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Lewis Minkin and the Party–Unions Link
ITLP_C11.QXD 18/8/03 10:02 am Page 166 11 Lewis Minkin and the party–unions link Eric Shaw ‘For over 80 years’, Minkin declares in his magisterial survey The Contentious Alliance (1991: xii), the Labour Party–trade unions link ‘has shaped the structure and, in various ways, the character of the British Left’.His core proposition can be encapsulated simply: trade union ‘restraint has been the central characteristic’ of the link (1991: 26). This constitutes a frontal challenge to received wisdom – end- lessly repeated, recycled and amplified by Britain’s media – that, until the ‘mod- ernisation’ of the party, initiated by Neil Kinnock and accelerated by Tony Blair, the unions ran the party. So ingrained is this wisdom in British political culture that no discussion of party–unions relations in the media can endure for long without some reference to the days when ‘the union barons controlled the party’.This view, Minkin holds, is a gross over-simplification and, to a degree, downright mislead- ing. The relationship is infinitely more subtle and complex, and far more balanced than the conventional view allows. The task Minkin sets himself in The Contentious Alliance is twofold: on the one hand to explain why and how he reached that con- clusion; and, on the other – the core of the book – to lay bare the inner dynamics of the party–unions connection. What is most distinctive and enduring about Minkin’s work? In what ways has it most contributed to our understanding of the labour movement? Does it still offer insights for scholars of Labour politics? In the first section of this paper, I examine how Minkin contests the premisses underpinning the orthodox thesis of trade union ‘baronial power’; in the second, I analyse the ‘sociological’frame of ref- erence he devised as an analytical tool to uncover the roots and essential proper- ties of the party–unions connection; in the third section, I address the question of the relevance of Minkin today. -
The Legacy of Margaret Thatcher British Politics and Policy May 2013
The Legacy of Margaret Thatcher British Politics and Policy May 2013 0 British Politics and Policy at LSE eCollections British Politics and Policy at LSE eCollections bring together key articles from the blog on specific themes so they can be downloaded and read as a short series. We hope these will form a useful resource for academics, students and those interested in particular issues that are covered more extensively online. We welcome comments and suggestions as to themes for future eCollections. Introduction On April 8th 2013 Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s first female Prime Minister, died at the age of 87. She was a divisive and controversial figure, lionised by some and reviled by others, yet the unique role she played in British political history was recognised by all. She established a new common sense within British politics, replacing the old post-war consensus with a new regime orientated towards free markets, privatisation and labour flexibility. This eCollection draws together a range of commentators who reflect on this legacy, as well as the life and career of the woman herself. The articles contained herein give the views of the author(s), and not the position of the British Politics and Policy at LSE blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Creative Commons All of our articles are also published under the Creative Commons licence, (CC BY-NC- ND 2.0) and other blogs and publications are free to use them, with attribution. If you do not wish for your article to be republished anywhere else, please let us know. -
OPENING PANDORA's BOX David Cameron's Referendum Gamble On
OPENING PANDORA’S BOX David Cameron’s Referendum Gamble on EU Membership Credit: The Economist. By Christina Hull Yale University Department of Political Science Adviser: Jolyon Howorth April 21, 2014 Abstract This essay examines the driving factors behind UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to call a referendum if the Conservative Party is re-elected in 2015. It addresses the persistence of Euroskepticism in the United Kingdom and the tendency of Euroskeptics to generate intra-party conflict that often has dire consequences for Prime Ministers. Through an analysis of the relative impact of political strategy, the power of the media, and British public opinion, the essay argues that addressing party management and electoral concerns has been the primary influence on David Cameron’s decision and contends that Cameron has unwittingly unleashed a Pandora’s box that could pave the way for a British exit from the European Union. Acknowledgments First, I would like to thank the Bates Summer Research Fellowship, without which I would not have had the opportunity to complete my research in London. To Professor Peter Swenson and the members of The Senior Colloquium, Gabe Botelho, Josh Kalla, Gabe Levine, Mary Shi, and Joel Sircus, who provided excellent advice and criticism. To Professor David Cameron, without whom I never would have discovered my interest in European politics. To David Fayngor, who flew halfway across the world to keep me company during my summer research. To my mom for her unwavering support and my dad for his careful proofreading. And finally, to my adviser Professor Jolyon Howorth, who worked with me on this project for over a year and a half. -
'The Left's Views on Israel: from the Establishment of the Jewish State To
‘The Left’s Views on Israel: From the establishment of the Jewish state to the intifada’ Thesis submitted by June Edmunds for PhD examination at the London School of Economics and Political Science 1 UMI Number: U615796 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615796 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 F 7377 POLITI 58^S8i ABSTRACT The British left has confronted a dilemma in forming its attitude towards Israel in the postwar period. The establishment of the Jewish state seemed to force people on the left to choose between competing nationalisms - Israeli, Arab and later, Palestinian. Over time, a number of key developments sharpened the dilemma. My central focus is the evolution of thinking about Israel and the Middle East in the British Labour Party. I examine four critical periods: the creation of Israel in 1948; the Suez war in 1956; the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and the 1980s, covering mainly the Israeli invasion of Lebanon but also the intifada. In each case, entrenched attitudes were called into question and longer-term shifts were triggered in the aftermath. -
One Nation: Power, Hope, Community
one nation power hope community power hope community Ed Miliband has set out his vision of One Nation: a country where everyone has a stake, prosperity is fairly shared, and we make a common life together. A group of Labour MPs, elected in 2010 and after, describe what this politics of national renewal means to them. It begins in the everyday life of work, family and local place. It is about the importance of having a sense of belonging and community, and sharing power and responsibility with people. It means reforming the state and the market in order to rebuild the economy, share power hope community prosperity, and end the living standards crisis. And it means doing politics in a different way: bottom up not top down, organising not managing. A new generation is changing Labour to change the country. Edited by Owen Smith and Rachael Reeves Contributors: Shabana Mahmood Rushanara Ali Catherine McKinnell Kate Green Gloria De Piero Lilian Greenwood Steve Reed Tristram Hunt Rachel Reeves Dan Jarvis Owen Smith Edited by Owen Smith and Rachel Reeves 9 781909 831001 1 ONE NATION power hope community Edited by Owen Smith & Rachel Reeves London 2013 3 First published 2013 Collection © the editors 2013 Individual articles © the author The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1998 to be identified as authors of this work. All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. -
New Labour, Globalization, and the Competition State" by Philip G
Centerfor European Studies Working Paper Series #70 New Labour, Globalization, and the Competition State" by Philip G. Cemy** Mark Evans" Department of Politics Department of Politics University of Leeds University of York Leeds LS2 9JT, UK York YOlO SDD, U.K Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] • Will also be published in Econonry andSocitD' - We would like to thank the Nuffield Foundation, the Center for European Studies, Harvard University,and the Max-Planck-Institut fur Gesellschaftsforshung, Cologne, for their support during the writing of this paper. Abstract The concept of the Competition State differs from the "Post-Fordist State" of Regulation Theory, which asserts that the contemporary restructuring of the state is aimed at maintaining its generic function of stabilizing the national polity and promoting the domestic economy in the public interest In contrast, the Competition State focuses on disempowering the state from within with regard to a range of key tasks, roles, and activities, in the face of processes of globalization . The state does not merely adapt to exogenous structural constraints; in addition, domestic political actors take a proactive and preemptive lead in this process through both policy entrepreneurship and the rearticulation of domestic political and social coalitions, on both right and left, as alternatives are incrementally eroded. State intervention itself is aimed at not only adjusting to but also sustaining, promoting, and expanding an open global economy in order to capture its perceived -
The Collective Responsibility of Ministers, and by Extension, of the Government Side of the Two Houses
RESEARCH PAPER 04/82 The collective 15 NOVEMBER 2004 responsibility of Ministers- an outline of the issues This paper offers an introduction to the convention of collective Cabinet, or ministerial, responsibility and explores in general terms this important constitutional topic. The paper examines both the historical development and the principles and content of collective responsibility. It also covers exemptions from the principle of unanimity such as ‘free votes’ and the ‘agreements to differ’ of 1932, 1975 and 1977. The Paper also examines breaches of the principle of confidentiality, such as ex-ministerial memoirs and the leaking of information to the media. It does not seek to provide a comprehensive analysis of ministerial responsibility or Parliamentary accountability, and should be read as a companion paper to Research Paper 04/31, Individual ministerial responsibility of Ministers- issues and examples This Paper updates and replaces Research Paper 96/55. Oonagh Gay Thomas Powell PARLIAMENT AND CONSTITUTION CENTRE HOUSE OF COMMONS LIBRARY Recent Library Research Papers include: 04/66 The Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe: Part I 06.09.04 04/67 Economic Indicators, September 2004 06.09.04 04/68 Children Bill [HL] [Bill 144 of 2003–04] 10.09.04 04/69 Unemployment by Constituency, August 2004 15.09.04 04/70 Income, Wealth & Inequality 15.09.04 04/71 The Defence White Paper 17.09.04 04/72 The Defence White Paper: Future Capabilities 17.09.04 04/73 The Mental Capacity Bill [Bill 120 of 2003-04] 05.10.04 04/74 Social Indicators -
Labour's Next Majority Means Winning Over Conservative Voters but They Are Not Likely to Be the Dominant Source of The
LABOUR’S NEXT MAJORITY THE 40% STRATEGY Marcus Roberts LABOUR’S The 40% There will be voters who go to the polls on 6th May 2015 who weren’t alive strategy when Tony and Cherie Blair posed outside 10 Downing Street on 1st May NEXT 1997. They will have no memory of an event which is a moment of history as distant from them as Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election victory was for the voters of 1997. If Ed Miliband seeks to emulate what Blair did in 1997, he too must build his own political majority for the era in which he seeks to govern. MAJORITY This report sets out a plausible strategy for Labour’s next majority, one that is secured through winning 40 per cent of the popular vote in May 2015, despite the challenges of a fragmenting electorate. It also challenges the Marcus Roberts party at all levels to recognise that the 40 per cent strategy for a clear majority in 2015 will require a different winning formula to that which served New Labour so well a generation ago, but which is past its sell-by date in a different political and economic era. A FABIAN REPORT ISBN 978 0 7163 7004 8 ABOUT THE FABIAN SOCIETY The Fabian Society is Britain’s oldest political think tank. Since 1884 the society has played a central role in developing political ideas and public policy on the left. It aims to promote greater equality of wealth, power and opportunity; the value of collective public action; a vibrant, tolerant and accountable democracy; citizenship, liberty and human rights; sustainable development; and multilateral international cooperation. -
That Was the New Labour That Wasn't
That was the New Labour that wasn’t The New Labour we got was different from the New Labour that might have been, had the reform agenda associated with stakeholding and pluralism in the early- 1990s been fully realised. Stuart White and Martin O’Neill investigate the road not taken and what it means for ‘one nation’ Labour Stuart White is a lecturer in Politics at Oxford University, specialising in political theory, and blogs at openDemocracy Martin O’Neill is Senior Lecturer in Moral & Political Philosophy in the Department of Politics at the University of York 14 / Fabian Review Essay © Kenn Goodall / bykenn.com © Kenn Goodall / bykenn.com ABOUR CURRENTLY FACES a period of challenging competitiveness in manufacturing had been undermined redefinition. New Labour is emphatically over and historically by the short-termism of the City, making for L done. But as New Labour recedes into the past, an excessively high cost of capital and consequent un- it is perhaps helpful and timely to consider what New derinvestment. German capitalism, he argued, offered an Labour might have been. It is possible to speak of a ‘New alternative model based on long-term, ‘patient’ industrial Labour That Wasn’t’: a philosophical perspective and banking. It also illustrated the benefits of structures of gov- political project which provided important context for the ernance of the firm that incorporate not only long-term rise of New Labour, and which in some ways shaped it, but investors but also labour as long-term partners – ‘stake- which New Labour also in important aspects defined itself holders’ - in enterprise management. -
1 Recapturing Labour's Traditions? History, Nostalgia and the Re-Writing
Recapturing Labour’s Traditions? History, nostalgia and the re-writing of Clause IV Dr Emily Robinson University of Nottingham The making of New Labour has received a great deal of critical attention, much of which has inevitably focused on the way in which it placed itself in relation to past and future, its inheritances and its iconoclasm.1 Nick Randall is right to note that students of New Labour have been particularly interested in ‘questions of temporality’ because ‘New Labour so boldly advanced a claim to disrupt historical continuity’.2 But it is not only academics who have contributed to this analysis. Many of the key figures associated with New Labour have also had their say. The New Labour project was not just about ‘making history’ in terms of its practical actions; the writing up of that history seems to have been just as important. As early as 1995 Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle were preparing a key text designed ‘to enable everyone to understand better why Labour changed and what it has changed into’.3 This was followed in 1999 by Phillip Gould’s analysis of The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party, which motivated Dianne Hayter to begin a PhD in order to counteract the emerging consensus that the modernisation process began with the appointment of Gould and Mandelson in 1983. The result of this study was published in 2005 under the title Fightback! Labour’s Traditional Right in the 1970s and 1980s and made the case for a much longer process of modernisation, strongly tied to the trade unions. -
British Politics and Policy at LSE: How Did New Labour Become 'Neoliberal'? Ed Miliband's Efforts to Break with the Party
British Politics and Policy at LSE: How did New Labour become ‘neoliberal’? Ed Miliband’s efforts to break with the party’s past Page 1 of 2 How did New Labour become ‘neoliberal’? Ed Miliband’s efforts to break with the party’s past As soon as Gordon Brown left office, Labour began to critique its own legacy in government. Glen O’Hara explains the impact of Ed Miliband’s criticism of his predecessors, and the long-term effects of that approach. It’s impossible to begin any assessment of Labour’s last period in office without reference to the idea of ‘neoliberalism’. In many ways that critique is exaggerated, though it contains elements of truth. The state intervened more in economic and social life; the public sphere was better funded; governments’ focus drew ever tighter on liberating children and the elderly (in particular) from poverty. Even so, many of the techniques which Labour used to deliver better public services drew on practices – or investment – from the private sector. Their incrementalist political language, and the way it imagined a cautious electorate selecting between teams of managers delivering ‘results’, often gave the impression that the Party was much more conservative than it really was. It is little wonder that critiques of the economic settlement we have known since the mid-1970s have attached themselves to New Labour just as they have the Conservatives. But the process by which New Labour came to be seen as ‘neoliberal’ are as rooted in the vagaries of politics as they are down to the reality of policymaking between 1997 and 2010. -
P HUSBAND EPISODE ONE 28.03.12.Fdx
THE POLITICIAN'S HUSBAND by Paula Milne EPISODE ONE "The Body Politic" REVISED 28.03.2012 (minor revisions only) Executive Producer David Aukin Producer Hal Vogel DAYBREAK PICTURES “Corruptio Optimi Pessima” Corruption of the best is the worst of all. THE POLITICIAN'S HUSBAND PART ONE 28.03 2012 2 1 EXT. HOYNES HOME - CARLINGWORTH - DAWN 1 A dawn blistered sky - a frail DAWN CHORUS - We’re somewhere indistinguishable in ENGLAND -an Edwardian semi-detached house - homely rather than ostentatious - 2 INT. MASTER BEDROOM - HOYNES HOME - DAWN 2 Dawn light filtered through shuttered curtains. CAMERA is tracing a tremulous crack in a ceiling - it’s in the shape of A QUESTION MARK - A MAN lies in bed gazing up at it - he’s not noticed the crack before - AIDEN HOYNES - early forties - dynamic and driven but a man not disenfranchised from his own humanity - His ALARM bleeps - startling him. He stabs it off - his wife FREYA rouses. He draws her to him - kisses her forehead - FREYA ...Is it time? He assents - his gaze drifts up to the QUESTION MARK again - it disconcerts him without knowing why - BBC TV REPORTER (O.S.) Surprise resignation today of Aiden Hoynes - 3 EXT. COLLEGE GREEN - PALACE OF WESTMINSTER - DAY 3 The neo Gothic spires of Westminster - BBC TV REPORTER (O.S.) - Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and regarded as one of the high flyers in the cabinet - CUT BACK; CAMERA tilts down over to COLLEGE GREEN - an array of TELEVISION JOURNALISTS address respective CAMERAS - focus on A BBC REPORTER - THE POLITICIAN'S HUSBAND PART ONE 28.03 2012 3 BBC TV REPORTER (cont’d) - For weeks Westminster been rife with rumours about his growing discontent with current Government policy - yet in his letter to the Prime Minister while he doesn’t actually use the cliché that he’s resigning to “spend more time with his family” but that’s the essence of it - 5 INT/EXT.