Constitutional institutions are splendid things : an analysis of the Conservative Party's constitutional positions From 1832 To 2020

Pitt, Daniel

Abstract

The Conservative Party is the most electorally successful party in British policies. It has been the party of Government more than its political rivals. This is an important fact for the study of the British constitution or the policies of any British political parties towards the constitution as constitutional major changes, reforms or amendments are unlikely to be implemented without being in Government. Therefore, to understand where the Conservative Party’s constitutional policies might bend towards after Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, it is necessary to analysis the party’s constitutional policies of the past. This is the core aim of this thesis; that is, to longitudinally analysis the Conservative Party election addresses and/or manifestos from the 1832 Reform Act to March 2020 (arguably the end of the Age of Brexit) with the main focus on the period between 1900 and 2019. To enable this a discussion on conservative principles will be conducted to provide a framework for analysis. The study utilises qualitative methods to gather and analyse the data. In particular, semi-structured interviews with elite actors within the Conservative Party; a document analysis of the manifestos and elections addresses of party leaders as well as other key actors; an analyse of letters, memorandums and internal reports from the Conservative Party Archive at the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the Churchill Archive Centre, Churchill College as well as other archives. This research found that generally the Conservative manifestos did not address constitutional issues qua constitutional issues. There were multiple uses of other prisms such as financial, economic, efficiency, foreign policy, and international trade to name a few rather than a constitutional one. Thus, it is difficult to have a coherent constitutionally conservative position on constitution, if it is not viewed through a constitutional prism. Moreover, it was also found that the manifesto shifted in the rhetoric utilised from standard constitutional language to catch-all terms, such as democracy and this was driven by pathos. The use of non-constitutional prisms meant there was a lack of an overall vision, and this raises the question of institutional memory loss within the Conservative Party. This has a major implication; that is, constitutional issues are unlikely to be solved by a coherent constitutional policy suite in the future as they are seen through the perspective of other prims. Finally, the Conservative Party has dwelt in the paradigm of homo economicus (especially since 1997) or in other words, the party has fallen into its modern comfort zone of economics and out of is historical one of, what I have called, ‘constitutional man’.

Citation

Pitt, D. (2022). Constitutional institutions are splendid things : an analysis of the Conservative Party's constitutional positions From 1832 To 2020. (Thesis). University of Hull. https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4269857

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Apr 25, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 25, 2023
• Keywords: Politics
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4269857
• Additional Information: Department of Politics, The University of Hull
• Award Date: 2022-11