Who leads and who follows? The symbiotic relationship between UKIP and the Conservatives – and populism and Euroscepticism

Politics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Bale

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) is not so much a populist party that became Eurosceptic as a Eurosceptic party that became populist. However, careful tracing of a sequence that began in the late 1990s reveals that it was not UKIP but the Conservative Party that first fused populism and Euroscepticism. David Cameron’s decision in 2006 to temporarily abandon both approaches, just as Nigel Farage became UKIP’s leader, turned out, in historical institutionalist terms, to be a critical juncture. It provided UKIP with an opportunity to fill the gap, after which the Conservatives were unable, as Europe was hit by successive economic and migration crises, to regain the initiative. As a result, and as Cameron’s coalition government failed to meet its promises to control immigration, UKIP enjoyed increasing electoral success. This allowed it to exert significant, if indirect, pressure on the Tories, eventually helping to force Cameron into promising an in/out referendum – a promise that did neither him nor his party any good. The UK case, therefore, reminds us that anyone wanting to understand populist Euroscepticism needs to appreciate that the relationship between the radical right and its mainstream, centre-right counterpart is more reciprocal, and even symbiotic, than is commonly imagined.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
Laurie Parsons

This article discusses the relationship between climate change and migration in the context of the UK. After a brief overview of climate migration scholarship, it examines the framing of climate migration as a crisis in UK policy discourse, highlighting the disjuncture between policy and academic scholarship in this respect. Subsequently, it examines the reasons for this schism, exploring both the framing of climate migration within the UK media landscape and the securitisation of the topic within UK government policy. Finally, the article explores how the UK�s political landscape undergirds the political logic of climate finance, emphasising the role of British domestic politics in shaping the boundaries and direction of climate change as it manifests in governance. The article closes by exploring potential new directions in UK climate migration policy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nana-fatima Taini Ozeto ◽  
Thérèse Allan

Previous research has identified the heightened amount of perceived stress experienced by migrants in the West. Muslim women specifically may be at a greater exposure to perceived stress, easily being identified as different from others due to the observance of the hijab (Ahmed, 1992). However, Muslims in the UK generally have one of the lowest rates of accessing mental health services (Joint Commissioning Panel for Mental Health, 2014). Current research shows the positive role religion plays in managing perceived stress and the potential development of mental health difficulties. Few studies have been conducted on migrant populations and even fewer with female Muslim migrants. The current study aimed to investigate religiosity, as a mediator of the relationship between religious coping and perceived stress in migrant Muslim women. It also aimed to investigate the relationship between perceived stress and migration. The results found religiosity to mediate the relationship between religious coping and perceived stress, that is, individuals with higher religiosity used religious coping and had lower perceived stress. However, there was no significant relationship between experiences of migration and perceived stress. These findings provide possible directions for mental health practitioners when working with clients from such backgrounds.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Foster ◽  
Matthew Feldman

Boris Johnson’s electoral victory and the 2020 culmination of Brexit are accelerating Britain’s shift towards the right and towards open criticism of technocracy in the UK and EU. Since 2016 the UK’s political atmosphere has polarised into hostile extremes. The continuation of this toxicity beyond Brexit, the dominance of nationalist narratives as Britain’s new ‘politics of everything’ (Valluvan 2019). While the Conservative Party remains traditionally centre-right and the Brexit Party has ceased to be relevant, the UK continues to witness the growth of the far right and what is called here the ‘Radical Right’, which have been accelerating since 2016, rapidly gaining influence (Norris and Inglehart 2019: 443-472), and ‘mainstreaming’ (Miller-Idriss 2017) in the Conservative majority elected in December 2019. The past four years have seen growing British contempt for technocracy in London and Brussels, while the Leave vote has been represented as a “Will of the People” antithetical to a Remain/Revoke/Second Referendum position, often portrayed as an anti-democratic scheme by “the elite” to frustrate the will of “the people”. This ‘us and them’ populist narrative is deepening as the UK’s volatile political environment moves away from the political procedures and economic values by which the UK has operated since 1945. Since early 2020, this narrative has been significantly accelerated by Covid-19 countermeasures, with anti-EU parties and narratives on the left and right becoming anti-lockdown or anti-vaccine parties and narratives. This paper approaches the radical right as emblematic of British politics’ shift from centrism towards polarised factions defined not by party but by support or contempt for technical governance. In this paper we propose a new explanatory basis for studying the populist radical right not as a temporary phenomenon in response to specific political events and conditions, but as a fluid, amorphous, and heterogeneous set of groups, parties, and narratives whose strategies, appeal, and narratives make them extremely adaptable, and significant as a force with substantial influence of politics into the future.


Author(s):  
Mark Stuart

This chapter examines the role of whips and rebellious Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK Parliament. Whips are MPs or peers who are responsible for managing the Members of their party, and in particular for ensuring that party Members vote in line with their party's policy. The whips are often regarded as bullies and cajolers, whereas MPs are seen as spineless and overly loyal. The chapter first considers the myths and reality about whips before discussing the growing rebelliousness of MPs — that is, they vote against their party line in the division (voting) lobbies. It shows that these rebels have made the role of the whips much harder, citing as an example the case of the Coalition Government of 2010–2015, where the government whips had to try to satisfy the demands of two parties — Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party.


Author(s):  
Harry Nedelcu ◽  
Chris Miller

The relationship between migration and extremist parties has been an overlapping topic in studies of party systems, citizenship, and migration. This body of work has collectively challenged the view that the success of radical right parties in Western Europe is an unavoidable consequence of increased immigration flows. Through a review of four recent studies, this article will attempt to unpack recent scholarly literature with the aim of investigating the salience of the causal link between immigration and the success of radical right parties. The four works studied arrive at separate conclusions due to their different conceptual understandings of agency in party systems as well as their assumptions about the nature of political mobilization. While three feature the mobilization of immigration as an electoral issue as being an important factor for the success of far right parties, one makes the claim that national definitions of citizenship shape both responses to migration within the host state as well as the space available for the radical right.   Full text available: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v6i1.209


Significance Most senior cabinet ministers have continued in office. This continuity masks what is likely to be a shift in the balance of policy in several areas compared with the previous Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, especially on economic and business matters. The forthcoming referendum on the United Kingdom's EU membership will make Conservative Party management a central consideration shaping government policy in this Parliament. Impacts Party management considerations will make the UK EU membership renegotiation a political exercise, not a technical one. Osborne will be central to the negotiations with key EU players, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Javid will be inclined to ease regulatory burdens, potentially prompting a UK exit for financial institutions. While Javid can set a new tone and exercise some influence, his capacity to reverse concerns in this area is limited. Cameron's pledge not to seek another term in 2020 will make him a less relevant figure in the second half of this Parliament.


1970 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Nedelcu ◽  
Chris Miller

The relationship between migration and extremist parties has been an overlapping topic in studies of party systems, citizenship, and migration. This body of work has collectively challenged the view that the success of radical right parties in Western Europe is an unavoidable consequence of increased immigration flows. Through a review of four recent studies, this article will attempt to unpack recent scholarly literature with the aim of investigating the salience of the causal link between immigration and the success of radical right parties. The four works studied arrive at separate conclusions due to their different conceptual understandings of agency in party systems as well as their assumptions about the nature of political mobilization. While three feature the mobilization of immigration as an electoral issue as being an important factor for the success of far right parties, one makes the claim that national definitions of citizenship shape both responses to migration within the host state as well as the space available for the radical right.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-157
Author(s):  
Jacob Winn

The Brexit vote — the British people’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016 — represents the outcome of a successful populist movement. More recently, the Conservative Party’s staggering 2019 electoral success demonstrated that the populist “Get Brexit Done” message remains popular among both traditional Conservatives and broad swaths of the working class in former Labour Partystrongholds. This study aims to explain the Conservative Party’s marked change rhetoric and policy, as well as factional shifts within the halls of Westminster, in response to the ongoing Brexit negotiations. While some scholars look at the supplyside causes of populism (elites and political parties) and others look at the demandside causes (the voters), this study applies a third school of thought that examines the relationship between supply and demand by analyzing a series of interviews with Conservative Party staff as well as public opinion polling. In doing so, the study concludes that there has been a deep, reciprocal, and simultaneous onset of populist Euroscepticism within both the Conservative Party and the working class that has structurally re-aligned the Conservative Party for decades to come, from more ‘libertarian’ to more ‘authoritarian’ in nature. A feedback loop between the new Conservative base and the Conservative Party has rendered and reciprocated a new mentality among voters. This research contributes to the existing literature as an example of the aftermath of populist movements when both elites and voters are able to forge cooperative relationships to achieve their goals.


1994 ◽  
Vol 72 (03) ◽  
pp. 426-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Kitchen ◽  
I D Walker ◽  
T A L Woods ◽  
F E Preston

SummaryWhen the International Normalised Ratio (INR) is used for control of oral anticoagulant therapy the same result should be obtained irrespective of the laboratory reagent used. However, in the UK National External Quality Assessment Scheme (NEQAS) for Blood Coagulation INRs determined using different reagents have been significantly different.For 18 NEQAS samples Manchester Reagent (MR) was associated with significantly lower INRs than those obtained using Diagen Activated (DA, p = 0.0004) or Instrumentation Laboratory PT-Fib HS (IL, p = 0.0001). Mean INRs for this group were 3.15, 3.61, and 3.65 for MR, DA, and IL respectively. For 61 fresh samples from warfarin-ised patients with INRs of greater than 3.0 the relationship between thromboplastins in respect of INR was similar to that observed for NEQAS data. Thus INRs obtained with MR were significantly lower than with DA or IL (p <0.0001). Mean INRs for this group were 4.01, 4.40, and 4.59 for MR, DA, and IL respectively.We conclude that the differences between INRs measured with the thromboplastins studied here are sufficiently great to influence patient management through warfarin dosage schedules, particularly in the upper therapeutic range of INR. There is clearly a need to address the issues responsible for the observed discrepancies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-398
Author(s):  
Ruchi Singh

Rural economies in developing countries are often characterized by credit constraints. Although few attempts have been made to understand the trends and patterns of male out-migration from Uttar Pradesh (UP), there is dearth of literature on the linkage between credit accessibility and male migration in rural Uttar Pradesh. The present study tries to fill this gap. The objective of this study is to assess the role of credit accessibility in determining rural male migration. A primary survey of 370 households was conducted in six villages of Jaunpur district in Uttar Pradesh. Simple statistical tools and a binary logistic regression model were used for analyzing the data. The result of the empirical analysis shows that various sources of credit and accessibility to them play a very important role in male migration in rural Uttar Pradesh. The study also found that the relationship between credit constraints and migration varies across various social groups in UP.


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