Download or read book Choosing the Labour Leader written by Timothy Heppell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-08-30 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The change in the method of selecting the Labour Party leader, from an elite parliamentary ballot to a mass participatory Electoral College, which occurred in 1981 was ideologically motivated. However, the strategy of the Left to enhance the accountability of the incumbent party leader to the wider Labour movement, and the Left's chances of securing an ideological succession in the party leadership failed. Drawing together debates on the method of party leadership selection and the ideological positioning of leadership candidates, this book examines each leadership election since 1963 as a means of charting the decline of the left within the Labour Party. Given the bypassing of the Electoral College to appoint Gordon Brown in 2007, and the debates surrounding his authority and legitimacy as Labour Party leader thereafter, this book offers a comprehensive and timely examination of Labour Party leadership elections from Wilson to Brown which will be invaluable for scholars of British Politics and the history of the Labour Party.
Download or read book Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders in Britain written by Thomas Quinn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats each allow their members to participate in the selection of the party leader. It also examines the consequences of all-member ballots in leadership elections. It looks at how parties remove leaders, showing that each of the major British parties sought to make it harder to evict incumbents.
Download or read book ED written by Mehdi Hasan and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes a man put politics and ambition before family? Ed Miliband is perhaps the least understood political leader of modern times. Brought up against A backdrop of tragedy, with a prominent Marxist thinker for a father, Ed followed his brother to the same college at Oxford, into Parliament and into the Cabinet before, at the eleventh hour, snatching away David's dream of the leadership. This new and fully updated edition follows Ed through the highs of leading the charge against Rupert Murdoch and News International to the lows of plummeting poll ratings, poor press and that infamous 'Blackbusters' tweet. Yet in the wake of Osborne's 'omnishambles' Budget and Labour's impressive gains in May 2012's local elections, political commentators have started to ask, with increasing volume, if we could indeed see Prime Minister Ed Miliband. As the 2015 general election approaches, Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre ask the important questions. Is Ed up to the job? Can he be trusted on the economy? And will he manage to bury the hatchet with David and bring his brother back to the Labour frontbench?
Download or read book Speak for Britain written by Martin Pugh and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-03-24 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written at a critical juncture in the history of the Labour Party, Speak for Britain! is a thought-provoking and highly original interpretation of the party's evolution, from its trade union origins to its status as a national governing party. It charts Labour's rise to power by re-examining the impact of the First World War, the general strike of 1926, Labour's breakthrough at the 1945 general election, the influence of post-war affluence and consumerism on the fortunes and character of the party, and its revival after the defeats of the Thatcher era. Controversially, Pugh argues that Labour never entirely succeeded in becoming 'the party of the working class'; many of its influential recruits - from Oswald Mosley to Hugh Gaitskell to Tony Blair - were from middle and upper-class Conservative backgrounds and rather than converting the working class to socialism, Labour adapted itself to local and regional political cultures.
Download or read book How Labour Governments Fall written by T. Heppell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What similarities exist between the reasons for Labour losing office in 2010 and those behind why previous Labour governments were defeated? This edited volume provides a detailed historical appraisal which considers the importance of themes such as economic performance; political leadership and the condition of the Conservatives in opposition.
Download or read book Corbyn written by Richard Seymour and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Jeremy Corbyn, the radical left candidate for the Labour leadership, won twice—and won big In the 2017 general election, Jeremy Corbyn pulled off an historic upset, attracting the biggest increase in the Labour vote since 1945. It was another reversal of expectations for the mainstream media and his ‘soft-left’ detractors. Demolishing the Blairite opposition in 2015, Corbyn had already seen off an attempted coup. Now, he had shattered the government’s authority, and even Corbyn’s most vitriolic critics have been forced into stunned mea culpas. For the first time in decades, socialism is back on the agenda—and for the first time in Labour’s history, it defines the leadership. Richard Seymour tells the story of how Corbyn’s rise was made possible by the long decline of Labour and by a deep crisis in British democracy. He shows how Corbyn began the task of rebuilding Labour as a grassroots party, with a coalition of trade unionists, young and precarious workers, students and ‘Old Labour’ pugilists, who then became the biggest campaigning army in British politics. Utilizing social media, activists turned the media’s Project Fear on its head and broke the ideological monopoly of the tabloids. After the election, with all the artillery still ranged against Corbyn, and with all the weaknesses of the Left’s revival, Seymour asks what Corbyn can do with his newfound success.
Download or read book The Starmer Project written by Oliver Eagleton and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forensic political biography of the Labour Party leader Hailed as a human-rights champion and political outsider, what sort of politician is Keir Starmer really, and what mark is he making on the new politics of Labour? In The Starmer Project, Oliver Eagleton provides a careful reading of Starmer’s record at the Crown Prosecution Service and as a member of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, tracing the political alliances he forged and the roots of his bid for the party leadership. Starmer originally pledged to revitalise Corbynism with a dose of lawyerly competence. To understand what happened afterwards it is necessary to understand the man himself. So little remains known about Starmer that his actions are usually interpreted as overtures to others. On closer inspection, however, he is anything but an empty political vessel.
Download or read book Choosing a Leader written by L. Stark and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating study contains important new information and original insights into a poorly-understood political phenomenon: contests for party leadership. It describes, in far greater detail than has appeared before, the frequently bitter struggles over leadership selection which have plagued the Conservative, Labour, Liberal, Social Democratic, and Liberal Democrat parties. Based on extensive interviewing with former party leaders, and careful analysis of leadership contests in each party, the book concludes that leadership selection rules rarely affect who stands for party leadership or who wins the contests.
Download or read book Five Year Mission written by Tim Bale and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 2010, Labour suffered one of its worst ever election defeats. A few months later it chose Ed Miliband as its new leader. His task? To win back power after just one term in opposition - a tall order given how many voters had come to blame Labour for the economic mess the country was in, and to see the party as a soft-touch when it came to immigration and welfare. Even those who were more sympathetic had their doubts. Was Ed Miliband really leadership material? Would he be able to overcome defeating his elder brother to get to the top? Would he have to do as he was told by the trade union leaders who had helped him win? Could he resolve the tensions between Blairites and Brownites, Blue Labour and New Labour? Might his desire to keep his colleagues united mean Labour stayed stuck in its comfort zone? Would he, in seeking to break from the party's recent past, take it too far to the left? Could he offer the electorate something really radical in 2015 or would he instead choose something safer but ultimately less inspiring? And what should twenty-first social democracy look like now that the money had run out? This book, by one of the country's foremost experts on party politics, seeks to answer all those questions and, in the run up to the 2015 general election, to ask one more: will Ed Miliband's five year mission turn out to be 'mission impossible'?
Download or read book Choosing party leaders written by Andrew Denham and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How political parties choose their leaders, and why they choose the leaders they do, are questions of fundamental importance in contemporary parliamentary democracies. This book examines political leadership selection in the two dominant parties in recent British political history, exploring the criteria and skills needed by political leaders to be chosen by their parties. While the Conservative Party’s strong record in office owes much to ability to project an image of leadership competence and governing credibility, the Labour Party has struggled with issues of economic management, leadership ability, and ideological splits between various interpretations of socialism. The authors argue that the Conservatives tend towards a unifying figure who can lead the Party to victory, whereas the Labour Party typically choose a leader to unite the party behind ideological renewal. Exploring the contemporary political choices of leaders like Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, this book offers a timely insight into the leadership processes of Britain’s major political players.
Download or read book Neil Kinnock written by Kevin Hickson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-18 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book reappraises Neil Kinnock’s policies, impact, legacy and leadership of the Labour Party 30 years on from his defeat in the 1992 general election. It offers comprehensively fresh perspectives and some first-hand accounts – some friendly, others more critical – from leading academics, journalists, politicians and advisors on various aspects of ideas, policy, elections and party management, including an interview with the man himself as he looks back on his experiences. This timely book will resonate widely with the current challenges to Labour’s leadership and the enduring uncertainties on the future of the party. This book will be of key interest to researchers and students in the fields of political studies and contemporary history as well as the interested general reader.
Download or read book Searching for Socialism written by Leo Panitch and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new and essential history of the Labour new left from Tony Benn to Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn’s rapid ascent to the leadership of the Labour Party, driven by a groundswell of popular support particularly among the young, was met at the time by a baffled media. Just where did Jeremy Corbyn come from? In Searching for Socialism, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys argue that it is only by understanding Corbyn’s roots in the Bennite Labour New Left’s long struggle to transcend the limits of “parliamentary socialism” and democratise the party, as a precondition for democratising the state, can you understand his surge to become leader of the party. Closely analyzing the forces inside the party aligned against Corbyn’s leadership, Panitch and Leys explain what happened between the validation of the Corbyn project in the 2017 election, while advancing an ambitious programme of democratic socialist measures unmatched anywhere since the 1970s, and the electoral defeat amidst the Brexit conjuncture of 2019. They argue that while this defeat marked the farthest point to which the generation formed in the 1970s was able to carry the Labour new left project, it seems unlikely that the new generation of activists will quickly see any other way forward than continuing the struggle inside the Labour Party, so as to fundamentally change it. In the face of the contradictions being generated by twenty-first-century capitalism, and the need for discovering and developing new political forms adequate to addressing them, this book is required reading for democratic socialists, not just in Britain but everywhere.
Download or read book Leadership and Uncertainty Management in Politics written by François Vergniolle De Chantal and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a range of international case studies from the USA, UK, France, Germany and Italy, this text assesses the conditions necessary for effective leadership and emphasizes the part played by uncertainty and division amongst followers.
Download or read book British Labour Leaders written by Charles Clarke and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering the qualities of leaders from this historic party, among them some of the towering figures of British political history, this book places each in the context of their respective time and political landscape. From Keir Hardie to Ed Miliband, and featuring eight Labour prime ministers since the inauguration of James Ramsay MacDonald, it offers an analytical framework by which those leaders may be judged, and a detailed personal biography of each.
Download or read book Building New Labour written by M. Russell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-03-21 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'New' Labour was defined in part by wide-ranging reforms to the party's internal democracy. These included changes to how candidates and leaders are selected, changes to policy making processes, and a programme of 'quotas' that transformed women's representation in the party. In the first book to analyse all these reforms in depth Meg Russell asks what motivated them, to what extent they were driven by leaders or members, and what they can teach us both about party organisational change and the nature of power relations in the Labour Party today.
Download or read book Corbynism in Perspective written by Andrew S. Roe-Crines and published by Building Progressive Alternatives. This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeremy Corbyn has proved to be one of Labour's most popular and yet one of its most divisive leaders among the membership. In this carefully researched collection of essays, Corbyn's influence on and legacy for the party are assessed.
Download or read book Leadership As Emotional Labour written by Marian Iszatt-White and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the ways in which the need to show (or hide) particular emotions translate into job roles - specifically those of leaders or managers - where the relationships are lasting, multi-directional and have complex, ongoing goals. The book contends that these multifaceted relationships contribute unique characteristics to the nature of the emotional labour required and expounds and explores this new genus within the 'emotional labour' species.
