Half a Century of British Politics

Half a Century of British Politics PDF Author: Lynton J. Robins
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719048401
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Leading experts assess the past fifty years of British political life. Retreat from empire to Europe, with all the adjustments this entailed, is explored, as is the changing nature of politics at home.

Half a Century of British Politics

Half a Century of British Politics PDF Author: Lynton J. Robins
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719048401
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Leading experts assess the past fifty years of British political life. Retreat from empire to Europe, with all the adjustments this entailed, is explored, as is the changing nature of politics at home.

The End of British Party Politics?

The End of British Party Politics? PDF Author: Roger Awan-Scully
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1785903632
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 77

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Book Description
Elections ask voters to choose between political parties. But voters across the UK are increasingly being presented with fundamentally different, and largely disconnected, sets of political choices. This book is about this hollowing out of a genuinely British democratic politics: how and why it has occurred, and why it matters. Electoral choices across Britain became increasingly differentiated along national lines over much of the last half-century. In 2017, for the second general election in a row, four different parties came first in the UK's four nations. UK voters are increasingly faced with general election campaigns that are largely disconnected from each other. At the same time, voters acquire much of their information about the election from news-media based in London that display little understanding of these national distinctions. The UK continues to elect representatives to a single parliament. But the shared debates and sets of choices that tie a political community together are increasingly absent. Separate national political arenas and agendas still have to interact but in some respects the House of Commons increasingly resembles the European Parliament – whose members are democratically chosen but from a disconnected series of separate national electoral contests. This is deeply problematic for the long-term unity and integrity of the UK.

The UK's Changing Democracy

The UK's Changing Democracy PDF Author: Patrick Dunleavy
Publisher: LSE Press
ISBN: 1909890464
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
The UK’s Changing Democracy presents a uniquely democratic perspective on all aspects of UK politics, at the centre in Westminster and Whitehall, and in all the devolved nations. The 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU marked a turning point in the UK’s political system. In the previous two decades, the country had undergone a series of democratic reforms, during which it seemed to evolve into a more typical European liberal democracy. The establishment of a Supreme Court, adoption of the Human Rights Act, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution, proportional electoral systems, executive mayors and the growth in multi-party competition all marked profound changes to the British political tradition. Brexit may now bring some of these developments to a juddering halt. The UK’s previous ‘exceptionalism’ from European patterns looks certain to continue indefinitely. ‘Taking back control’ of regulations, trade, immigration and much more is the biggest change in UK governance for half a century. It has already produced enduring crises for the party system, Parliament and the core executive, with uniquely contested governance over critical issues, and a rapidly changing political landscape. Other recent trends are no less fast-moving, such as the revival of two-party dominance in England, the re-creation of some mass membership parties and the disruptive challenges of social media. In this context, an in-depth assessment of the quality of the UK’s democracy is essential. Each of the 2018 Democratic Audit’s 37 short chapters starts with clear criteria for what democracy requires in that part of the nation’s political life and outlines key recent developments before a SWOT analysis (of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) crystallises the current situation. A small number of core issues are then explored in more depth. Set against the global rise of debased semi-democracies, the book’s approach returns our focus firmly to the big issues around the quality and sustainability of the UK’s liberal democracy.

Who Governs Britain?

Who Governs Britain? PDF Author: Anthony King
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141980664
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
The British system has been radically transformed in recent decades, far more than most of us realise. As acclaimed political scientist and bestselling author Anthony King shows, this transformation lies at the heart of British politics today. Imagining - or pretending - that the British political system and Britain's place in the world have not greatly changed, our political leaders consistently promise more than they can perform. Political and economic power is now widely dispersed both inside and outside the UK, but Westminster politicians still talk the language of Attlee and Churchill. How exactly has the British system changed? Where does power now lie? In Who Governs Britain?, King offers the first assessment in many years of Britain's governing arrangements as a whole, providing much needed context for the 2015 general election.

Slade Gorton

Slade Gorton PDF Author: John Charles Hughes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
Publisher description: Slade Gorton's half century in politics began in 1956. Together with Dan Evans and Joel Pritchard, he was a key player in generating a new wave of progressive Republican politics in Washington State. He helped elect the youngest governor in state history; argued 14 cases bafore the U.S. Supreme Court as attorney general; upset a legend to win a seat in the U.S. Senate; saved baseball for Seattle; angered Indians and environmentalists; championed the plight of timber towns caught in the crossfire over the spotted owl; suffered a bitter defeat and made a comback, only to lose one of the closest Senate races in American history. Gorton went on to investigate British Petroleum's safety practices, forged consensus on the 9/11 Commission and served on the 2011 Redistricting Commission. This sweeping biography explores the eventful life of a resilient politican who remains in the arena in his 80s.

A Handbook of English Politics for the Last Half-century

A Handbook of English Politics for the Last Half-century PDF Author: Sir Arthur Herbert Dyke Acland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 67

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Book Description


Political Deference in a Democratic Age

Political Deference in a Democratic Age PDF Author: Catherine Marshall
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783030625412
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
This book explores the concept of deference as used by historians and political scientists. Often confused and judged to be outdated, it shows how deference remains central to understanding British politics to the present day. This study aims to make sense of how political deference has functioned in different periods and how it has played a crucial role in legitimising British politics. It shows how deference sustained what are essentially English institutions, those which dominated the Union well into the second half of the twentieth century until the post-1997 constitutional transformations under New Labour. While many dismiss political and institutional deference as having died out, this book argues that a number of recent political decisions – including the vote in favour of Brexit in June 2016 – are the result of a deferential way of thinking that has persisted through the democratic changes of the twentieth century. Combining close readings of theoretical texts with analyses of specific legal changes and historical events, the book charts the development of deference from the eighteenth century through to the present day. Rather than offering a comprehensive history of deference, it picks out key moments that show the changing nature of deference, both as a concept and as a political force.

British Politics: A Very Short Introduction

British Politics: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Anthony Wright
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199661103
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
This book presents an introduction to the evolution and history of the British political system.

Unmasking Our Leaders

Unmasking Our Leaders PDF Author: Michael Cockerell
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1785907190
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
A Daily Mail Political Book of the Year "Michael Cockerell is the master" – Laura Kuenssberg "A triumph" – Alan Johnson "My political book of the year" – Iain Dale "The master chronicler of our political age" – Nick Robinson "Endlessly compelling" – Emily Maitlis "Excellent" – New European "Riveting" – Tony Rennell, Daily Mail Book of the Year "The David Attenborough of the political animal kingdom" – Rory Bremner "Richly entertaining" – Steve Richards "Brimming with priceless indiscretions" – Mail on Sunday "The Holbein of the televisual political portrait" – Professor Peter Hennessy *** Our political leaders spend their careers spinning their images and polishing their achievements; Michael Cockerell has spent his professional life stripping off the gloss. Over fifty years, he has gained unrivalled access to the secret chambers of Westminster and Whitehall. Here, he reveals in illuminating and often hilarious stories what our top politicians are really like behind the mask. Drawing on his unique experience of having filmed all the past ten Prime Ministers, Cockerell tells how he manages to lull some of the wariest people in the land into candour, and shows how questions of sex are never far from the surface in Westminster. Amongst much else, he recounts: how Margaret Thatcher flirted with him on screen but attacked him by name in the Commons; how Tony Blair said he would willingly 'pay the blood price' in Iraq; how David Cameron learned from Enoch Powell always to make a big speech on a full bladder – and how Boris Johnson admitted to doubts about his ability to be Prime Minister. Funny, riveting and above all revealing, Unmasking Our Leaders is an absorbing insight into half a century of British politics.

Enoch Powell

Enoch Powell PDF Author: Paul Corthorn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198747152
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Best known for his notorious 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 and his outspoken opposition to immigration, Enoch Powell was one of the most controversial figures in British political life in the second half of the twentieth century and a formative influence on what came to be known as Thatcherism. Telling the story of Powell's political life from the 1950s onwards, Paul Corthorn's intellectual biography goes beyond a fixation on the 'Rivers of Blood' speech to bring us a man who thought deeply about - and often took highly unusual (and sometimes apparently contradictory) positions on - the central political debates of the post-1945 era: denying the existence of the Cold War (at one stage going so far as to advocate the idea of an alliance with the Soviet Union); advocating free-market economics long before it was fashionable, while remaining a staunch defender of the idea of a National Health Service; vehemently opposing British membership of the European Economic Community; arguing for the closer integration of Northern Ireland with the rest of the UK; and in the 1980s supporting the campaign for unilateral nuclear disarmament. In the process, Powell emerges as more than just a deeply divisive figure but as a seminal political intellectual of his time. Paying particular attention to the revealing inconsistencies in Powell's thought and the significant ways in which his thinking changed over time, Corthorn argues that Powell's diverse campaigns can nonetheless still be understood as a coherent whole, if viewed as part of a long-running, and wide-ranging, debate set against the backdrop of the long-term decline in Britain's international, military, and economic position in the decades after 1945.