Scholarship Flashcards
Sarton on Party Systems
“A party system is precisely the system of interactions resulting from inner-party competition.”
Nicola McEwan on Party Systems
“Partisan dealignment and geographic diversity make the party system less stable and less predictable.”
Harris on the Conservatives
“The Conservative Party exists, has always existed, and can only exist to acquire and gain power, albeit on a particular set of terms”
Ramsden on Conservatives
“Observers note that the party’s quite remarkable facility for adaptation and, closely allied to this, its appetite for power, often indeed its readiness to subordinate all other considerations to that one objective.”
Goes on Labour Party
2019 election was lost due to accommodation of short term factors such as Corbyn’s leadership and disorganisation around Brexit, and long term factors such as structural changes in politics and new cleavages (divides within politics)
Manwaring on Labour Party
2017 Labour manifesto were not as left wing as appeared - not “radical throwback” - but a return to Labour policies of 1983 (called ‘longest suicide note in history’)
McEwan on the Union
Brexit removed the voice of the devolved assemblies - severely limited their autonomy
Removed their voices from debates around Brexit and Article 50
Keating on the Union
Unified vs. plurinational state
UK government acted in a way that assumed the UK was a sovereign unitary state
UK needs to respect the autonomy of the devolved powers or there will be a crisis of nationality
Two scholars for the Changing UK Party System
Sarton and McEwan
Two scholars for Conservatives and the Right
Harris and Ramsden
Two scholars for the Labour Party
Goes and Manwaring
Two scholars for the Union
McEwan and Keating
