scholarly journals Is the Position of Boris Johnson Safe?

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-55
Author(s):  
Elena Ananieva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
The Public ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Difficult Times ◽  
Ruling Party

Since November, the highest echelons of the Conservative Party have been involved in a series of scandals – violation of the rules of lobbying, anti–covid measures, donor contributions to the party treasury – which also affected PM Boris Johnson. The ratings of the ruling party and the head of the Cabinet began to decline rapidly, and the authority of B. Johnson as leader is questioned by the parliamentary fraction and the public. The popularity of the Labour Party and its leader K. Starmer has risen amid the crisis in the ruling party. However, the Tories face a dilemma – changing the party leader, and, consequently, the PM, can put early general elections on the agenda so that the new leader confirms his mandate with the voters. Will the Conservatives take risks in difficult times, having a significant majority in the House of Commons?

UK prime minister will likely remain in power for now

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Consumer Confidence ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Net Zero ◽  
The Eu

Significance As many as a dozen lockdown parties are now alleged to have been held at Downing Street, significantly damaging Johnson’s support among the public and his Conservative Party. His position as party leader and prime minister is gravely threatened. Impacts Johnson’s domestic troubles, coupled with rising economic concerns, increase the chance of an agreement with the EU over Northern Ireland. Disillusionment with Johnson, opposition to net-zero and culture wars open the door for Nigel Farage’s Reform Party to revive its appeal. Rising inflation threatens to undermine consumer confidence and slow the economic recovery over the coming year.

Policy Differences in British Parliamentary Parties

1971 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 694-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Kornberg ◽  
Robert C. Frasure
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Test ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Questionnaire Data ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Data Support ◽  
Ideological Differences

Questionnaire data that delineate the positions of 197 Labour and 126 Conservative M.P.s in the British House of Commons on ten major policy issues are utilized in an empirical test of some of the positions taken by British political parry scholars, Samuel H. Beer and Robert T. McKenzie. Assuming that policy stances taken on these issues reflect more general ideological orientations, the data support Beer's view that serious ideological differences divide the parties. However, McKenzie's belief that policy differences between the frontbenches are narrower than are differences between their backbench supporters is also confirmed. The data also indicate that the differences between the front and backbenches are greater in the Labour party than in the Conservative party, a situation that could be intrinsic to the parties or merely a function of the fact that Labour was in power when these data were collected. Finally, it is suggested that although there are significant differences between the frontbenches and an extreme wing of their respective backbenches, as McKenzie had assumed, it would be unwise to exaggerate the importance of such intraparty differences.

scholarly journals The Impact of Fake News and the Emerging Post-Truth Political Era on Nigerian Polity: A Review of Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umaru A. Pate ◽  
Danjuma Gambo ◽  
Adamkolo Mohammed Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online News ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Ruling Party

Since the rising to notoriety of the present ‘genre’ of malicious content peddled as ‘fake news’ (mostly over social media) in 2016 during the United States’ presidential election, barely three years until Nigeria’s 2019 general elections, fake news has made dangerously damaging impacts on the Nigerian society socially, politically and economically. Notably, the escalating herder-farmer communal clashes in the northern parts of the country, ethno-religious crises in Taraba, Plateau and Benue states and the furiously burning fire of the thug-of-war between the ruling party (All Progressives Congress, APC) and the opposition, particularly the main opposition party (People’s Democratic Party, PDP) have all been attributed to fake news, untruth and political propaganda. This paper aims to provide further understanding about the evolving issues regarding fake news and its demonic impact on the Nigerian polity. To make that contribution toward building the literature, extant literature and verifiable online news content on fake news and its attributes were critically reviewed. This paper concludes that fake news and its associated notion of post-truth may continue to pose threat to the Nigerian polity unless strong measures are taken. For the effects of fake news and post-truth phenomena to be suppressed substantially, a tripartite participation involving these key stakeholders – the government, legislators and the public should be modelled and implemented to the letter.

The Socialist Movement in Great Britain and the United States

1924 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertram Benedict
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Labor Party ◽  
British Labour ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Socialist Movement

There is little need to point out the growing strength of the British Labor party. At the recent general elections, it achieved approximately one-third of both the House of Commons and the popular vote; and the fact that at the preceding election it had rolled up twenty-two per cent of the House and thirty per cent of the ballots proves that its recent achievement was not merely occasional. Throughout Great Britain there is thoughtful consideration as to whether Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald will prove as able a prime minister as he proved a leader of His Majesty's Opposition.What may not be so widely appreciated is that the British Labor party is fundamentally, in fact no less than in theory, a socialist party. At its annual conference held in June, 1923, the following resolution was proposed:“This Conference … asserts that the supreme object of the Labour Party should be the supersession of Capitalism by the Socialist Commonwealth … ;” and with hundreds of delegates representing several million members, the resolution was passed unanimously. Indeed, as the chairman, Sidney Webb, remarked in putting the resolution to a vote, it was largely unnecessary, for everyone in Great Britain recognized that the British Labour party was a socialist movement.

VIII: POSTMASTER GENERAL: 1945

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 111-118
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
The People ◽  
The Future ◽  
Post War ◽  
Clear Majority

I think we were all astonished by the result of the election in the autumn of 1945. Never before had the Labour Party won a clear majority of seats in the House of Commons. Churchill had gone to the electorate as the victorious war leader, far superior to a mere Party Leader, to whom the people of Britain owed more than to anyone else in the competing political parties. But the war had held up the progress of social reform and economic advance, and the men coming home from the front were looking for a new deal. This had been forecast in the vision of the future adumbrated by Sir William Beveridge in his famous Report on post-war society.

Constructing George Wyndham: Narratives of Aristocratic Masculinity in Fin-de-Siècle England

2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy W. Ellenberger
Keyword(s):  
Heart Attack ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Career Interest ◽  
The Public ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Fin De Siècle

In June 1913, on a holiday trip to Paris, George Wyndham died suddenly of a heart attack—he was not quite fifty years old. Shocked by this unexpected loss, colleagues in the Conservative Party and the House of Commons, whose inner circles he had occupied for a quarter of a century, organized the usual tributes. Obituaries laid out Wyndham's pedigree as scion of one of England's more romantic landed families, charted his meteoric rise in the 1890s under Arthur Balfour's patronage, referred briefly and discreetly to his troubled tenure as Irish secretary from 1900–1905, and applauded his versatility as a sportsman and a man of letters. Despite his truncated career, interest in Wyndham did not wane after these first homages. Working through the interruption of war, his family saw that collections of letters and essays, with the 1925 set prefaced by J. W. Mackail's “life,” reached the public. These materials prompted pen portraits and biographies that appeared at regular intervals into the 1970s.A largely sympathetic group of authors, those who wrote about Wyndham faced the interesting challenge of presenting as inspiring and exemplary a life whose disappointments had threatened to outweigh its achievements. The solution they found was one that Wyndham would have accepted, for, indeed, he helped to shape it. In their hands, George Wyndham became a modern Siegfried, the charming, versatile, and disinterested son of an extraordinary ruling class—now, alas, eclipsed—who had guided Britain through two centuries of unprecedented grandeur and prosperity.

The British Elections

1952 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-120
Author(s):  
M. A. Fitzsimons
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The Self ◽  
British Government ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Popular Vote ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
Party Members

The british elections of October 25 gave the Conservative Party a small majority of 17 members in the House of Commons, although the popular vote provided a majority of 200,000 for the Labour Party. Parliament, however, is the supreme power in the British government and the discrepancy between popular vote and parliamentary results will not seriously shake the self-confidence of the Conservative Party. Members of the Labour Party, less sober and responsible in opposition, will doubtless characterize the Conservative government as a freak and an accident. But British traditions sanction the illogical workings of electoral machinery.

Splits will intensify in Kenya's ruling party

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Party Leader ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Vice Chairman ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Political Weapon ◽  
First Time ◽  
Ruling Party

Significance The ruling Jubilee Party has struggled with internal disunity ever since Kenyatta and Ruto announced their unlikely alliance ahead of the 2013 general elections. Tensions have intensified following the resignation -- some say sacking -- of former Jubilee Party vice-chairman David Murathe in January, and comments by him that represent the first time a senior Kenyatta ally has said publicly he will do everything in his power to prevent Ruto from succeeding Kenyatta as party leader and president. Impacts Ruling party disunity will intensify speculation over possible new coalitions, including one involving opposition leader Raila Odinga. If Kenyatta's allies are deemed to be betraying Ruto, the prospects for violence between Kikuyus and Kalenjins will increase dramatically. The outcome of 2022 elections, and the coalitions that will contest it, are becoming more uncertain, increasing the risk of instability. Political manoeuvring will deflect government attention from pressing policy concerns such as infrastructure and rising debt. The use of corruption allegations as a political weapon will lead to fresh investigations but not to an overall reduction in graft.

Club Government‐the Crisis of the Labour Party in the National Perspective

1981 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Marquand
Keyword(s):  
Old French ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The Media ◽  
National Perspective ◽  
The Right ◽  
Rules Of The Game

WHATEVER MAY BE IN DOUBT ABOUT THE CURRENT CRISIS IN the Labour Party, one thing is clear. In a sense true of no other internal crisis in the 62 years since the loose and inchoate ‘Labour Alliance’ of 1900 first became a true political party, with individual members and a distinctive claim to power, the arguments which have provoked it concern the rules of the game as well as moves within the game: the way in which party decisions are made and enforced, as well as the content of the decisions themselves. This, of course, is why the arguments are so fierce and the crisis so deep. Policy defeats can be revised later if Fortune's wheel turns again. Constitutional defeats damage the losers permanently. It is true, no doubt, that both sides in the current struggle have exaggerated the likely consequences of the changes forced through at the October party conference. The old French saying that there is more in common between two deputies, one of whom is a Communist, than between two Communists, one of whom is a deputy has not suddenly lost all relevance to Westminster merely because Labour MPs will have to face compulsory reselection between general elections, or because the party leader is elected in an electoral college. Reselection will not re-make the Parliamentary Labour Party in the image of constituency management committees, and the creation of an electoral college will not free the leader from the need to win and hold the confidence of his parliamentary colleagues. When all the necessary qualifications have been made, however, there can be no doubt that the constitutional changes will shift the balance of party power to the advantage of the Left and to the detriment of the Right — as, of course, they were intended to do. That is what the struggle has been about; and the media have been right to concentrate their attention on that aspect of it.

Policy Voting in Britain: The Colored Immigration Issue in the 1964, 1966, and 1970 General Elections

1978 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donley T. Studlar
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
The Public ◽  
Immigration Control ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Immigration Issue

Several studies in recent years have examined the question of mass issue voting in the United States and have found that people vote more frequently on the basis of policy questions than has heretofore been thought. It would seem to be useful for the study of comparative politics to explore mass policy voting in other democratic countries. The colored immigration issue in Britain is a particularly appropriate one to examine because of the controversy surrounding its impact on voting behavior, especially in the 1970 election. Are the policy preferences of the electorate related to their voting behavior? This question is examined longitudinally through a secondary analysis of the Butler-Stokes election surveys of 1964,1966, and 1970 for England.After utilizing controls for a large number of variables, one finds that theimmigration issue had no significant impact on electoral behavior in 1964 and 1966. In the 1970 election, however, the Conservatives gained an estimated increment of 6.7 percent in votes because many people perceived them to be the party more likely to keep immigrants out and voted in accordance with that perception. This impact can be attributed to Enoch Powell's associating the Conservative party with restrictive immigration control in the public mind.

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