The party competition promotes the two-party system’s optimisation, as the more intense the competition is, the more achievable the policies are. The purpose of party competition is that ‘party leaders are basically concerned with winning the next general election’, so compete for votes takes the largest part of competition. The series of competitions reflects in every aspect. I will quote Tony Blair’s government and David Cameron’s government as examples. 1997 was a meaningful year for both the United Kingdom and the Labour Party. On one hand, the UK had another new Labour government in the past 18 years. On the other hand, the Labours won the election under the leadership of Tony Blair and then started to in power which lasted for 13 years …show more content…
The publication British Party Politics And Ideology After New Labour (2010) mentions that ‘Blairism certainly was a response to Labour’s strategic political weakness and failure. It was also a reaction to the ideological and intellectual failure of British social democracy’. To deal with problems, the party ‘saw consist and far from insignificant increases in expenditure on health and education as well as reforms to welfare that targeted the poorest in the name of equality; taxation was reformed in an effort to assist the poorest families, and throughout his time in power Blair made regular pronouncements on the collective interest and the importance of social solidarity and expressed an idea of Britain defined by not each person for themselves, but working together as a community to ensure that everyone, not just the privileged few’. In reality, the Labours faced the weakness, responded in an effective way which concern about rights and interests of people from different classes. At last, its modified policies made the party get chance to …show more content…
For the electoral strategy, Cameron also built a modern image for both himself and his old party and brought the new message. It is understood that ‘traditional issues like tax and Europe barely featured, new issues such as the environment and issues “owned” by Labour like health figured prominently, and a more progressive tone was adopted on crime and welfare.’ Because the party put attention to the recovery of state economy during the hard time of 2008 world financial crisis, concerned about the UK social problems and promised to give citizens a better living environment, their political opinions gained the voters’ trust and won the power on the May of 2010. The cases illustrates the competition leads parties think about problems from the voters’ perspective so that they could change their principles in an effective way. If the party was too stubborn to adapt over time, it must be abandon like the
The conservative party has been in existence since the 1670s and was first called the ‘Tories’, a term used by the Scottish and Irish to describe a robber. This party is a right- wing party which believed in conserving the tradition and the king, as the name entails. David Cameron, the current party leader became the leader in 2005. He is also the present prime minister of Great Britain and he has made a lot of changes since he became the leader of the party. In this essay, I will talk about the history of the party, looking into detail at their gradual changes or transition in ideology and the various changes that David Cameron has made to the party’s image and beliefs.
This essay will address whether New Labour contained policies with which it wished to pursue, or was solely developed in order to win elections. It is important to realise whether a political party that held office for approximately 13 years only possessed the goal of winning elections, or promoted policies which it wished to pursue. If a party that held no substance was governing for 13 years, it would be unfair to the people. New Labour was designed to win elections, but still contained policies which it wished to pursue. To adequately defend this thesis, one must look at the re-branding steps taken by New Labour and the new policies the party was going to pursue. Through analysis, it will be shown that New Labour promoted policies in regards
introduced Department of Housing, Home Savings Grants Scheme and Housing Loans Insurance Corporation to help more Australians own their own home
Party is an inevitable feature of the democracy and it is defined as ‘an autonomous group of citizens having the purpose of making nominations and contesting elections in the hope of gaining control over governmental power through the capture of public offices and the organization of the government’ (Caramani, 2011, p.220). Parties are ubiquitous in modern political systems and they perform a number of functions, they are: coordination, contesting elections, recruitment, and representation (Caramani, 2011). Political parties are the product of the parliamentary and electoral game, and party systems reflect the social oppositions that characterize society when parties first appear (Coxall et al., 2011).
In light of the recent Senate scandal, the public’s attention has been directed to the government’s credibility and its members’ discipline again. Mike Duffy’s 90,000 dollars scandal has put the Canadian government’s party discipline into the spotlight. While it is well-known amongst general public, there are other similar incentives and disincentives shared between the Members of the Parliament (MPs) and senators in keeping them disciplined, as well as some different ones that set them apart. In this essay, I am going to analyze the main levers of party discipline in the House of Commons and the Senate for their effectiveness. By comparing the similarities and differences, I will explain for the motivations behind the Senate, even if they have seemingly fewer incentives than the MPs, such as free of worrying about being re-elected.
If the parties in our governmental system would openly discuss about the difference in positions and in point of views within the groups in realizing these controversies will minimize the unnecessary troubles greatly. Another possibility of improvement would be following the great examples of other countries with the Westminster governance system. For example, in countries like Australia and New Zealand have already a well-established party discipline rules that are less strict than the ones in Canada and way more effective than the ones we have. In an article, it was said that” Australian parties are considerably more discipline than those in the UK an even those in Canada, although the degree of discipline in the latter has been the subject of much critical comment. Parliamentary votes in the UK are subject to varying degrees of party discipline, with the most rigid being the so-called” three-line whip’ votes. Neither Australia nor Canada has such gradations. In New Zealand party discipline has increased under its mixed Member proportional (MMP) electoral system and, unless party leaders have agreed to a conscience vote, standing orders require a party vote to be taken rather than individuals casting their votes in the chamber. “(Sawer, Abjorensen and Larkin
middle of paper ... ... d therefore the smaller parties can be considered to have very little effect on the overall political situation. In conclusion, the UK can still best be described as a two party system, provided two considerations are taken into account. The first is that Conservative dominance victories between 1979-97 was not a suggestion of party dominance and that eventually, the swing of the political pendulum will be even for both sides. This can perhaps be seen today with Labour's two landslide victories in 1997 and 2001.
Between 1964 1974 conservatives party was not success in elections, they lost four election out of five and three of them lose came under the leadership of Edward Heath. Margaret Thatcher succeeded, and replaced Heath in (1975). Margaret Thatcher became the prime Minster leading the Conservative Govt. Below shows t the results of Thatcher Govt majority of seats won on the following terms
Despite of Theresa May's promises, the biggest surprise this spring has been the General Election in the UK. Former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair has argued: "Theresa May has decided on a snap general election because she wants to secure a big parliamentary majority before the full consequences of Brexit become obvious to voters" {Sparrow, Andrew. 18.04.2017). Tony Blair was arguably right, because the Conservatives did get a big parliamentary majority. They received more councillors after the local elections, whereas Labour lost many, and UKIP was nearly wiped out, with only one candidate left. The Liberal Democrats grew after the election, but does still have less than a third of the Labour Party (Ibid, 2017).
In 1997, Tony Blair of the labour party won the United Kingdom’s general election on the ideology, goals and a party manifesto of a ‘new labour’, a revision, an update and a reform of the old labour party, bringing new radical politics to the 20th century - although some believe that labour only won the election due to the British publics increasing hate for Thatcher and the conservatives. The term new labour was a reflection on how the labour party was trying to reform itself and depart from the ideas of ‘old labour’ that had failed to win an election since 1974 and take on new ideas and politics that seemed radical, new and progressive and that would regain trust from the British voters. ‘New labour, new for Britain’ was the slogan that first appeared on the party’s manifesto in 1996 and soon became the party’s main slogan for the campaign of the 1997 elections. But how exactly was new labour new? New labour was trying to become more progressive with its politics that reformed all of the key policy domains that the government were interested in. By attempting to reform the party’s manifesto as well as clause IV, new labour attempted to become a new party that could progress British politics rather than rely on traditional politics of old labour. New labour wanted to modernise the party’s by perusing their traditional goals which include job support, economic growth, investments in public services, welfare and redistribution but they also wanted new progressive politics that catered to the minority groups in terms of social justice, for example civil partnerships (King,2002). However, some argue that new labour was not particularly ‘new’ and instead that Blair’s government had betrayed the traditions of the labour party and inst...
In 1997 general election, Tony Blair who was the leader of labour, he claim that labour party would seek reform of House of Lords and make it more democratic. As an initial self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future, the right of hereditary peers to
This, therefore, shows that class is no longer an imperative factor in how people vote. The weakening of the class system across the UK has seen the emergence of a more diverse set of political struggles between the parties, most especially at election time. Whilst elections from 1945 to 1992 were more or less a straight contest between Labour and the Conservatives, by 2015, the contest involved at least six key parties - all dealing with issues that crossed class lines. Despite the competition between parties during election campaigns and leadership debates, the results seemed to show an emergence of the Conservative/Labour division, with 82.4% of the vote going to these parties.
The US has a two party system in which two parties dominate in the US
In a dominant- party system, a single party wins approximately 60 percent or more of the seats in legislature and two or more other parties usually win less than 40 percent of the seat. Opposition parties in dominant-party system are free to contest elections. The dominant parties have to compete for votes to maintain its power or to gain power. This democratic competition imposes a check and balance on the government of the day, promotes transparency and accountability and ensures that service delivery to the people are prioritized or it will be given the boot.
It is well known that the British political system is one of the oldest political systems in the world. Obviously, it was formed within the time. The United Kingdom of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the constitutional monarchy, providing stability, continuity and national focus. The monarch is the head of state, but only Parliament has the right to create and undertake the legislation. The basis of the United Kingdom’s political system is a parliamentary democracy. Therefore, people think the role of the Queen as worthless and mainly unnecessarily demanding for funding, but is it like that?