The Thatcher revolution: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and Tony Blair, and the transformation of modern Britain, 1979-2001

2004 ◽  
Vol 41 (06) ◽  
pp. 41-3666-41-3666 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Tony Blair ◽  
Margaret Thatcher ◽  
Modern Britain

Limits to Dominance?

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
Margaret Thatcher ◽  
Capital Building ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Very High ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Policy Vision

This chapter compares the leadership capital of two long-serving UK prime ministers: Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, treble election winners who held office for a decade. Mapping their capital over time reveals two very different patterns. Thatcher began with low levels of capital, building to a mid-term high and final fragile dominance, though her capital fell between elections. Blair possessed very high levels from the outset that gradually declined in a more conventional pattern. Both benefited from electoral dominance and a divided opposition, Thatcher’s strength lay in her policy vision while Blair’s stemmed from his popularity and communication skills. The LCI reveals that both prime ministers were successful without being popular, sustained in office by the electoral system. Towards the end of their tenures, both leaders’ continued dominance masked fragility, ousted when unrest in their parties and policy unpopularity eroded their capital.

scholarly journals “Doing God” in Number 10: British Prime Ministers, Religion, and Political Rhetoric

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Crines ◽  
Kevin Theakston
Keyword(s):  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Policy Support ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
David Cameron ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
Margaret Thatcher ◽  
Public Persona

AbstractThis article analyses British prime ministers' use of religious language and their own religious beliefs in their political rhetoric. This is used to justify policy, support their ideological positions, present a public persona, and cultivate their personal ethical appeal and credibility as values-driven political leaders. The focus is on the use and the nature of the religious arguments of Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. As political leaders, British prime ministers are aware of the need to modify and tailor their language in response to changing audiences and contexts. “Doing God” is a difficult and risky rhetorical strategy for British prime ministers but it increasingly has the potential to yield political benefits.

Class Resilience

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-122
Author(s):  
Peter Marks
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Margaret Thatcher ◽  
Classless Society

Alwyn Turner’s compendious study, A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s (2013), ends after 574 richly observed pages seemingly contradicting its title. Turner writes of John Major and Tony Blair, that ‘both had sought to create a classless society, both had failed, with wealth inequality increasing and social mobility decreasing, and both found themselves ill at ease with the kind of classless culture that emerged instead’ (574). Turner adds that Major and Blair (and before them, Margaret Thatcher) had aimed to refashion Britain as a meritocracy, where ability was more pertinent and consequential than family background and traditional networks of social power.

Literature of the 1990s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Marks
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Margaret Thatcher ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Culture History ◽  
The Individual

Placing literary creativity within a changing cultural and political context that saw the end of Margaret Thatcher and rise of New Labour, this book offers fresh interpretations of mainstream and marginal works from all parts of Britain. Based on a framework of thematically-structured accounts, the individual chapters cover national identity, ethnicity, sexuality, class, celebrity culture, history and fantasy in literature from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. It offers its readers a comprehensive view of the changing and challenging literary landscape in this period, critically examining the fiction, poetry and drama as well as representative films, art and music. Placed within the broader context of a transformative political and cultural environment that included Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, Damian Hirst and Princess Diana, the book captures the energetic and sometimes provocative experimentation that typified the final decade of the twentieth century.

What Are You Reading?

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-397
Author(s):  
Kim Solga
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Tuition Fees ◽  
Private Partnership ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
The Public ◽  
Margaret Thatcher ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Government

In May 2010, a general election in the United Kingdom produced a coalition government headed by David Cameron's Conservatives and (nominally) the Liberal Democrats under deputy PM Nick Clegg. The coalition (still in power in 2014) quickly plunged the nation into a period of postcrash austerity the likes of which had not been seen for generations. When I landed at Heathrow in June 2012 to start a new job at Queen Mary University of London, the ground was thick with casualties—and getting thicker. Significant challenges to the U.K. welfare state have been launched before, of course: most visibly and famously under Margaret Thatcher, perhaps more insidiously and tenaciously under Tony Blair. Blair, having learned the lessons of Thatcher's blunt brutality, was a consummate salesman of the public–private partnership, but in 2010 the facade of “feel good” neoliberalism was almost instantly in danger of cracking. Shortly after the election, Clegg backtracked on his promise not to raise tuition fees, allowing the government to triple university students' annual bills to £9,000. By the end of that year protests had taken over the streets; Brits of all social classes were struggling, and angry.

More Than Anyone Bargained For: Beyond the Welfare Contract

1998 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 141-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Goodin
Keyword(s):  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Social Welfare Policy ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Margaret Thatcher ◽  
The People ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
Deserving Poor ◽  
Undeserving Poor

From British debates over the 1832 New Poor Law to the near present, the notion of “desert” has long had a clear referent in discussions of social welfare policy. The designation “deserving poor” was reserved for those with legitimate grounds for not supporting themselves through paid employment. Invariably among them were the very young, the very old, and the mentally and physically very disabled—people who literally could not work for a living. Also included were various categories of people who, according to the varying conventions of the day, were socially excused from paid labor—widows in the Victorian era, students in the postwar era, and so on. Anyone who could and should work for a living but refused to do so was traditionally deemed to be among the “undeserving poor.” Those were the people whose “welfare dependency” has long been the target of welfare reformers, most recently Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

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