Throughout the twentieth century the Conservative party dominated British politics as an integrated party of the right. Yet since late 1992, the Tories have increasingly struggled to attract the support of a third of voters at elections or in opinion polls. Patrick Dunleavy argues that because of the divisiveness of Thatcherism, the right wing electorate in Britain is now permanently fragmented between three parties – the Conservatives, the UK Independence Party, and now the rump of the Liberal Democrats, clearly aligned behind austerity policies. However, the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system always punishes such divisions severely. Ironically the most enduring legacy of Thatcherism’s attempted ‘revolution’ may be the long-run hegemony of the centre-left.
The British Tory party has existed for more than three hundred years, and for much of that time has been a vote-winning and ideology-integrating machine of unparalleled efficacy. Like the US Republicans, the roots of its success lay in pragmatically and flexibly husbanding all right-of-centre voters into an integrated bloc at the ballot box, ruthlessly exploiting the tendency of first-past-the-post elections to crush divided oppositions.
Across all the general elections in Great Britain between 1900 and 1997 the Conservatives were usually the dominant bloc, with a mean vote of 44 per cent. With left-of-centre and centrist voters divided between Labour and the Liberals (later Liberal Democrats) this was enough to ensure that the Tories were in government four fifths of the time in the twentieth century. Margaret Thatcher similarly ‘won’ three general elections in a row with essentially standard Tory performances of 42 per cent, chiefly because of the fragmentation of her opposition, with internal Labour crises and the break-away presence of the Social Democrats boosting Liberal support.
Yet the most enduring political legacy of Thatcherism was to destroy the delicate internal balancing mechanisms of the Conservative party. By developing radical policies informed by neo-liberal ideas, and implementing them in a fashion that was deliberately confrontational, socially disruptive and divisive, this political project sowed the seeds of long-run cleavages that have since grown and multiplied. Some key roots of these conflicts might be traced to the PM’s personality traits, magnified in office, as Tim Bale and Francoise Boucek have argued in different ways on this blog. Gratuitously, without need, she alienated her leading colleagues and eviscerated Cabinet government, so that very soon ministers did everything they could to hide issues and policies from Number 10’s view, and to settle issues amongst themselves. Where they could not, as with issues like football hooliganism or the poll tax, Thatcher’s interventions sometimes contributed directly to enormous policy fiascos. But Thatcherism was never the creation of Margaret Thatcher alone, but rather of a whole set of powerful right-wing and principally finance market interests that achieved hegemony during her time in office.
The main focus of conflicts, however, was on European policy. Large-scale industrial and commercial business wanted then and still wants now a Britain at the heart of a huge European market of 500 million people. Yet the finance industry was more ambiguous and because of her nationalism Thatcher displayed mixed attitudes, signing the Single European Act, campaigning in the 1983 general election against Labour’s pledge to withdraw, but later feuding with her Foreign Secretary and Chancellor for years on end over her nationalist rhetoric and her overt contempt for EU processes and integration.
The second focus was Thatcherism’s progressively more hard-line stance on implementing neo-liberal policies, with the enormous bonus of North Sea oil funding only a tripling of unemployment, so that the UK now has no equivalent of the state investment fund built up by the Norwegians in the same period. Increasingly too, the abrasiveness of neo-liberal ideologues made the Conservatives appear as the ‘nasty party’, at first leaving inner cities to rot unaided, later impoverishing the welfare-dependent, and presiding apparently unconcerned over nationwide waves of riots in 1981, 1985 and 1990.
Thatcher’s fall from power over the poll tax and Europe exacerbated the lasting tensions that the wider Thatcherism project had already created. For Tory neo-liberals and Euro-sceptics a potent ‘stab in the back’ myth was created, in which a failure of nerve by cowardly Westminster elites unwilling to sustain the true faith brought about her downfall. For the Tory right the historical lesson drawn was the need for an increasingly virulent anti-Europeanism and a recommitment to anti-statism – welfare cuts, privatization and ‘light touch’ non-regulation in financial markets. These policies could not fit easily with the historical integrative role of the Conservative party, as the feuding under the Major government demonstrated.
Something dramatic happened to the Conservatives’ pulling power in elections in the aftermath of Thatcherism, as my first Chart demonstrates. Beginning immediately after ‘Black Wednesday’ in autumn 1992, Tory support fell to just above 25 per cent in mid 1994, recovering only slightly under successive leaders competing against Tony Blair. After more than a decade of Tory failure, in the European elections in 2004 and 2008, two alternative parties of the right, UKIP (UK Independence Party) and the BNP (British National Party) took a quarter of the vote between them, with the Conservatives hard-pushed to achieve even 30 per cent support. A year after 2004, the Tories racked up a terrible 32 per cent in the 2005 general election. And two years after 2008, despite Gordon Brown’s pushing down of the Labour vote, the Conservatives polled a disappointing 36 per cent. This time the swing of the pendulum failed to gift them a Commons majority and the party had to enter a coalition for the first time in fifty years.
Chart 1: Tory poll performance, 1990 to 2010 Source: Mark Pack database: http://bit.ly/11mzfWy
The sustained performance of the Liberal Democrats contributed powerfully to the Tory stasis in the noughties. But Clegg’s entry into government in 2010 and endorsement of ill-fated austerity measures have now decisively stripped away all their left-of-centre supporters, as my second chart below shows. At first, the Liberal Democrats looked like the coalition patsy, taking the blame for a preponderantly Tory government. But their support has now clearly stabilized at a lower base around 11-12 per cent, and their survival in council elections suggests that they might yet edge up a few points in a future general election campaign, attracting ‘responsible’, small ‘c’ conservative voters through their recent efforts at differentiation. Yet their left-wing support has gone, Clegg’s constitutional reforms have all failed, and the Liberal Democrats are identified with austerity policies – thus clearly right-of-centre now in their core identity.
Chart 2: The performance of British parties in the opinion polls since the 2010 general election Source: UK Polling Report
For UKIP the disappearance of the BNP through internal feuding after 2008, the reinstatement of the astute Nigel Farrage as UKIP leader after his disastrous absence in 2010, and the supportive background of the Euro crisis, have all helped boost regular poll ratings to unprecedentedly sustained heights around 11-12 per cent (alongside local council election successes). Aided by Cameron’s centrism and evident weakness as PM, the ‘Farragists’ have transformed UKIP into an authentic-looking heir to Thatcherism, appropriating especially its uninhibited nationalism, extreme market liberalism and unreasoned social conservatism in ways that take the party well beyond its old single-issue format.
The consequences of this two-way squeeze for Conservative support took time to become apparent, but they are now visible in Chart 2 above. As austerity policies have made recession worse, prolonging spending cuts possibly to 2020, Tory poll ratings have drifted down to just over 30 per cent, and more than a few polls now have rated the party at 28 or 29 per cent – fully 15 points below their twentieth century general election mean.
The next general election
Thanks to vigorous Conservative opposition to the Alternative Vote in 2011, the split of the right-of-centre vote now threatens to pitch all parties of the right into the severe under-representation that any first-past-the-post electoral systems keeps waiting for divided parties. For UKIP, the possibility is that they may poll record votes at an election in 2014 or 2015, and yet win not a single Westminster seat. For the Liberal Democrats it is hard to see more than half at best of their current 57 MPs surviving.
And for the Conservatives, unless they can squeeze or partner with one of their rivals, just getting back to the 36 per cent support of 2010 will be tricky. So current crude forecasts (using unified national swing) posit a Labour majority of 90 to 110 seats. Of course, the government may hope for some improvement in the economy and float up a little in the polls by 2015. Yet if a Labour victory still eventuates, it will be clear that the lasting legacy of Thatcherism was to fragment the centre-right of British politics, in the process perhaps gifting Ed Miliband with a 1997-like landslide of MPs.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the British Politics and Policy blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting.
Patrick Dunleavy is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy in the Government Department at the London School of Economics.
One of the better photos I’ve seen lately
That would be FOUR parties of the right. The idea that a Labour party whose only differences with the austerity project are the speed at which it should be done and which openly backs workfare is left wing is just not sustainable.
A good article, although clearly some bias in this article :
“The second focus was Thatcherism’s progressively more hard-line stance on implementing neo-liberal policies, with the enormous bonus of North Sea oil funding only a tripling of unemployment, ” I would add major tax cuts were also achieved unless you think going from 60 to 40% and 33% to 25% are not significant.
“eviscerated Cabinet government,” She ran a very good cabinet government in terms of decisions all being taken in cabinet, minuted etc. Not sofa style Government or the dysfunction between Number 10 and Number 11 in the Blair years.
The article says post Thatcher the Conservatives had a hard time. They won in 1992 with their long term average vote. So no signs of Thatcher fatigue there (although the majority was much smaller because the Lib Dems had started their ascent). It was due to Golden/Black Wednesday that the Conservatives lost their reputation for economic competency, coupled with a Labour party that had lost 4 times in a row and finally got it with a very savvy new Leader (fortunate for them that Smith died). UKIP got started because of Maastrict and the formation of the Referendum party which was the forerunner for UKIP. Even without Thatcher the issue of the UK’s relationship with the EU would always have come up at some point.
You say she has gifted the centre-left. She has in so far as the centre has shifted significantly to the right and if Labour tried to renationalise, loosen trade union laws or significantly increase income tax then the Conservatives would surge again.
Fair comment, but incomplete surely. Why do so many electors not vote? What are the sources of today’s English nationalism? Why do so many English working class voters feel betrayed? What of the growing underclass, the falling real wages and the increasing economic insecurity suffered by so many?
There is fertile ground here. Give security and self respect back to the people and the rewards will be great.
Thatcher trashed the Tory party for a generation.
Blair did the same to Labour.
Clegg has reduced the LibDems to a runt of twits happy with his disingenuity.
After wishing a plague on all your houses, who is left? The Populists, aka UKIP.
More sadly, national stress (not including those given a 5% rise by George Osborne because the poor little darlings found it so hard to manage on £150,000) is likely to cause national conflict.
Greece and Spain have shown it is only just below the surface.
Who’s for more poll-tax riots?
An interesting analysis, but I don’t agree that the Conservative share of the vote was holding steady until 1997. The Conservative share of the vote has declined at approximately the same rate as Labour’s since 1950. The IPPR report FPTP – Worst of both worlds shows clearly how the Labour + Tory combined share of the vote declines at a pretty linear rate from over 95% in 1951 to 65% in 2010
Secondly, I think it would be a mistake to characterise UKIP solely as a party of the right. Their policies are generally right wing, but a lot are just populist, which is possibly why they have picked up votes from Labour and LibDem supporters as well as from the Conservatives. Albeit for every Labour vote that transfers to UKIP, two LibDem votes and six Conservative votes will (source: YouGov). I attribute a lot of this to working class voters (of all political hues) feeling let down on key UKIP policies such as immigration, whilst ‘protest’ voters who used to give their votes to the LibDems now give them to UKIP.
Of course they are a party of the right even if some of their positions are populist right which have broader appeal. There’s way too much hype surrounding UKIP whose performance has been magnified by a low turnout council election and this is very unlikely to be repeated in a general election. However, as you observe they have taken voters from the conservatives at three times the rate they have taken them from Labour so the question that needs to be asked is what would their electorate look like assuming they took not 23% in a low turnout contest but around 15-16% of the vote in a general which is entirely plausible. The answer is an overwhelmingly conservative one. And the impact on the regular conservative party would be devastating. Even beyond UKIP the conservatives have a huge trojan horse in the party already in that about 40% of their Westminster representation wants to leave Europe essentially unilaterally while the remaining 60% whatever they may say don’t want to leave for very sound economic and diplomatic reasons(this includes Cameron btw…do you really think he’d be waffling about referendums unless he had to?). Perhaps it’s time for Cameron to read some biography…starting with Robert Peel (who he doesn’t look like since Peel was a very courageous man) and A. J. Balfour (who he looks very like).
I think it flawed and premature to predict a General Election result based on low-turnout voting solely in English Tory shires. If anything, the long-term story of last night’s vote is the total collapse of the LibDem vote in South Shields and the implication that this could happen across all Lab-Lib marginals in Scotland, Wales, the North and the English cities. In other words, the maximalisation of the centre-Left vote by Labour and its commensurate effect also in Lab-Tory marginals in these regions. The question is how big is the core centre-Left vote. My hunch is that it is not much above 40 percent.
Conversely, the UKIP surge as the natural protest vote in the Tory shires and the current absent (Lib) and implausible (Lab) alternatives to this, as well as its likely reproduction in the European elections, I see as very short term and unlikely to be replicated in a General Election.
What we have learned here is basically what we already knew. The Conservatives are returning to toxicity in Scotland, Wales, the North and the English metropolitan cities, and are dragging their Liberal coalition partners down the same route, but also that Labour is failing totally to break out of its core vote in those areas and into the southern marginals. Their spin that they would win swathes of marginals in the South based on last night’s results is dependent on huge UKIP votes at the General Election, unlikely to be retained when it can unseat so many Conservative MP’s.
Summary: Very little movement from the current situation. If I had to stick my neck out, I would go for a hung parliament with Labour the largest party but with very few more votes than last time – taking marginals in its “own” areas while at the same time, siphoning off some Libdem votes in the South to allow Conservative victories in Lib-Con marginals there. While I very much enjoyed the article, I don’t see a ’97-type Labour landslide on 40 percent of the vote.
Ever such an interesting post! The left is looking rather empty at the moment.
I do look forward to the next GE and wonder what UKIP will do to split the Conservative and perhaps also the Lib Dem protest vote…
Professor Dunleavy has provided us all with a cogent and incisive analysis of ‘Thatcherism’, and the Conservative party which shall ring all too true.
However, I would go further, as I believe that the Conservative party in parliament is itself an unstable coalition of those who would describe themselves as ‘modernisers’, and those of whom are on the ‘right’ who were against the legislation to introduce single sex marriage.
UKIP is the party that shall benefit from such divisions. One could ask why UKIP can only grow at local government level by the defections of disillusioned Conservatives? This is even in areas which are quite prosperous, and were immigration is low. There are, if any, examples of council seats that have gone straight from the Labour party to UKIP.
This is very interesting and informative. One of the consequences of Thatcherism was to make the Conservative brand toxic in Scotland and northern England to an extent that David Cameron could not overcome (particularly once the Conservative started talking about austerity). However, there is a danger for the Labour Party thinking that says the core vote plus disaffected Liberals will get us home. All we know about Lib Dem voters is that they are heterogeneous and not all UKIP votes would otherwise vote Conservative: part of the problem here is that one is dealing with one is dealing with more than the traditional Downsian left-right dimension. I sense that the Labour Party think that they need not bother about centrist voters in southern England who switched from Labour to Conservative in 2010. That could be a mistake.
“The lasting achievement of Thatcherism as a political project is that Britain now has three political parties of the right, instead of one” – What drivel. If that is so, explain to me why these right wing parties are forcing the electorate against their will to participate in a dictatorial socialist construct?
The three parties are undoubtedly left wing or there would be no need for UKIP!
Views unclouded by knowledge