This book traces how Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, during their respective years as Conservative Opposition Leaders (1965-70 and 1975-79), managed their Party's attempts to ensure a return to government, each after two electoral defeats. They did so in the context of an emergent New Conservatism, championed by the likes of Enoch Powell, Keith Joseph and Nigel Lawson, which betokened a long-term change from the post-war Butskellite settlement. Against a national background of declining economic status, high inflation, debilitating public sector strikes and internal Conservative Party debates, particularly over industrial relations policy and monetarism, they adopted strikingly different approaches to policy-making in Opposition. The book illustrates how, paradoxically, Heath's technocratic over-prescription failed to save his eventual premiership, while Thatcher's under-committed policy design failed to impede her leading a purposeful and transformative government i n the 1980s.

This book traces how Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, during their respective years as Conservative Opposition Leaders (1965-70 and 1975-79), managed their Party's attempts to ensure a return to government, each after two electoral defeats. They did so in the context of an emergent New Conservatism, championed by the likes of Enoch Powell, Keith Joseph and Nigel Lawson, which betokened a long-term change from the post-war Butskellite settlement. Against a national background of declining economic status, high inflation, debilitating public sector strikes and internal Conservative Party debates, particularly over industrial relations policy and monetarism, they adopted strikingly different approaches to policy-making in Opposition. The book illustrates how, paradoxically, Heath's technocratic over-prescription failed to save his eventual premiership, while Thatcher's under-committed policy design failed to impede her leading a purposeful and transformative government i n the 1980s.

This book examines the frequently expressed assertion by political commentators and historians that the UK is currently experiencing 'the end of a political era'. It does this by analysing the seismic shifts in the way politics have been conducted in recent years, principally since the EU Referendum in 2016. It also considers these developments in the light of the relative political stability which lasted from the end of the Second World War, and it compares this with another discrete 'political era', spanning from 1832 to the 1906 election. Comparisons between the two periods make a compelling case for contemporary claims and also provide a broad definition of what constitutes a political era. The book will be of importance to historians and students of history, but in its broader treatment of such current issues as democracy, voter motivation, electoral systems, globalisation, national and local identities, and migration, it will also appeal to the politically-minded general reader.