2017 General Election UK Case Study
- Created by: EllaBella888
- Created on: 16-11-17 15:28
Political context
May used the provision of the act that allows an early election if it is supported by two-thirds of MPs. In a vote taken the day aft er her announcement, 522 out of 650 MPs voted for an election.
Need for certainty and stability as the UK entered the process of negotiating withdrawal from the European Union. ‘The country is coming together,’ she declared, ‘but Westminster is not.’ This was a reference to potential opposition to the government’s handling of the Brexit process from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP.
May seeking party advantage. Conservatives 20 points ahead of Labour in the opinion polls at the start of the campaign = widespread expectations that they could win a majority as large as 100 seats. This would have been an extraordinary improvement on the 17 seat majority that May inherited. An election victory would also enable May to win her own personal mandate, independent of that won by David Cameron, and possibly allow her to jettison policy commitments made by him.
Another reason may have been that, had she allowed the electoral cycle to run its course, May would have been preparing for a general election in 2019–20 – just at the time when the Brexit negotiations would be coming to an end. A prime minister in such a position might struggle to win favourable terms from the EU, and if the talks went wrong it would damage her chances of re-election.
Campaign- 'Strong and stable'
The mantra of ‘strong and stable leadership’ was repeated endlessly by May and her
supporters. Some commentators noted that she rarely referred to the Conservative Party,
instead emphasising that people should vote to strengthen her hand as prime minister.
Her ‘battle bus’ carried the slogan ‘Theresa May for Britain’ in large letters. This may have
been because she was seeking the votes of working-class former Labour or UKIP voters,
in parts of the country where the label ‘Conservative’ has negative connotations. She
and her supporters depicted Jeremy Corbyn as lacking judgement and experience. They
warned of a ‘coalition of chaos’ if he and his left-wing supporters took office, propped up
by a combination of the SNP, Greens and Liberal Democrats – even though Tim Farron
stated that his party would not enter a coalition. The Conservative line of attack echoed
Cameron’s message in the 2015 election, when he painted a lurid picture of a weak Ed
Miliband government, kept in Downing Street by SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and risking
the break-up of the UK.
The Conservatives also criticised Labour for announcing unaffordable spending
commitments. They argued that the money saved from Labour’s intended reversal of
cuts to corporation tax and capital gains tax had been earmarked for too many different
projects, and that they had not costed their plans for the nationalisation of railways,
Royal Mail and water companies. The ‘governing competency’ line of attack was given
credibility when Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary until the final week of the
campaign, struggled to recall figures when explaining how Labour would fund the
recruitment of extra police officers. There was also embarrassment when Jeremy Corbyn
was unable to state how much Labour’s planned expansion of free child-care would cost.
However, these blunders did not significantly affect Labour’s standing in the polls. Many
of the party’s policies were popular. In particular, there was an upsurge in registration to
vote among young people, partly explained by support for the pledge to abolish student
tuition fees. More generally, people responded to Labour’s promise to support public
services and put an end to the limited pay rises of recent yearss
Campaign- Social care
The social care U-turn
Midway through the campaign came a major setback to the Conservatives’ efforts
to present themselves as the party of strong, decisive government. The manifesto
contained a promise that when elderly people needed care, their homes would not have
to be sold during their lifetimes to meet the costs. Instead the money could be taken
from their estates after death, and a guaranteed £100,000 of their assets would be left
untouched. However, there was no announcement of a cap on the amount for which
they might be liable. In addition, for the first time, those who received assistance in their
own home would have its value taken into account as part of their assets. The ensuing
outcry over the weekend of 20–21 May forced the prime minister to announce that
the government was looking at a cap after all, prompting claims that she was actually
weak and vacillating. The Conservatives had started the campaign with a poll lead of
more than 20 points but this fell to single figures, largely because of the unpopularity
of what Labour dubbed the ‘dementia tax’. It looked as though Theresa May was taking
the elderly – normally seen as a key constituency for the Conservatives – for granted.
Unlike Cameron, who had protected benefits for elderly people, she had taken a huge
risk with an important section of the electorate. May was also accused of making policy
with a small circle of advisers, and of not consulting widely enough among senior party
colleagues before setting out the manifesto.
Campaign- Social care
National security and counter-terrorism
Terrorism became a key issue after a radical Islamic suicide bomber killed 22 people
at a pop concert in Manchester on 22 May, provoking widespread shock. The election
campaign was suspended for three days and the official terror threat designation
was raised from ‘severe’ to the higher level of ‘critical’ for several days, with troops
supplementing police on the streets. May at once shifted from the persona of
campaigning party leader to that of national leader, co-ordinating the government’s
response and making statements about the investigation in an appropriately sombre
manner. Ministers criticised Jeremy Corbyn for giving a speech in which he argued that
the terror threat had been exacerbated by ill-judged British military interventions in the
Middle East. Although he made a point of condemning the atrocity, the speech played
into an established narrative, that Corbyn was too ready to understand the causes of
terrorism, rather than combating challenges to national security. Conservative speakers
and newspapers reminded the public that as a backbench MP he had associated with
representatives of Sinn Fein, Hamas and other groups linked to terrorism. However, the
episode did not benefit the Conservatives, whose poll lead a week after the outrage was
a mere seven points.
On the evening of 3 June there was a further terrorist atrocity when Islamic extremists
drove a van into people on London Bridge and then ran amok with knives, killing eight
bystanders and injuring many more before they were stopped in their tracks by armed
police. Once again political debate centred on issues of security and policing. Labour
drew attention to the Conservatives’ implementation of cuts to police numbers that had
left the country vulnerable. May proposed new measures to crack down on radical Islamic
ideology and announced that the Human Rights Act would not be allowed to stand in
the way of action. The gap between the Conservatives and Labour remained narrow as
polling day approached, although the exact figure varied considerably from one polling
company to another, from a lead of 12 points to just one point.
The conduct of the campaign
The conduct of the campaign
The nature of the parties’ campaigns was controversial. Unlike in the 2010 and 2015
elections, there were no televised face-to-face debates involving the leaders of the two
main parties. This was because the prime minister refused to take part in them. Instead
Corbyn and May appeared on two different TV programmes to take questions separately,
without facing each other. It left a negative impression when May declined to take part
in a leaders’ debate in Cambridge on 31 May, in which Corbyn chose to appear at the
last minute. May was represented by Home Secretary Amber Rudd. With all the other
party leaders present (apart from SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, who was not running
for a Westminster seat), May’s absence seemed odd and was frequently referenced by
the other leaders. Beyond the TV studios, Corbyn proved to be an effective campaigner,
energised when he addressed enthusiastic rallies of his core supporters. May tended
to speak at more carefully controlled events, involving smaller numbers of people, and
often appeared ill at ease when confronted with difficult questions. It was widely felt that
the Conservatives had fought a poor campaign, negative and uninspiring in tone, and
too heavily focused on a leader who proved to be insufficiently appealing to voters. By
contrast, the Labour message was one of hope – ending austerity and offering positive
change. Labour was also more adept than the Tories at using social media to reach
younger voters.
Polling day
Polling day: huge shock to the Conservatives, although they remained the largest party in parliament, they lost their overall majority. Far from increasing her personal authority,Theresa May was humiliated.
It was a victory only in the narrowest, most technical sense; the Conservatives had actually lost 13 seats, even if their share of the vote had gone up by more than five percentage points. The surprise beneficiary of the election was Jeremy Corbyn, whose party had not only gained 30 seats but had achieved its largest increase in vote share since Clement Attlee’s 1945 victory. Gains included seats in Londonand southern England such as Kensington, Canterbury and Portsmouth South, which had never been Labour seats.
This strengthened Corbyn’s hold on the party, making it virtually impossible for his centre-right, or Blairite, critics to mount another challenge to his leadership. But the reality was that neither of the two main parties were in a position to form a majority government. For that to happen a party would need a minimum of 326 seats. Even with the support of the other ‘progressive parties’ – such as the SNP and the Green Party – assuming that it was forthcoming, Labour would have fallen short of the required total. As leader of the largest party, May had the constitutional right to make the first attempt to form a government. The only way to make the arithmetic work was for her to seek the support of the largest party in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party.
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