Contents Acknowledgements ix Notes on the Contributors x List of Boxes, Figures and Tables xiii 1 Britain Beyond Blair – Party Politics and Leadership Succession 1 Patrick Dunleavy, Richard Heffernan, Philip Cowley and Colin Hay Party system change 2 Leadership succession and political celebrity 7 Economic prosperity and welfare state modernisation 13 Conclusion 15 2 The Blair Style of Central Government 17 Richard Heffernan Government at the centre 20 The prime minister and the core executive 22 Blair’s prime ministerial authority 24 The limits to prime ministerial authority 27 The Tony Blair–Gordon Brown axis, 1997–2005 32 Conclusion 34 3 Making Parliament Matter? 36 Philip Cowley Parliament in perspective 36 The constituency face 38 Voting in the House of Commons 41 Commons modernisation 45 The House of Lords 49 Conclusion 54 4 Political Parties and Party Systems 56 Sarah Childs Britain’s party systems 57 The main five parties 61 v vi Contents Cartel or cadre? 68 Choosing more diverse parliamentary candidates 73 Conclusion 75 5 Elections and Voting 77 John Bartle and Samantha Laycock The 2005 election results 78 Explanations of voting 80 Sociological and social-psychological evidence from 2005 81 Issue-voting evidence from 2005 84 From modest plurality to comfortable majority 89 Turnout 91 What lies ahead? 93 6 Political Participation beyond the Electoral Arena 98 William Maloney Political participation and patterns of involvement 100 Groups and the policy-making process 101 ‘New’ and ‘newer’ types of political participation 106 Social capital 112 Conclusion: groups, participation and democracy 115 7 The Half-hearted Constitutional Revolution 117 Matthew Flinders New Labour and the constitution 120 Principled progress and retrospective reasoning 2003–05 123 Common themes 2001–05 129 The Westminster model and multilevel governance 131 Conclusion: the constitution and British democracy 135 8 Devolution and the Lopsided State 138 Charlie Jeffery Recent developments in the four nations 140 What the public thinks 152 Devolution and policy variation 153 Managing UK–devolved relations 156 Conclusion 157 9 Britain, Europe and the World 159 Michael Smith Europe in British government and politics 160 British policy making 162 Contents vii Britain in the European Union 164 Britain, Europe and the world 169 Conclusion: a complex imbalance? 173 10 Security Policy in an Insecure World 174 Michael Cox and Tim Oliver Britain and 9/11 175 Britain and the Iraq war 178 Britain between the US and Europe 184 The Blair and Bush doctrines 188 Conclusion 191 11 The Politics of Multicultural Britain 193 Gillian Peele A diverse society 194 The multiculturalism debate 198 New Labour and multiculturalism 204 Minority groups and the political process 207 The politics of extremism 209 Conclusion 210 12 The State and Civil Liberties in the Post-9/11 World 212 Michael Saward Policies in question 214 Political rhetoric and underlying ideals 218 Security and protection: two competing ideas of democracy 227 Conclusion 229 13 The News Media and the Public Relations State 231 Dominic Wring Advertising and opinion research 232 Public relations: spin and its discontents 233 Reforming the public relations state: the Phillis Report 2004 237 The propaganda war: selling the invasion of Iraq 240 Power without responsibility? 246 Conclusion 249 14 Managing Economic Interdependence: The Political Economy of New Labour 251 Colin Hay The economic record 252 The distinctiveness of New Labour’s political economy 256 viii Contents The context reassessed: negotiating globalisation 261 Tensions, contradictions and future prospects 267 Conclusion 271 15 Modernising the Public Services 272 Stephen Driver Labour, social democracy and public services 272 New Labour in power: ‘modernising’ public services 273 Diversity, choice and public-sector provision 290 Conclusion: ‘modernisation’ and the social-democratic state 292 16 British Politics after Blair 295 Andrew Gamble The Thatcher legacy in British politics 296 The Blair government 299 Ideological alternatives 303 Blairism without Blair 308 Conclusion 312 17 The Westminster Model and the Distinctiveness of British Politics 315 Patrick Dunleavy The Westminster model under pressure 316 The reformist critique – normalising British politics 328 The drift of power from the UK state 336 Conclusions 340 Further Reading 342 Bibliography 349 Index 371 Chapter 1 Britain Beyond Blair – Party Politics and Leadership Succession PATRICK DUNLEAVY, RICHARD HEFFERNAN, PHILIP COWLEY and COLIN HAY In December 2005 the Conservatives’ share of the general election vote intention in the MORI monthly poll touched 40 per cent for almost the first time since the autumn of 1992. Between 1992 and 2005, the party’s score had typically languished in the range from 31 to 34 per cent and it had suffered three consecutive general election defeats with similar shares of the vote (with its share in 2005 up just 0.6 per cent on that in 2001). Put another way, the Conservatives for more than twelve years performed at a full ten percentage points less than their average general election score for the whole of the twentieth century, which was 44 per cent. Their apparent revival in December 2005 also saw them achieve a lead of over Labour (of 6 per cent) for almost the first time since 1992. The catalyst was, of course, the election of the previously little-known David Cameron as the new Conservative leader, triggering a ‘honeymoon’ period in public opinion. Famously such blips greeting new leaders tend to be evanescent, so in normal times not too much could be read into it. But the circumstances were far from normal. For the first time since an aged Winston Churchill (eventually) bowed out of office to give the premiership to a long-frustrated Anthony Eden in 1955, the governing party was trying to secure the orderly transfer of power by agreement from an incumbent prime minister – this time Tony Blair giving way to a clear (but equally long-frustrated) heir apparent, Gordon Brown. The key difference lay in the fact that just before the 2005 general election Tony Blair had pre-announced his intention to ‘serve a full third term’, but not to stand again as prime minister at the succeeding general elec- tion, expected in 2009–10. This approach had never before been attempted in British politics. That Labour should go with it spoke volumes for its confidence that, since 1997, it had somehow become the ‘natural’ party of government. Blair’s outstanding record in winning three successive general elections was matched by his extraordinary 1 2 Developments in British Politics 8 significance for Labour as a party and as an electoral force. Assuming a 2009 election, Blair will have presided over a more than doubling of his party’s total experience of office with a workable parliamentary major- ity. His going is widely anticipated for either May 2007 (his ten-year anniversary in power) or at most a year later in 2008 (Brown’s last chance to acquire a record of his own as prime minister before a 2009 election). Inevitably it seems to signal a watershed in British politics, given extra salience by a possible Conservative revival. We discuss three key aspects – the implications for party system change, the contemporary role of leaders in politics, and the significance of the next few years for Britain’s economic and social trajectory. Party system change Political scientists who pored over the 1992 results before the Conservatives’ autumn collapse in poll ratings following Black Wednesday were united in misconstruing the message. The initial academic reaction was to construe the Conservative’s fourth consecutive victory as a sign of the party’s continuing hegemony. Anthony King wrote that the UK had ‘one major party, the Conservatives, one minor party, Labour, and one peripheral party, the Liberal Democrats’ (King 1993, 224). The main British election study published its analysis of the outcomes as Labour’s Last Chance? (Heath et al. 1994). A series of other publications and acres of journalistic comment argued that Britain had effectively become a one- party state, one in which the Conservatives looked set for indefinite rule. There may seem far fewer dangers of similarly misconstruing Labour’s success in winning most seats in the 2005 election, since the party suffered a loss of over 6 per cent of its previous vote and its majority fell from over 160 to a more assailable 66. Labour also regained power with the lowest share of the vote (and of the entire electorate) ever for a government with a secure Commons majority. Following the Conservatives’ static vote share and Michael Howard’s immediate resignation as leader, there seemed little prospect, either, of analysts overstating that party’s future chances. The number of Conservative MPs increased by a fifth, the party won seats in all three countries of Great Britain for the first time since 1997 and the Tories almost entirely repulsed the expected assault on their seats from the Liberal Democrats. But Howard in fact got fewer seats than Michael Foot (who led Labour to spectacular defeat in 1983). Even in key seats where the Conservatives made gains against Labour this was mostly because the government’s support drifted to other parties rather than because the Tory vote increased much. In parts of the country, the party’s votes actually fell (Cowley and Green 2005). And in 2005 the Introduction 3 Conservatives achieved their third-worst seats and votes outcomes for a century, beaten only by 2001 and 1997. But perhaps the main dimension of uncertainty in assessing British party politics no longer lies in the ancient sport of forecasting the ‘swing of the pendulum’ between the top two contenders, so much as in working out the significance of different signals sent by voters in differ- ent kinds of contexts. Figure 1.1 shows four snapshots of different party systems, for England outside London, and then for London, Scotland and Wales.