This book examines the changing demographics, attitudes and electoral behaviours of Londoners over the last 50 years and considers the impact these changes have had on the policy agendas of the capital, past, present and future.Focussing on the issues of greatest concern to voters in the capital, including crime, the economy and the cost of living, housing, inequality, health, immigration and the environment, the book examines the capital’s economic and cultural dominance and how i...

As the party that has held power more times than any other, the Conservatives have played a crucial role in the shaping of British society. And yet the leaders who have stood at its helm – from Sir Robert Peel to Rishi Sunak, via Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher – have steered the party vessel with enormously varying degrees of success, particularly latterly, when the short but destructive tenures of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss did much to damage the party's reputation for competenc...

The New Labour project was not conjured up out of thin air — it only looks that way because of the party's amnesia about the intellectual roots and political traditions which have guided it. This book provides extracts from fifteen thinkers and politicians located within the revisionist tradition as an antidote to that amnesia. It is an 'all star cast' from R.H. Tawney, Hugh Gaitskell and Anthony Crosland to Roy Hattersley, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. The collection demonstrates that Labo...

A compelling chronicle of the Labour Party’s perpetual internal divisions.The biblical adage that “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand” remains sound theological advice. It is also essential counsel for any political party that aspires to win elections. When a party is riven with division, the public does not know what it stands for. Though both major UK parties have been subject to internal conflict over the years, the Labour Party has be...

The world's most successful gays are found in California and Florida, as are its most prolific serial killers. This literary thriller takes the form of a memoir in which Gianni Versace's Great Gatsby life story is cut short by Andrew Cunanan as in a scene out of Cruising. The cast includes the exotic poster boy killer with a series of faces, a pair of handsome, star-crossed former lovers, two innocent strangers seized at random, the undisputed Tsar of fashion and gay Baroque design, myster...

Exploring British Politics is a concise, comprehensive, and accessible guide to the subject. Fully updated and revised, the new edition covers developments since 2016 in the role of the executive, parliament, the civil service, political parties, general elections, party ideology, and membership, as well as examining turmoil and leadership battles within the Labour and Conservative parties, the politics of growing inequality, public action and reaction, demographic trends and thei...

In this literary thriller, Tim Roper and Paul Morel each become a character in the other's narrative: the watcher being watched. Their experiences of childhood abuse and murder are superimposed, one upon the other, to produce a double vision of evil.Tim tells of growing up in the "Deep North" of Australia as an only child after World War II. Driven to become a serial killer, he marks the Equinox of leap years with double sacrifices to Mithras, the soldiers' god. After 20 years and ...

After a period of electoral dominance, centre-left parties in western Europe have suffered a dramatic erosion of support; the vote share enjoyed by social democrats is at its lowest ever level. Social democracy stands at a point of great promise, but also peril.This book explores these themes and argues that to write off centre-left politics now would be a great mistake. It counters the idea that social democratic values have been rejected by voters. The ideal of solidarity and the...

The politics of austerity has seen governments across Europe cut back on welfare provision. As the State retreats, this edited collection explores secular and faith-based grassroots social action in Germany and the United Kingdom that has evolved in response to changing economic policy and expanding needs, from basic items such as food to more complex means to move out of poverty.Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and practitioners in several areas of social inte...

This Palgrave Policy Essential maps and assesses key changes in the Whitehall model over the last two decades. It argues that the traditional Whitehall model is being replaced by a system of ‘New Political Governance’ (NPG) centred on politicised campaigning; the growth of political advisory staff relative to the permanent civil service; the personalisation of bureaucratic appointments; and the creation of a government machine that is ‘promiscuously partisan’. It provides a snapshot of the...

Anthony Crosland bequeathed a significant intellectual legacy to the Labour Party including his celebrated treatise The Future of Socialism published sixty years ago. In this timely book, Patrick Diamond argues that Crosland continues to serve as a vital reference point for today’s Labour Party. He considers a wide range of Crosland’s writings on the economy and politics, relating his ideas to ideological debates taking place within the Labour Party about egalitarian social democracy, elec...

Number Ten Downing Street and the Cabinet Office are at the apex of power in British government, but relatively little is known about the day to day functioning of these great institutions of state. With an unprecedented level of access, and wide-ranging interviews from former ministers, senior civil servants and political advisers, Patrick Diamond examines the administrative and political machinery serving the Prime Minister, and considers how it evolved from the early years of New Labour...