scholarly journals Constructing a new conservatism? Ideology and values

Author(s):  
Richard Hayton

Following three severe election defeats, the Conservatives elected David Cameron as leader on an explicitly modernising platform. His agenda for change encompassed revitalising the party image through a concerted effort to rebrand the party, an extensive review of policy, and ideological repositioning towards the centre-ground. While these three strands are of course intertwined this chapter will focus on the latter, namely the attempt to distance the Conservatives from the legacy of Thatcherism and cultivate a new form of conservatism with wider electoral appeal. This is examined in relation to the period of opposition under Cameron’s leadership (2005-10) and during his tenure as Prime Minister as leader of the Coalition government between 2010 and 2015. The chapter argues that despite some rhetorical distancing from the Thatcher era, Cameron largely failed to alter the trajectory of contemporary conservatism, which remains essentially neo-Thatcherite. Ultimately this has undermined the modernisation project that he hoped would define his leadership, limiting the effectiveness of his rebranding strategy and shaping the policy agenda that his government has been able to pursue. While forming the Coalition provided the Conservative leader with significant freedom of manoeuvre in statecraft terms (Hayton, 2014) it conversely limited his scope to radically alter his party’s ideological core, as he increasingly needed to balance the demands of his Coalition partners with those of the right of his own party. While significant political capital was expended on the totemic issue of equal marriage for gay couples, few other issues have pushed the boundaries of conservatism beyond its Thatcherite comfort zone. In short, after a decade of Cameronite leadership the construction of a coherent new conservatism remains largely unfulfilled.

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Crossley ◽  
Michael Lambert

The Troubled Families Programme (TFP) was launched by the UK Coalition Government in December 2011. Following the riots that took place in towns and cities across England during that summer, the then Prime Minister David Cameron promised to put ‘rocket boosters’ under plans to ‘turn around’ the lives of the country's ‘most troubled families’ by the end of the Coalition's term of office in May 2015. In his ‘fightback’ speech, delivered just a week after the riots had ended, Cameron (2011a) stated that the riots were not about poverty or race or government cuts. Instead, he argued that that the riots were ‘about behaviour: people showing indifference to right and wrong; people with a twisted moral code; people with a complete absence of self-restraint’.


2020 ◽  
pp. 157-176
Author(s):  
Rodney Brazier

The rules and processes that govern and guide how Prime Ministers lose office, and how Prime Ministers take it over, are many, scattered, uncodified, and therefore not easy to access. This is a constitutional lacuna for those who operate the system, and for citizens who wish to understand it. This chapter considers for the first time the arguments for and against reducing all that into a readable, coherent, and authoritative document. The issues that would arise if such a project were to be undertaken are set out. The chapter concludes with a unique draft code on choosing a Prime Minister. It sets out in direct language the rules about the office, the qualifications required, the right to be Prime Minister, a coalition government, deputizing for a Prime Minister, and resignation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194016122110226
Author(s):  
Ayala Panievsky

As populist campaigns against the media become increasingly common around the world, it is ever more urgent to explore how journalists adopt and respond to them. Which strategies have journalists developed to maintain the public's trust, and what may be the implications for democracy? These questions are addressed using a thematic analysis of forty-five semistructured interviews with leading Israeli journalists who have been publicly targeted by Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The article suggests that while most interviewees asserted that adherence to objective reporting was the best response to antimedia populism, many of them have in fact applied a “strategic bias” to their reporting, intentionally leaning to the Right in an attempt to refute the accusations of media bias to the Left. This strategy was shaped by interviewees' perceived helplessness versus Israel's Prime Minister and his extensive use of social media, a phenomenon called here “the influence of presumed media impotence.” Finally, this article points at the potential ramifications of strategic bias for journalism and democracy. Drawing on Hallin's Spheres theory, it claims that the strategic bias might advance Right-wing populism at present, while also narrowing the sphere of legitimate controversy—thus further restricting press freedom—in the future.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yamamah Kashkool ◽  
wael Al-bayati

"The period of approving the Constitution of the Republic of Iraq for the year 2005 was surrounded by a state of political turmoil that usually accompanies any transitional phase that carries many political variables through the transition from a phase of dictatorial rule to a new phase bearing the features of democracy. In its approval, the lack of clarity in the political vision and the weakness of the constitutional legal culture of its authors, as well as the way in which it was approved by a popular referendum, which is voted on by yes or no, and does not allow an opportunity to discuss its articles and articles and diagnose its shortcomings. One of the shortcomings in our constitution is that it does not refer to regulating the resignation of the Prime Minister. This position has a political nature, and an administrative nature, and its occupant has the right to decide not to continue with this position and be satisfied with working in this field for any reason, and this must be in accordance with the context Organized legal, which is known as resignation., and this is what we dealt with in this research. For the purpose of researching this topic, we asked a research question that is... How can we address the legislative shortcomings that surrounded the Constitution of the Republic of Iraq for the year 2005 and related to regulating the resignation of the Prime Minister? From this research question, we derived several secondary research questions... 1- What is the limitation of legislative shortcomings? 2- What are the reasons for the legislative deficiencies in the Iraqi constitution? 3- Does the Prime Minister have the right to resign during his tenure? 4- To whom is the resignation submitted? 5- Who is the party that decides whether or not to accept the resignation? 6- What are the procedures that follow the acceptance of the resignation? By discussing these questions, we will try to reach the possibility of developing a legislative text that deals with a complete organization of the resignation of the Prime Minister, especially since the idea of ​​amending the constitution and to this day is still valid and possible, because many political, social and economic conditions in the country have changed from the time of entry into force of this constitution, which makes the idea of ​​the amendment obligatory and necessary"


1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy E. Miller

Responding to mounting public concern about the shift to managed care, legislation to grant patient protections has dominated the health policy agenda over the past two years. Although some policies, such as laws on maternity length of stay, can be easily dismissed as “body part by body part” micromanagement of medical practice, other initiatives offer substantive, new rights to patients across the spectrum of care. At both the state and the federal levels, the right of enrollees to appeal a denial of treatment or to file grievances about other plan decisions has emerged as a centerpiece of patient protection legislation. Grievance and appeal rights have been embraced as a way to empower patients, to enhance access to treatment, and to improve the quality of care by providing an external mechanism to review treatment denials.


1981 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 447-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Bratton

Events in independent Zimbabwe have confounded pundits on the left and the right who assumed that African resistance to settler colonial rule was more revolutionary than nationalistic. How can the rather unexpected direction of political and economic change in Zimbabwe since April 1980 be understood? The Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) Government of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe has committed itself to redress the severe social inequities of the past, but has decided, at least at the outset, to reach its goals through a prudent rather than a doctrinaire approach. What factors explain the current development strategy? Does the apparent accommodation of Z.A.N.U. (P.F.) with private capital signal a dangerous divergence from the stated goal of building socialism? Or does it represent an awakening to the idea that economic production, even if organised on capitalist lines, is a prerequisite of development in Africa?


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Stephen Trinder

As a master’s and Ph.D. student at Anglia Ruskin University in 2011, I recall the central message in lectures given by my eventual Ph.D. supervisor Professor Guido Rings was that we cannot underestimate the enduring strength of the legacy of colonialism in Europe and its influence on shaping contemporary attitudes towards immigration. Indeed, as I was completing my studies, I became increasingly aware of the negative rhetoric towards migrants in politics and right-wing press. In an attempt to placate the far-right of his party and address a growing threat from the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a discourse of ‘othernising’ migrants on the basis of their supposed rejection of ‘Britishness’ from former UK Prime Minister David Cameron in particular caught my attention. The result of this was tightening of immigration regulations, which culminated of course in the now-infamous Brexit vote of 2016. Almost a decade after my graduation, Professor Rings is currently Vice Chair for the Research Executive Agency of the European Commission and continues to work at Anglia Ruskin University at the level of Ph.D. supervisor. He still publishes widely in the field of Migration Studies and his recent high-profile book The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema (Routledge, 2016) and editorships in the fields of culture and identity (iMex Interdisciplinario Mexico) argue for increased intercultural solidarity in Europe as well as a strengthening of supranational organizations like the EU and the UN to offset growing nationalism. I got in touch with Professor Rings to find out where he feels Europe stands today with regard to migration and get his comments on the continued rise of nationalism on the continent.


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