to have a profession in their Twitter bio field in our sample), despite such professions representing under 1.15% of the UK population. Whilst polling data shows teachers and healthcare workers are amongst the most trusted professions in society, these were amongst the most popular professions that those in our sample claimed to have.

Good intentions in risk management and the LDI crisis

This paper describes the part played by repo trading, collateral management and liability driven investment (LDI) strategies (each of which was designed to improve the management of risk) in amplifying the crash in gilt prices following the 23rd September, 2022 UK mini-budget. This was a crisis that ultimately led to the resignations of the British Prime Minister and Chancellor of Exchequer as well as the announcement by the Bank of England of a willingness to spend up to £65bn intervening in the gilt market.1 It argues that neither the government nor the LDI funds were solely responsible for the crash and that the fragilities in the UK financial system had gradually built up over a number of decades. It also looks at the lessons that could potentially be learned by financial institutions using repo trading or collateral management as well as the potential lessons for policy makers in government and regulatory bodies.

Unions, Strikes, Shaw (Unions, Strikes, Shaw: “The Capitalism of the Proletariat.”)

Unions, Strikes, Shaw (Unions, Strikes, Shaw: “The Capitalism of the Proletariat.”)

When a Liberal Use of Metaphor Is Really a Conservative One: The Case of Boris Johnson’s Televised Press Releases

The Covid-19 pandemic has generated a number of studies on the use of metaphor to frame the disease and the trope has been presented as a prominent feature of Covid-19 discourse. The metaphor of war has been identified as the master metaphor for framing the health emergency, prompting reflections about its possible drawbacks and feasible alternative framings in order to generate a more constructive stance among the general public, politicians and administrators.
 Such studies largely refer to corpora drawn from heterogeneous sources, combining official statements with coverage in mainstream media, blogs and opinion pieces. The present study is based exclusively on a homogeneous single-genre corpus, namely the official Covid-19 announcements made by the former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from the beginning of March 2020 to December of the same year.
 Using automated interrogation routines, frequency and keyword functions were examined to define the extent and expose underlying patterns of metaphor use in this genre. The quantitative data was also subjected to qualitative analysis from the perspective of Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which led to insights into contextual constraints and cultural facets of metaphor use in this genre.
 The results obtained could be considered surprising. It emerged that Boris Johnson resorted to metaphor only sparingly in this genre. The results highlighted that, on the rare occasions when he did rely on this trope, his usage was very predictable and conventional. However, despite the low frequency and keyness of metaphor in his Covid-19 announcements, this rhetorical figure was seen to offer diverse resources and produce multiple effects, even when used so conservatively.

What was David Cameron Thinking? Thoughts of a British Prime Minister Regarding Brexit

The aim of my research is to examine what David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was thinking all the way through the process of the UK’s secession from the European Union: why he made certain decisions and what influenced him. In order to do that, I use speeches, parliamentary debates, and memoirs, including several interviews with the former PM. The research methodology primarily uses the tools of discourse analysis: I examine the semantic elements, words, sentences and other characteristics of the political discourse, paying attention to the strategic structure of speech modes. By interpreting his political thinking and analysing his speeches, I wish to examine the impact of this leading politician on his own party’s and the electorate’s views on the EU. Understanding this can help to interpret the relationship between Britain and Europe, and perhaps in part, give an answer as to why the British chose to continue outside the Union. Based on this, we can also try to assess what this relationship will look like in the future.

Humorous parodies of popular culture as strategy in Boris Johnson’s populist communication

This article examines the role of parodic humour in Boris Johnson’s populist communication. Populist parties and conservative politicians have increasingly drawn humorous connections to films and entertainment in their political communication. But, despite the increasing research on populism, the role of humour in political communication is not yet at the centre of populism research. The article shows how professionally designed humour can dominate discourses and bring immense amounts of media attention to specific details while distracting attention from other political issues. The argument of the article is illustrated by analysing humorous communication of the former British PM Boris Johnson in 2019 and 2020. Among others, Johnson compared himself to Marvel’s Hulk, a parody that echoed through the news media. The article provides a very specific and new insight into the means by which populist strategies make use of parodic humorous elements in their communication.

Theresa’s tears: gendering mediations of populist leadership failures in Brexit Britain

ABSTRACT When former British Prime Minister Theresa May resigned in May 2019, in the first few days much mainstream and social media coverage focused on the tears she cried. Newspapers highlighted her tears as an extraordinary act for a politician. Her unexpected display of emotions was met with sympathy, sometimes even considered a feminist political moment, and often contextualised the framing of May’s political legacy. Analysing UK mainstream tabloid and broadsheet coverage following May’s resignation, this paper explores the media reactions in more detail. A dominant theme in the assessment of May’s legacy was her perceived inability to “get Brexit done.” Any deployment of feminist celebrations of public female tears was quickly overtaken by coverage that constructs May as politically and personally fragile, rooted in a known range of sexist tropes that associate femininity in politics with weakness. This “feminine weakness” is the opposite of what is needed to fulfil the Brexit project, which is often described in masculinist terms. Thus, Brexit is constructed as inherently masculine, and women are considered a threat to this project, highlighting the ways in which Brexit is mediated as a gendered political process. This article argues for greater attention to the role media play in the gendering of populist discourse.

Remembering otherwise: media memory, gender and Margaret Thatcher in Irish hunger strike films

ABSTRACT This article analyses two films about the Irish republican prison protests and the hunger strikes of 1981 – Terry George’s Some Mother’s Son (1996) and Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008) – as countermemories of the dominant British media coverage of the protests and the hunger strikes. Focusing on the use of the voice/image of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in these films, the article asks for what purpose and to what effect these clips and recordings are employed and suggests that Thatcher’s gender does matter in these films. In contrast to the worried mothers of the incarcerated republican sons, prime minister Thatcher appears as the unbending Iron Lady of the British government in Some Mother’s Son, representing the gendered chief villain of the film. In Hunger, Thatcher’s cold, disembodied female voice – Thatcher as acousmêtre – is set against the resisting and suffering male body of Bobby Sands. This article addresses these gendered depictions and their construction through the use of voice and silence. In both films, the female presence of Thatcher is used to invoke the old and create new media memories of the hunger strike.

One Man's Damage: The Consequences of Boris Johnson's Assault on the British Political System

AbstractThe disgraced British prime minister, Boris Johnson, was forced to resign by his own backbench MPs on 7 July 2022 (effective from 6 September) in complete denial that he had done anything wrong. Optimists might argue that this shows the strength of the British political system; that a way was found to throw out a proven rascal, thus providing the opportunity for a restoration of ‘normal politics’. In my view, this optimism is misplaced. Boris Johnson's behaviour, mirroring that of his populist role model, Donald Trump, has raised a number of serious questions about the continued successful functioning of the UK's unwritten constitution.The article reviews the character of Johnson's constitutional violations during his period as prime minister. Using data from a recent survey of UK voters, it then explores the damaging effect that his period in office has had on UK public opinion. Despite his removal from office, Johnson retains a hard core of support across the wider electorate and, in particular, among grassroots Conservative supporters and party members. These supporters remain largely unaware of Johnson's constitutional crimes, and where they do know about them, they forgive them. This creates the real danger either that Johnson may at some future date return to office to repeat his offences, or that a similarly populist successor might deploy the same anti‐democratic devices that Johnson himself used in his desperate attempts to cling to power.

Editorial

Editorial