11 - The United Kingdom: The Conservatives and their Competitors in the post-Thatcher Era

Summary

After the end of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher in 1990, the Conservatives struggled to regain the hegemonic position they enjoyed under her leadership, having to wait until 2019 to once again win a general election with a convincing majority. This chapter analyses these travails in relation to the silent revolution and the silent counter-revolution. As a classic catch-all party, the Conservatives have had to battle to hold together a sufficiently broad electoral coalition, challenged in the political centre by the Liberal Democrats and (for a time) New Labour, and on the right by Eurosceptic populists in the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and more recently the Brexit Party. As the chapter explores, the Conservatives in opposition after the 1997 general election responded initially to the silent counter-revolution, attempting to shore-up their support on the right. Ongoing electoral defeat saw the party under David Cameron embrace the process of value change identified in Inglehart’s ‘silent revolution’ thesis. In more recent years, the Conservatives have sought once again to contain, and arguably have embraced, the silent counter-revolution of the populist radical right.