Suchergebnisse

The Scottish parliamentary and local elections of 2007 were significant for two key reasons: the SNP was brought to power for the first time in its history, posing a fundamental challenge to the 300-year Scottish-English Union; and the local elections used the Single Transferable Vote - the first time such an electoral system has been used in Great Britain since 1945. This book will explore the significance of these two developments, asking whether they herald a revolutionary break with the past or simply mark a continuing evolution of existing patterns of Scottish politics. It does so using a unique source of evidence - representative high quality annual sample surveys of the Scottish public that since 1999 have regularly measured how people in Scotland have reacted to devolution and how they have behaved in elections. Readers will gain an unparalleled insight into the identities, attitudes and electoral behaviour of people in Scotland during the first decade of devolution.

A key distinction that has long been drawn in the study of public attitudes is between 'position' and 'valence' issues.1 A 'position' issue is one where people disagree about the objective of public policy. Brexit is an obvious example – some voters want the UK to be part of the EU, while others do not. A 'valence' issue, in contrast, is one where most people agree on the goal – nearly everyone, for example, is in favour of low unemployment. The difference has implications for the way in which political parties are able to compete with each other on an issue. In the case of a 'position' issue they can try to persuade voters that the policy objective they are proposing is better than that of their opponents. In the case of a 'valence' issue, in contrast, voters have to decide which party is best able to achieve the objective on which more or less everyone is agreed. But where is climate change now likely to stand on this spectrum in Britain's party political battle? Is stopping the warming of the planet an objective to which most voters are committed and where the only issue is which of the parties has the better ideas for addressing it? Or, is it an issue on which there are divisions within the electorate that could potentially see the parties taking different stances on mitigating climate change? Much research on attitudes towards climate change focuses on the willingness (or otherwise) of individuals and private organisations to adapt or change their behaviour out of concern for the climate. Our focus, however, is on attitudes towards the collective actions that the state may or may not take in order to address climate change. While the actions of individuals matter, it is governments that are uniquely placed to take collective action on the issue, including setting the legal and regulatory framework within which individuals and others take their decisions. Our evidence comes from a variety of surveys and polls conducted during the course of the past 12 months.

The Liberal Democrat by-election victory in Chesham & Amersham has served to remind us of the potential electoral downside that Brexit could pose for the Conservatives. While the party consolidated its strength between 2015 and 2019 among Leave voters, its support fell back among Remain supporters (Curtice, forthcoming). As a result, it might well have been anticipated that the party would potentially be vulnerable in a seat like Chesham & Amersham that, while traditionally a Conservative seat, was also one where well over half (55%) of voters had backed Remain. Although all by-elections have their own particular features – and concern about planning and HS2 appear to have had a particular resonance in Chesham & Amersham – the outcome appeared to lend some credibility to the claim that, in the wake of Brexit, the Conservatives might be at risk of losing a 'blue wall' of traditionally safe seats, much as Labour proved to be vulnerable in 2019 in a 'red wall' of onetime safe seats in the North of England and the Midlands that had, however, backed Leave (Kangasooriam, 2019; Mattinson, 2020).But does such a 'blue wall' really exist? Might hitherto safe Tory-held seats that backed Remain prove to be Boris Johnson's Achilles' heel and deny him a second general election success? Or can the Prime Minister afford to brush off defeat in Chesham & Amersham as a little local difficulty that has little in the way of wider electoral significance?

Labour emerged from the December 2019 general election badly battered and bruised. In the wake of a contest whose principal purpose was to bring an end to the seemingly endless debate about how Brexit should be settled, it found itself with fewer MPs than at any time since 1935. It is little wonder that the party is debating how it can improve its fortunes now that Brexit has been resolved. The search for an answer is, however, less straightforward than many in the party seem to appreciate. Although a dominant narrative as to the way forward seems to have emerged, there is an alternative perspective that raises questions about the viability of this approach. Both perspectives recognise that Brexit has reshaped the electoral landscape, and disrupted Labour's electoral coalition. However, whereas the dominant narrative reckons it is possible for Labour to reverse that disruption, the alternative perspective suggests Labour faces a potentially difficult choice about the kind of voter on which it focuses its hopes in post-Brexit Britain.

The Covid-19 pandemic has occasioned a dramatic increase in the economic role of the state. During 18 months of varying degrees of lockdown that required many businesses to shut and made heavy demands on the NHS and other public services, the state paid the wages for nearly 9 million workers, increased welfare provision for the working age poor, and increased spending on public services. Government spending accounted for well over half of the economy in 2020/21, its highest ever level in peacetime. But even now that lockdown is over, the government has unveiled tax and spending plans that imply that public spending will account for a higher proportion of GDP than it has done on a sustained basis at any time since the 1970s, not least thanks to increased spending on health, social care and welfare. Meanwhile, the tax take will be at its highest since the early 1950s. Whereas the government's response to the economic and fiscal shock occasioned by the 2008–9 financial crash was to rein in public spending, this time it has apparently come to the conclusion that the state needs to play a more active role – in the hope that this will enable the country to 'build back better'.