Whatever happened to Conservative Party modernisation?

Abstract

By way of an introduction to this special issue, our aim here is to bring together and interpret some of the main themes and issues to come out of the selection of articles presented below in order to make sense of the overall fate of David Cameron’s attempted modernisation of the Conservative Party. On the basis of the evidence highlighted by each of the contributors to this issue, we make a number of arguments. First, that Cameron’s early attempts to steer the party into the centre ground of British politics can be judged to have been reasonably effective. Second, that in 2007–2008, in the context of the emergence of economic difficulties leading to the financial crisis, the party found itself at a crossroads, and it chose to exit that crossroads with a turn, across a number of policy areas, back towards a more traditional Thatcherite or neo-liberal agenda. Third, we argue that the financial crisis and the political instability it generated is not enough on its own to explain this turn to the right. Rather, these events should be seen as having acted as a catalyst for the exposure of three main fault lines in the party’s modernisation strategy: (i) its lack of ideological coherence; (ii) its potential for serious performance deficits because of a lack of consistency in the political leadership displayed by Cameron; and (iii) its vulnerability to party management problems.