Suchergebnisse

This book charts how recent political developments have changed the debate surrounding Britain's membership of the European Union and poses a series of questions about how this debate will unfold over the course of the coming months and years.

What is Britain's future in Europe? This book revisits an old argument but for dramatically new times. The old argument is about Britain''s 'semi-detachedness' from Europe and whether that posture could ever change. The new times are the crisis in the Eurozone and its wider impact on the European Union''s future. While logic may point to deeper integration, the politics associated with the EU''s problems make this a significant and possibly insurmountable challenge. Where should Britain stand? What future should Britain want for the EU? And how important is continued membership of the EU for B

AbstractJeremy Corbyn's election and re‐election as Labour leader, together with the emergence of a new Conservative Prime Minister committed to Brexit, has led to renewed speculation about the possibility of a new party appealing to the 'politically homeless' in the centre and centre‐left of British politics. This article draws lessons from the SDP experience in the early 1980s. Are the structural conditions more favourable to the progressive centre‐left now than they were then? Is there the sociological, electoral and ideological space for a new party? Does first past the post remain an insuperable barrier to an electoral breakthrough? From whom and in what circumstances might the leadership for a new party come? For all the depth of Labour's current problems, a new party seems an unlikely immediate prospect. In 1981, the SDP made a major miscalculation about the irreversibility of Labour's decline. However, the process of fragmentation in British politics seems set to continue.

Roger Liddle argues that structural changes, which have weakened the centre left across Europe, may also explain New Labour's apparent decline.