Political divisions

Political divisions

Regional divisions 

- Thatcher had an important impact on the nature of British politics - unintended consequences

- The Conservatives were far more successful in the south and east of England but lost support in the north of England, Scotland and Wales - in 1979 the Conservatives had won 21 of 71 Scottish seats, by 1987 this had fallen to 10 and by 1997, the party had been almost completely wiped out in Scotland

- Thatcher gave boost to Scottish and Welsh nationalism largely in response to the decline of their traditional industries - this was accelerated with devolution under New Labour (Thatcher strongly opposed)

Career politicians & party advisers

- Thatcher accelerated the earlier trend of using outside advisers rather than career civil servants for policy advice

- Political analysts have attributed lower voter turnout to a belief that votes would not change their perception of government 

- The proportion of Labour MPs with manual labour backgrounds fell from 1 in 3 to 1 in 10

- The percentage of MPs who had worked with politicians or for political organisations increased from 3% in 1979 to 14% in 2010

- The percentage of MPs with university degrees increased from 40% between 1918 and 1945 to…