Thomas Quinn

Electing and ejecting party leaders in Britain

Introduction Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders Selection and Ejection by the Parliamentary Party The Labour Party: The Electoral College The Conservative Party: Enfranchising the Members The Liberal Democrats: One Member-One Vote Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders: An Assessment Appendix A: Labour Party Leadership Election Results 1955-2010 Appendix B: Conservative Party Leadership Election Results 1965-2005 Appendix C: Liberal Party, Social Democratic Party and Liberal Democrat Leadership Election Results 1967-2007 Leadership Election Rules and Results in the Minor Parties and Devolved Major Parties: Appendix D: Green Party of England and Wales Appendix E: United Kingdom Independence Party Appendix F: British National Party Appendix G: Scottish National Party Appendix H: Plaid Cymru Appendix I: Labour Party Leaders in Scotland and Wales Appendix J: Conservative Party Leaders in Scotland and Wales Appendix K: Liberal Democrat Leaders in Scotland and Wales Appendix L: Donations to Candidates in Party Leadership Contests 2001-10 Appendix M: Proposed Labour Leadership Election Timetable 2009 Notes Index

The UK Coalition Agreement of 2010: Who Won?

Abstract The UK general election of 2010 resulted in Britain’s first peacetime coalition government since the 1930s. The coalition parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, agreed a comprehensive policy deal in a coalition agreement. This paper undertakes a content analysis of that agreement to determine which party gained (or lost) most. ‘Gained’ and ‘lost’ here both have very specific meanings since they are based on comparisons of party positions as set out in their respective manifestos with the position of the new government set out in the agreement. In global terms we find that the agreement is nearer to the Liberal Democrats’ left–right position than the Conservatives’. Nevertheless, a more detailed analysis of policy areas identifies several where the Conservatives gained more. Overall, both parties secured considerable gains on their own priority policies.

The Conservative Party and the “Centre Ground” of British Politics

Abstract This article examines the claim that the British Conservative Party has been too right‐wing and must shift to the centre ground if it is to win the next general election. Using data from the British Election Study and the Comparative Manifestos Project, it is shown that the Conservatives’ policies since 1997 have not been extremely right‐wing. Indeed, both data sets indicate policy convergence between the major parties in recent years, although New Labour’s electoral strategy of targeting some centre‐right voters created problems for the Tories. However, the general perception among voters, as evident in polling data, that the Conservatives were “fairly right‐wing” was more indicative of the party’s image problem, whereby they were seen in the post‐1997 period as angry, stuck in the past, and socially intolerant. “Shifting to the centre ground”, therefore, is more likely to entail softening the Conservatives’ image, toning down their language, and appearing more socially inclusive, rather than the wholesale abandonment of policies that were not particularly different from those of Labour.

New Labour and the Trade Unions in Britain

Abstract This article examines the relationship between the British Labour Party and its affiliated trade unions under the Blair government. It shows that the party–union link in Britain, contrary to expectations, was not characterized by further institutional de‐linkage under Blair. The article explains why, using a political exchange model focusing on the unions’ supply of votes and finance in return for policy concessions. It is shown that the capacity to enforce deals is paramount in political exchange, but that the unions’ two major enforcement mechanisms – intra‐party and industrial power – were both diminished. In the absence of enforceable deals, exchange models predict the undersupply of resources, which happened as the unions withdrew funds. Once Labour’s continued reliance on union money became evident, the party offered a comprehensive policy bargain – the Warwick agreement – to guarantee union donations. The agreement, with its institutional innovations, entailed the partial re‐institutionalization of political exchange (‘re‐linkage’), with the possibility of further funding cuts if the party reneged on the deal. At present, only comprehensive state funding for parties could threaten the link.

From New Labour to New Politics: The British General Election of 2010

Britains general election of 2010 was one the countrys most remarkable elections in the post-war era.1 It brought to a close the longest-serving Labour government in British political history, co...

Block Voting in the Labour Party A Political Exchange Model

This paper offers a retrospective analysis of the trade union block vote, a key internal institution in the decision-making bodies of the British Labour Party. The block vote is normally presented as an institution that facilitated oligarchic control of the Labour Party, a claim largely accepted in this paper. Much less attention has been given to its efficiency in safeguarding the supply of trade union resources to the party by linking financial donations to voting power. To understand both the efficient and distributional consequences of the block vote, a political exchange approach to the study of party organizations is adopted.

MEMBERSHIP BALLOTS IN PARTY LEADERSHIP ELECTIONS IN BRITAIN

Given the propensity of party members to be ideologically less centrist than voters, British parties’ shift to membership ballots in leadership elections might have been expected to result in radical leaders. This paper explains why this development has largely not occurred, using data from four recent leadership elections. Following Stark (1996), it argues that members’ selection criteria are unity, electability and competence. The paper shows that members are not blind ideologues but are sensitive to the need for party unity.

The British Labour Party’s leadership election of 2015

This article examines the British Labour Party’s leadership election of 2015, which resulted in the unexpected victory of the radical-left candidate, Jeremy Corbyn. It looks at the contest using Stark’s academic model of leadership elections, based on the tripod of selection criteria acceptability, electability and competence, and finds it wanting. Selection rules, which are downplayed in Stark’s model, are then examined, as Labour used a new selection system based on one-member-one-vote in 2015. While these are found to have had some impact, Corbyn’s victory cannot be explained primarily by institutions. The article reconsiders Stark’s model and shows that it failed because of the diminished significance of electability as a selection criterion in the Labour leadership contest of 2015. That largely reflected the circumstances in which the contest took place, in the aftermath of a demoralising election defeat for Labour.

Throwing the rascals out? Problems of accountability in two-party systems

This article critically examines the concept of ‘accountability’ as it is understood in two-party systems and majoritarian democracy – namely the ability of voters to remove governments that violate their mandates or otherwise perform poorly. Voters’ capacity to ‘throw the rascals out’ is one of the main normative appeals of two-partism and the single-member plurality (SMP) electoral system. However, this article uses a spatial model to show that in at least two types of situation voters are left in a bind when confronted with a mandate-breaking governing party: (1) when both major parties undertake unexpected non-centrist shifts in opposing directions after an election, leaving centrist voters with an unappealing choice; and (2) when a governing party that had won an election on a non-centrist platform undertakes a post-election shift to the centre, leaving its more radical supporters dissatisfied. In each case, voters have four imperfect options: punish the governing party by throwing the rascals out, but in doing so vote for a party that is ideologically more distant; abstain, and withdraw from the democratic process; vote for a minor party that has no hope of influencing government formation, but which might detach enough votes to allow the ideologically more distant major opposition party to win; and forgive the governing party its mandate-breaking. All of these options represent accountability failures. The problems are illustrated with two case studies from two-party systems: the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s and New Zealand in the period 1984–1993. In both instances, many voters found it difficult to ‘throw the rascals out’ without harming their own interests in the process. The article concludes that accountability may sometimes be better achieved if voters can force a party to share power in coalition with another party in order to ‘keep it honest’ instead of removing it from government completely, as can happen in multi-party systems based on proportional representation. Thus, although two-partism based on plurality voting is normally regarded as superior to multi-partism and proportional representation on the criterion of accountability, in some instances, the reverse can be true. The article therefore undermines a core normative argument advanced by supporters of majoritarian democracy and SMP.

Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders

In 1998, the Conservative Party’s leader, William Hague, pushed through a package of reforms to his party’s organisation, of which the most eye-catching was a new system for selecting the party leader.1 Since 1965, the Conservative leader had been elected by MPs alone, but the new system created a two-stage process by which MPs would choose two candidates to put to a postal ballot of individual party members. In doing so, the Tories became the last of the three main British parties to extend the franchise in leadership elections from MPs to members.2 The Liberal Party had been the first in 1976, when it abandoned parliamentary ballots and moved to a complicated system of membership participation based on local ballots (see Chapter 5). A ‘pure’ system of one member-one vote (OMOV) was used by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Liberal Democrats, the successor party after the Liberals merged with the SDP in 1988. Labour also abandoned its exclusive use of parliamentary ballots, in 1981, when it adopted an electoral college that split votes between MPs, party activists and affiliated organisations such as trade unions. Initially, only activists who were members of their local general committees could vote, but the franchise was later extended to all party members in postal ballots. Votes in the affiliates section were also removed from union executives and conference delegates to individual union members (see Chapter 3). With the Conservatives’ adoption of their own form of OMOV in 1998, the extension of voting rights to members in the major British parties was complete. Like many changes to leadership-election rules, those in the Conservatives Party were implemented in opposition and followed a heavy election defeat.3 Labour had done the same in 1981 and again, to a lesser extent, in 1993.