Contents List of Boxes, Figures and Tables x Acknowledgements xiii Notes on the Contributors xiv 1 Introduction: A Landscape Without a Map? British Politics after 2010 1 Philip Cowley, Colin Hay and Richard Heffernan 2Constitutional Politics 7 Meg Russell Blair: the reluctant radical 8 Brown 2007–10: the frustrated radical 10 Critiques of the Labour legacy 12 A step-by-step assessment 14 A surprisingly new constitution? 21 The constitution under Cameron and Clegg 25 3 Changing Patterns of Executive Governance 29 David Richards The core executive and the comfort blanket of the Westminster model 29 New Labour’s pattern of executive government: from Blair to Brown 32 The Brown administration and executive government 36 The coalition government: establishing new patterns of governance? 44 Conclusion: the Westminster model under Cameron’s coalition 48 4Changing Parliamentary Landscapes 51 Alexandra Kelso The expenses crisis and its consequences 53 What is parliament for? 58 New legislative mechanisms 60 Scrutiny and oversight 62 v vi Contents Facilitating public engagement 64 House of Lords reform 67 Conclusion 68 5 Elections and Voting 70 David Denver Turnout and turning out 71 Variations in turnout 72 Variations in ‘turning out’ 75 Party support 78 Party performance 79 Variations in party performance across constituencies 82 Explaining party choice 85 Valence voting 86 Is that it? 89 6Political Parties and the British Party System Philip Cowley 91 The fragmentation of the party system 92 Coalition politics at Westminster 96 The Conservative party 100 The Labour party 103 The Liberal Democrats 107 Conclusion 111 7 Territorial Politics in Post-Devolution Britain 113 Roger Scully and Richard Wyn Jones Why devolution matters 113 Parties and elections under devolution 115 Institutional and constitutional politics 118 Devolution and government policy 120 Public attitudes to devolution 123 The future of devolution 126 Conclusion 128 8Power Sharing in Northern Ireland 130 Cathy Gormley-Heenan Power-sharing opportunities and difficulties 1998–2007 132 Restoration of power sharing in 2007: a sign of success? 134 Power sharing, power splitting and power snaring 135 Contents vii Power sharing and snaring in practice: policies and problems 139 Opposition, protest and dissent 142 Has power sharing worked? 145 The future political landscape in Northern Ireland 147 9 Anti-Politics in Britain 152 Gerry Stoker Exploring the rise of anti-politics 153 Explaining disengagement 161 Some proposed solutions 167 What to do? Are reforms possible? 170 Conclusion 173 10 Pressure Group Politics 174 Richard Heffernan Group form and function: associational and promotional groups 175 The representative claim and its limits 182 How Britain’s political system structures the way associational and promotional groups operate 187 Groups and government 192 Conclusion 194 11 The Politics of Diversity 196 Rosie Campbell Gay rights 197 Gender politics 199 Race, immigration and Islam 204 Governing diversity 210 Conclusion 214 12 The Changing News Media Environment 215 Andrew Chadwick and James Stanyer Old, new and renewed media 215 New media use in Britain 217 Old news and the new media environment: quality under pressure? 222 Transforming media management 227 The media and the 2010 general election campaign: the impact of the televised leaders’ debates 232 Conclusion 236 viii Contents 13 Britain and the Global Financial Crisis: The Return of Boom and Bust 238 Colin Hay From boom to bust 239 The great moderation and the emergence of the Anglo-liberal growth model 241 ‘Privatised Keynesianism’ – the new growth model 243 The bursting of the bubble: the re-nationalisation of ‘Privatised Keynesianism’? 244 The political fallout and the prospects for the return to growth 252 Conclusion 254 14 Britain’s Place in the European Union 257 Lori Thorlakson The EU and domestic party politics 258 The UK and the Lisbon Treaty 264 Economic crisis, EU budgetary and the Lisbon Strategy for growth 268 EU enlargement 274 Conclusion 278 15 Security and Surveillance in Britain 280 Richard J. Aldrich and Antony Field Terrorism and international security 281 UK counter-terrorism strategy 283 In the field: UK counter-terrorism operations 287 Surveillance and the Intercept Modernisation Programme 292 Security and the Cameron government in 2010 297 Conclusion 300 16 Britain in the World 302 Andrew Gamble From liberal peace to liberal war 303 Blair’s legacy: foreign and external policy to 2007 306 From Blair to Gordon Brown: foreign and external policy from 2007 311 Conservative policy under Cameron 315 Conclusion: foreign policy and the Conservative Liberal–Democrat coalition 317 Contents ix Further Reading 321 Bibliography 328 Index 351 ix Chapter 1 Introduction: A Landscape without a Map? British Politics after 2010 PHILIP COWLEY, COLIN HAY AND RICHARD HEFFERNAN It is far too early to tell if the general election of 2010 will prove a defin- ing moment in British politics. Few elections by themselves herald a radi- cal or abrupt change of direction. The roads both to and from the watershed election of 1945 were as important as the election itself. The same could be said of another election, 1979, which saw the election of the first Thatcher government and from which a different form of politics eventually emerged. Yet the election of 2010 is likely to earn its place in the history books, regardless of what follows. It resulted in only the second hung parliament in 80 years, and the first since 1974 in which no one party could command a majority or form a single-party government. The resulting Conservative–Liberal Democrat government is Britain’s first peacetime coalition since 1931. Given the electoral arithmetic, many commentators had expected a hung parliament but one from which a Conservative minority government would eventually emerge, with a second election, held within a year, to decide matters, similar to what occurred in 1974. Few predicted a full coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, not least because it was thought unlikely it would seem desir- able to the parties themselves. The majority of European countries have a multiparty system and are governed by some kind of coalition. Such coalitions presently comprise at least a centre-right conservative party and a centrist liberal party. The British Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition is, for some, an indication that Britain, so long the exception, might be in the process of entering the European ‘mainstream’, and that 2010 marks another yet nail in the coffin of the ‘Westminster model’. Moreover, if the coalition is able to deliver on its promise of widespread political reform, it may well come to have a significant impact on both the way our politics is conducted and the means by which it is enacted. 1 2 Developments in British Politics 9 The coalition agreement specified a five-year term. If it is to last that long, however, the coalition has to overcome some significant hurdles. The most obvious is the economic. Having claimed early in the 2005 parliament that they would seek to ‘share the proceeds of growth’, the Conservatives moved fully behind fiscal retrenchment as the extent of Britain’s budget deficit became clear. Indeed, in the long pre-election campaign the Conservatives went so far as to project themselves as the guardians of Britain’s (in their view) much needed return to austerity after a decade of excess. Their own polling data, however, suggested that this did not play well with broad swathes of the public. Voters, it seemed, were happy to accept that some fiscal rebalancing was required but one that affected others, not them personally. Thus, when it came to the campaign itself, the deficit was rather downplayed, becoming something of the elephant in the room. The Liberal Democrats undoubtedly scored many points in the coali- tion negotiations despite bringing only a relatively small number of seats to the table. But the tenor of the new government’s economic agenda was set by the Conservatives. True to their manifesto commitment, George Osborne’s first ‘emergency’ budget took place scarcely a month after the election itself. It was very much an austerity budget – with substantial increases in taxation and the promise of drastic reductions in public spending to come – but it was also very short of substantive detail about where the axe would ultimately fall and the single greatest tax-raising measure (the increase in VAT from 17.5 to 20 per cent) was deferred until January 2011. The emergency budget was as much as anything a signal – to both the financial markets and the electorate – of the painful fiscal rebalancing to come. More detail came in the Comprehensive Spending Review in October 2010 when it was announced that unprotected departments (those other than health and international development) would face an average real cut of around 25 per cent over four years. Welfare reform, which many consider likely to put the coalition under strain, is at the centre of the government’s approach to fiscal retrench- ment. The welfare shakeup announced in the budget will save the coun- try only a minimum of £11 billion by 2014/15, but additional, significant savings are being canvassed. Ministers have made it clear that the greater the size of the cut in the welfare budget, the lower the cuts will be else- where. Labour allege that this policy is a ‘gamble’. It is certainly risky. If it takes Britain back into recession – a so-called double-dip recession – as Labour charged, then it will be seen to have failed even by its own stan- dards. Were this to arise, it would almost certainly serve to discredit the government’s economic policy at a time of mounting political opposition and unrest. It is not difficult to see how that in turn might lead to a slide Introduction: British Politics after 2010 3 in the opinion polls, exacerbating differences within and between the coalition partners and perhaps even prompting a vote of no confidence and an early election.