Bridging work for Sept 2021

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

As strange as it might sound, the purpose of your Politics bridging work is not to begin covering the content you will be studying in Year 12. Instead, it is to help you to start thinking like an A Level Politics student should, by utilising the wide range of resources available to us as students of politics today, and developing key skills. You should see Politics as a subject that is constantly discussed and debated, and staying up to date with what’s going on in the UK and the US is essential to succeeding at A Level. Hopefully these tasks will help you to start to do that!

WEEK 1 – TASK 1: KEEPING UP WITH NEWS

It is hugely important that you stay up to date with the news. Below are a few things you should consider doing to help you to do this.

• Download a newspaper app and get into the habit of keeping up to date every day with breaking news. Many newspapers use a paywall but some (like The Guardian) are still free. Even paywall websites often allow a couple of free articles per week. The BBC news website is certainly free and is also an essentials source of news.

• Newspapers often have their own political slants which may affect what you like to read. The Guardian tends to be more left-wing, whereas the Mail, Telegraph and Express are right-wing. The Times is somewhere around the middle. Try to avoid tabloids like the Sun and Mirror at least for academic study!

• Twitter is the most effective way of keeping up with the news – if you have a Twitter page, begin to follow political journalists as they often use this medium to break new stories. If you don’t have a Twitter page, consider setting one up to help with your Politics studies (you don’t need to tweet!).

Below are some useful journalists to follow from a wide array of publications and political views: Laura Kuenssberg Robert Peston Alex Wickham Julia Hartley Brewer John Crace Marina Hyde

Bridging work Page 1 of 20 Jonathan Freedland Dan Hodges Owen Jones Ash Sarkar Marie Le Conte Hadley Freeman

WEEK 2 – TASK 2: PODCAST REVIEW

Select one episode of a political podcast to listen to. There are hundreds of excellent podcast series available on Politics. Below are a few, but you are welcome to choose a different one of your own.

• The Political Party with Matt Forde • Reflections with Peter Hennessy • Political Thinking with Nick Robinson • The Guardian Politics Weekly • The Economist Radio • Reasons to Be Cheerful with Ed Miliband • KCRW’s Left, Right and Center

When you’ve listened to the episode, write a summary of it. Within this, consider the following:

• Your thoughts on the episode – what topic it covered and what specific aspects of that topic it focused on • Your own opinion of the topic covered (i.e.: Brexit, Donald Trump) and the argument put forward • The tone of the podcast and how it conveyed the political issue • How effective you felt the episode was • Whether podcasts are effective ways of relating politics to wider audiences

You should aim to write at least a page of A4

WEEK 3 – TASK 3: ANALYSING POLITICAL OPINION

Read the two articles attached about the Trump presidency, and highlight key points as you go. When you’ve finished, look to make notes on the two articles under the following headings.

• What are the key messages of each article? Include at least 4 points here • What opinion does the article have of the Trump presidency and how do you know? Refer to specific phrases from each column here • What does this tell us about studying politics? Do articles containing opinion help or hinder us?

Bridging work Page 2 of 20 In total, notes for both articles should amount to about a page of A4 WEEK 4 – TASK 4: WRITING A POLITICAL ESSAY

Essay Title: “The Conservative Party won the 2019 UK General Election due to the failings of the Labour Party” To what extent do you agree? A political essay should include:

1. A very short introduction that states clearly whether you agree with the question or not 2. AT LEAST TWO – and USUALLY THREE paragraphs. Each paragraph will have a clear theme (I.E. Labour failings) 3. In each paragraph you should follow this structure: • Outline theme • Make a point that supports the theme • Then add an example that backs up the point • Then explain WHY the point was so important. “This was important because…” • Then look to state why perhaps the theme was LESS IMPORTANT “However perhaps Labour failings were less significant because…” • Add an example to back up your however point • Then explain why the point was perhaps less important THIS WILL MEAN YOU ARE ANALYSING IN EACH PARAGRAPH! 4. You end your essay with a short conclusion that sums up what you feel was the most important reason for the Conservative election victory and why you think as you do. Here is part of a paragraph to give you an idea as to how it will look:

How far has the modern Conservative Party retained basic conservative principles?

One way that the modern party is still traditional is in its continued support for Tradition and Preservation. Traditional conservatives highlight the need to support traditional institutions such as the monarchy, church, marriage and political institutions. The Modern Party still supports this to a great extent. This has been seen recently in the Parties opposition to attempts to change the voting system for UK General elections from FPTP to AV in the Referendum of 2011 as well as their campaign to persuade the people Scotland to reject independence in 2014. Both of these policies clearly highlight the support of tradition and traditional institutions (namely retaining the current voting system as well as keeping the United Kingdom in one piece). However, in other ways the modern party seems to have slightly stepped away from tradition in other areas. For example, in 2013 the Party Leadership introduced legislation in support of Gay Marriage which clearly counters the idea of traditional values and perhaps suggests that in some ways the Party is less traditional to an extent as it has been seen to be supporting alternative lifestyles rather than traditional family values

Potential paragraph themes for your essay: 1. Failures of the Labour Party (i.e.: Corbyn, the manifesto, Brexit referendum) 2. The strengths of the Conservative Party (simple message, Brexit)

Bridging work Page 3 of 20 3. Other factors (Brexit could come in here as well, as could a paragraph on Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn (i.e. the party leaders or something on the other parties)

There are some resources for you to use at the back - you can also find other information that might help you! What to do now: 1. Read each article and highlight key points 2. Re-read the articles and make notes that link to each section in the planning grid (final page) 3. Complete essay planning sheet 4. Write the essay

RESOURCES

Task 3 – Article 1 from The Atlantic

The President Is Unravelling

The country is witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of Donald Trump. Peter Wehner Contributing writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at EPPC

IN CASE THERE WAS ANY DOUBT, the past dozen days have proved we’re at the point in his presidency where Donald Trump has become his own caricature, a figure impossible to parody, a man whose words and actions are indistinguishable from an Alec Baldwin skit on Saturday Night Live.

President Trump’s pièce de résistance came during a late April coronavirus task-force briefing, when he floated using “just very powerful light” inside the body as a potential treatment for COVID-19 and then, for good measure, contemplated injecting disinfectant as a way to combat the effects of the virus “because you see it gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on them, so it’d be interesting to check that.” But the burlesque show just keeps rolling on.

Take this past weekend, when former President George W. Bush delivered a three-minute video as part of The Call to Unite, a 24-hour live-stream benefiting COVID-19 relief.

Bush joined other past presidents, spiritual and community leaders, front-line workers, artists, musicians, psychologists, and Academy Award winning actors. They offered advice, stories, and meditations, poetry, prayers, and performances. The purpose of The Call to Unite (which I played a very minor role in helping organize) was to offer practical ways to support others, to provide hope, encouragement, empathy, and unity. In his video, which went viral, Bush—in whose White House I worked—never mentioned Trump. Instead, he expressed gratitude to health-care workers, encouraged Americans to abide by social-distancing rules, and reminded his fellow Americans that we have faced trying times before.

Bridging work Page 4 of 20 “I have no doubt, none at all, that this spirit of service and sacrifice is alive and well in America,” Bush said. He emphasized that “empathy and simple kindness are essential, powerful tools of national recovery.” And America’s 43rd president asked us to “remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat.”

“In the final analysis,” he said, “we are not partisan combatants; we are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God.” Bush concluded, “We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise.”

That was too much for Trump, who attacked his Republican predecessor on (where else?) Twitter: “[Bush] was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!”

So think about that for a minute. George W. Bush made a moving, eloquent plea for empathy and national unity, which enraged Donald Trump enough that he felt the need to go on the attack.

But there’s more. On the same weekend that he attacked Bush for making an appeal to national unity, Trump said this about Kim Jong Un, one of the most brutal leaders in the world: “I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!”

Then, Sunday night, sitting at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial for a town-hall interview with Fox News, Trump complained that he is “treated worse” than President Abraham Lincoln. “I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen,” Trump said.

By Monday morning, the president was peddling a cruel and bizarre conspiracy theory aimed at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a Trump critic, with Trump suggesting in his tweet that a “cold case” be opened to look into the death of an intern in 2001.

I could have picked a dozen other examples over the past 10 days, but these five will suffice. They illustrate some of the essential traits of Donald Trump: the shocking ignorance, ineptitude, and misinformation; his constant need to divide Americans and attack those who are trying to promote social solidarity; his narcissism, deep insecurity, utter lack of empathy, and desperate need to be loved; his feelings of victimization and grievance; his affinity for ruthless leaders; and his fondness for conspiracy theories.

None of these traits are new in Trump; they are part of the reason why some of us were warning about him long before he won the presidency, even going back to 2011. But, more and more, those traits are defining his presidency, producing a kind of creeping paralysis. We are witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of an American president. It’s something the Trump White House cannot hide—indeed, it doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. There is not even the slightest hint of normalcy. THIS WILL HAVE ongoing ramifications for the remainder of Trump’s first term and for his re-election strategy. More than ever, Trump will try to convince Americans that “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” to quote his own words in 2018.

That won’t be easy in a pandemic, as the death toll mounts and the economy collapses and the failures of the president multiply. But that doesn’t mean Trump won’t try. It’s all he has left, so Americans have to prepare for it.

Trump and his apparatchiks will not only step up their propaganda; they will increase their efforts to exhaust our critical thinking and to annihilate truth, in the words of the Russian dissident Gary Kasparov. We will see even more “alternative facts.” We will see even more brazen attempts to rewrite history. We will hear even

Bridging work Page 5 of 20 more crazy conspiracy theories. We will witness even more lashing out at reporters, more rage, and more lies.

“The real opposition is the media,” Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, once told the journalist Michael Lewis. “And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” We will see more extreme appeals to the fringe base of Trump’s party, including right-wing militias. For example, after hundreds of protesters, many of them carrying guns, descended on the capitol in Lansing, Michigan, to protest Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order, Trump, summoning the ghosts of Charlottesville, described the protesters as “very good people.” Some of these “very good people” carried signs saying TYRANTS GET THE ROPE and TYRANT BITCH and comparing the governor to Hitler.

We will see a more prominent role played by One America News (OAN), a pro-Trump network that the president has praised dozens of times. And we will see the right-wing media complex go to even more bizarre places—not just people such as InfoWar’s Alex Jones, who literally threatened to eat his own neighbours if the lockdown continued, but more mainstream figures such as Salem Radio Network’s Dennis Prager, who declared the other day that the lockdown was “the greatest mistake in the history of humanity.”

Watching formerly serious individuals on the right, including the Christian right, become Trump courtiers has been a painful and dispiriting thing for many of us to witness. In the process, they have reconfigured their own character, intellect, and moral sensibilities to align with the disordered mind and deformed ethical world of Donald Trump.

And we will see, as we have for the entire Trump presidency, the national Republican Party fall in line. Many are speaking out in defence of Trump while other timid souls who know better have gone sotto voce out of fear and cowardice that they have justified to themselves, and tried less successfully to justify to others. Read: How the pandemic will end

What this means is that Americans are facing not just a conventional presidential election in 2020 but also, and most important, a referendum on reality and epistemology. Donald Trump is asking us to enter even further into his house of mirrors. He is asking us to live within a lie, to live within his lie, for four more years. The duty of citizenship in America today is to refuse to live within that lie.

“The simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions,” Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said in his mesmerizing 1970 Nobel lecture. “Let that enter the world, let it even reign in the world—but not with my help.”

Solzhenitsyn went on to say that writers and artists can achieve more; they can conquer falsehoods. “Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art,” he said.

But art, as powerful as it is, is not the only instrument with which to fight falsehoods. There are also the daily acts of integrity of common men and women who will not believe the lies or spread the lies, who will not allow the foundation of truth—factual truth, moral truth—to be destroyed, and who, in standing for truth, will help heal this broken land.

Task 3 – Article 2 from Fox News

Bridging work Page 6 of 20 Coronavirus and China – 4 ways US can start to avenge deaths of hundreds of thousands That is the question facing President Trump as the world learns that China’s leaders lied about the coronavirus that originated in Wuhan. People everywhere will demand that Beijing pay a price for the enormous loss of life and the incalculable damage done to economies around the globe. An intelligence report from the “Five Eyes” alliance of Western nation’s reports that China intentionally misled the world about COVID-19. The dossier, leaked by a newspaper in Australia, indicates that Beijing suppressed evidence that COVID-19 was transmitted between humans, silenced whistle-blower doctors alarmed at the spread of the disease, censored news about the outbreak on social media and perhaps worst of all, destroyed samples of the virus which could have helped develop an earlier therapy or vaccine.

The report calls Beijing’s behaviour an “assault on international transparency"; some might call it murder.

We must retaliate by hitting Beijing where it hurts that despotic regime worst: by undermining its propaganda campaigns and by crushing its illicit pathways to growth. The good news is that the Trump administration has already paved the way on both those fronts.

Unlike prior administrations, the Trump White House has not been afraid to call out China for its worst behaviour. President Obama kowtowed to Beijing to get their support for the Paris Climate Accord, demanding almost no concessions from the worst polluter on earth just to get their signature on a deal that would have undermined U.S. growth. He also wanted their support for the flawed Iran nuke deal, which did zero to rein in Tehran’s terror blitz in the Middle East.

Those ambitions took precedence; Obama was not about to rock the boat, even as Beijing lied to him about their military ambitions in the South China Sea, as they hacked into our Office of Personnel Management to steal the records of 22 million Americans, and so much more.

Obama chose not to confront Beijing on unfair trade practices, even as millions of middle-class jobs in the U.S. evaporated.

President Trump was elected in part to push back against China, and that he has done, at great risk to our economy and to his own re-election prospects. Against all odds, his team managed to ink a trade deal that would begin to right some of the wrongs, resetting uneven tariffs while also reducing the cheating by stateowned firms and the theft of American know-how.

That effort opened the door to a more honest relationship with China. COVID-19 blew the door off its hinges.

What now?

Through our new measures, we must demonstrate that the United States can be trusted, and China cannot. That rules out defaulting on our debt, which some have suggested. It also rules out more tariffs. The White House has claimed those taxes on imports were necessary to reset the trade rules for U.S. producers; that’s how they should be used, not as punishment.

Bridging work Page 7 of 20 Instead, we first need to bring critical manufacturing back to the U.S. We should, for instance, restore the tax benefits that helped create a major pharmaceutical hub in Puerto Rico. Rebuilding that industry would be good for struggling Puerto Rico and good for the U.S. It is unconscionable that we rely on China for a large portion of our drugs and medical supplies.

But, using tax incentives or regulatory relief – whatever it takes -- other industries should also be encouraged to move out of China, to diversify their sourcing or, better yet, relocate to the U.S. We have learned recently that far too many critical supply chains wind through China; we need to investigate and protect against those vulnerabilities.

Second, we need to strictly limit access to our universities and labs by Chinese students and scientists. In January, the Department of Justice arrested Charles Lieber, Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department. DOJ alleges that Lieber lied about his long-time participation in China’s “Thousand Talents” program and failed to disclose millions of dollars he received from the Wuhan University of Technology. During the same period, Lieber received $15 million in grants from the Department of Defence and National Institutes of Health.

Two Chinese nationals who worked with Lieber were also charged, one with acting as an agent for a foreign government and the other for attempting to smuggle vials of biological research out of the U.S.

Lieber’s alleged duplicity is the tip of the iceberg. For years, American scientists and our intel organizations have warned that visiting Chinese students and scholars have penetrated the goodwill and secrets of U.S. universities, and then headed home with pockets full of secrets. This must stop.

Third, we must close down Chinese acquisitions of U.S. properties and companies. The EU, normally squeamish about confronting Beijing, has recently taken steps to prohibit Chinese state firms from buying European companies. We must do the same.

Fourth, we need an aggressive public relations campaign that will penetrate Beijing’s suffocating lockdown of news and social media in the country and undermine President Xi Jinping’s authority. Voice of America must help, and all efforts should be made to broaden its reach within China.

Lately, VOA has come under fire from the White House for broadcasting material viewed as helpful to Beijing; that must stop. The organization prides itself on being “independent” and not being a propaganda arm for the U.S.

But if Beijing lies to its people, VOA’s role is to counter the official narrative and to represent American values. Otherwise, why should taxpayers pay their bills?

None of this will be easy; the White House can count on Democrat resistance to every step. But the American people are on board; according to Pew Research Centre, two-thirds of the country has a negative view of China, up from 38 percent five years ago. More impressive, 91 percent think it would be better “if the U.S. is the world’s leading power.”

Common sense Americans believe in our leadership. In November, they will choose a president who believes in it too.

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Task 4: Article 1 from The Guardian

Five reasons the Tories won the election

A focused campaign, the promise to ‘get Brexit done’ and playing it safe helped Tories to victory Rowena

Mason

Boris Johnson took a huge gamble by calling a December general election for the first time in almost a century. But he was celebrating on Friday morning after the Conservatives scored one of their biggest general election victories in recent years, telling party activists: “We broke the gridlock, we ended the deadlock, we smashed the road block.” The prime minister’s victory rests on a number of factors, which included:

Brexit

Boris Johnson’s message that he would “get Brexit done”, repeated over and over again, appears to have resonated with a public weary of the lack of resolution over the UK leaving the EU.

He stressed throughout the campaign that he would sort out the issue quickly with his “oven-ready” deal, even though the UK is heading for years of trade negotiations and uncertainty at the end of next year when the transition period comes to an end. And he repeatedly stressed the prospect of a Labour government leading to another referendum. 'We smashed the roadblock': Boris Johnson's election victory speech in full – video Simplicity of message

The Tories’ message was much more focused than Labour’s. Johnson focused relentlessly on the “get Brexit done” slogan as well as pledges about more police officers and nurses. In contrast, Labour had a multiplicity of huge policy offers from mass nationalisation to free broadband and compensating women born in the 1950s for the rise in the pension age. Ultimately, concentrating on a small number of core pledges seems to have given Johnson the cut-through he needed.

A safety-first strategy

The Conservatives launched a manifesto that was short on eye-catching policy offers, beyond a small tax cut to national insurance and a very modest increase in public spending. The party was keen to avoid the disaster of Theresa May’s 2017 manifesto when she unveiled an unpopular policy on social care that was soon dubbed a “death tax” by Labour. This time, the party steered clear of any controversial pledges. The

Bridging work Page 9 of 20 manifesto was so cautious it even contained promises not to do things, such as a pledge not to bring back fox-hunting.

Labour’s weakness

The Labour vote dropped dramatically in many areas. In some places, the Conservative vote did not go up hugely but Johnson’s candidate came out on top because traditional Labour voters appeared to have stayed

Bridging work Page 10 of 20 at home or voted for the Brexit party. Defeated MPs have variously blamed the party’s Brexit position and Corbyn’s leadership for the suppression of the Labour vote.

Boris Johnson

Candidates said throughout the election that while Jeremy Corbyn was unpopular on the doorstep, there was little enthusiasm for Johnson either. However, he was clearly a stronger candidate throughout the campaign than May in 2017, submitting to two head-to-head leadership debates in which he made no major slip-ups. The gaffe-prone prime minister also stayed on message until almost the end of the campaign, when he was pilloried for refusing to look at a picture of a small boy on a hospital floor and hiding in a fridge to escape a TV interviewer. Throughout, his leadership ratings were substantially higher than Corbyn’s

Task 4: Article 2 from BBC

Durham North West: The 'no-hope' seat the Tories won By Francesca Williams and Lucy Moody BBC News 14 December 2019

Among the Conservative Party's haul of astonishing election scalps was Durham North West - a seat the party was not targeting and one it once discounted as impossible to win. What happened?

There are safe seats where favoured candidates can be assured of an easy victory.

And then there are places where rookies have to do their best, hoping to prove their worth for a better seat next time. For the Conservatives, Durham North West was always the latter.

Labour since 1950, it was where Theresa May was sent to cut her parliamentary teeth. As expected, she lost to Labour incumbent Hilary Armstrong by a margin of nearly 14,000 votes.

Richard Holden's victory on Thursday was less dramatic. He beat Labour's Laura Pidcock - once tipped as potential party leader or, at least, successor as deputy - by a more modest 1,144.

"[Corbyn] now needs to go," says Anne-Marie Kennedy. "He needs to get someone in the Labour Party that can run the party properly."

Her mother, Pauline Harrison, is equally unimpressed with the Labour leader, who she believes does not want to unify people or get Brexit done.

"The result is brilliant," she says.

But, if Boris Johnson might find these comments reassuring, Mrs Kennedy has a message for him too.

"I think, Boris, you need to be true to your word for the people," she says.

Matthew Young, from Consett which saw its steelworks close a year into Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, says Brexit was "the crux" of the election.

Bridging work Page 11 of 20 "There's a man in power now who has promised to do that and I hope he does it," he says.

But Baroness Hilary Armstrong, who held Durham North West from 1987 until she stood down at the 2010 election, does not believe this was the deciding factor.

She thinks voters were more concerned about Labour's "competence".

"They quite liked some of the promises but they never believed we could deliver them," she says.

"Ordinary working people feel let down. They just feel that the Labour Party has lost touch with them - and I agree with them."

Even the constituency's first Conservative MP, Richard Holden, sees his win in terms of a Labour loss.

"This wasn't a result which was really even about me," he says.

"This was, particularly from a lot of Labour voters spoken to on the doorstep, a real rejection of the way Jeremy Corbyn has been leading the Labour Party."

Among the voters who are shocked at the result, there are plenty looking forward to an emboldened Boris Johnson government.

Brenda Spelman, from Medomsley, is "delighted" with the Conservative win.

"Onwards and upwards," she says. "It can only get better. I think under Labour it would have got worse."

Task 4: Article 3 – follow this link for a visual guide https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2019/dec/13/boris-johnson-achieves-landslide- victoryvisual-guide

Task 4: Article 4 from The Daily Express

John Curtice reveals why the Tories stormed to victory – and what Labour did wrong

POLLING guru John Curtice has revealed why Tory leader Boris Johnson scooped the biggest election victory since Margaret Thatcher in 1987 and how Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn suffered losses worse than his leftwing hero Michael Foot in 1983 - and it has everything to do with Britain’s geography.

Mr Curtice, a frequent pollster in the run-up to yesterday’s general election ballot, gave his in-depth analysis to UK think tank The UK in a Changing Europe and said the swing of the Labour heartlands was also down to Brexit, voted for overwhelmingly in the north - and subsequently rejected by Mr Corbyn’s remain party. He said: “Labour’s vote fell on average by more than 10 points in the most pro-Leave areas. “It’s vote fell by more than six points in the most pro-Remain ones.

Bridging work Page 12 of 20 “This pattern had a clear impact on the geography of the election.

“Support for the Conservatives rose by four points in the Midlands, the North East and Yorkshire – the regions of England that voted most heavily in favour of Leave.

“In contrast, the party’s vote fell back by a point in London and the South East.

“And in Scotland, the party’s vote fell by as much as four points.

“Conversely, Labour saw its vote fall by 12 to 13 points in the North East and Yorkshire, while it fell by only six or seven points in London and the South of England.

“The result also saw Labour lose ground heavily in its traditional working-class heartlands.

“The bond between Labour and its traditional working-class base is now badly strained.

“In the EU referendum working-class voters voted heavily to leave the EU.

“These voters had already swung quite strongly to the Conservatives in 2017. Labour tried to retain their support – remaining ambiguous about whether it was a pro-Remain or a pro-Leave party.

“But this election simply saw the pro-Conservative trend continue yet further.

“As a result, Labour dramatically lost many a seat in the North of England and the Midlands – places such as Ashfield, Bishop Auckland, and Workington – that had never previously elected a Conservative MP in a general election.”

This afternoon, Mr Johnson also thanked Remain voters for supporting him in the polls yesterday during a statement outside Downing Street after he won 365 seats in a huge 80-seat majority.

Boris Johnson vowed to repay Brexiteers trust after being re-elected as Prime Minister with a 365-seat Government. The Prime Minister went on to plead with Remainers to “find closure” with Brexit in a hope to unite the UK.

In a statement, Mr Johnson said: “This morning I went to Buckingham Palace and I am forming a new Government and people will arrive at Westminster to form a new Parliament.

“I am proud to say that members of our One Nation Government, a people’s Government, will set out plans for constituencies who have never returned a Conservative MP for 100 years.

“We will have an overwhelming mandate because of this election to get Brexit done and we will honour that mandate by January 31.

“In this moment of national resolution I want to speak to those who voted for us for the first time.

“They have waivered over the ballot and they heard the voices of their parents and their grandparents whispering in their ears.

“I say thank you for the trust you have placed in us and in me.”

Mr Johnson urged “everyone to find closure and to let the healing begin”, adding that “the overwhelming priority of the British people is that we should focus above all, on the NHS”.

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YOUR WORK

Task 2: Podcast Review

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Task 3: Analysing political opinion

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Task 4: Writing a political essay

Planning grid

Introduction argument:

Theme Point and examples Explanation However and Explanation examples

Bridging work Page 16 of 20 Some parts of their Failures of the manifesto were seen Labour as very popular with campaign the public. For example: The nationalisation of the failing railway system

Their manifesto Strengths of focused upon a few the simple messages. For Conservative example… campaign

Overall judgement: ______

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