The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1997: An Analysis of the Voting Motivations of Conservative Parliamentaria
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The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1997: An Analysis of the Voting Motivations of Conservative Parliamentarians Timothy Heppell and Michael Hill Department of Politics, Centre for Democracy and Governance, Ramsden Building, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK. E-mails: [email protected], [email protected]
This paper examines the voting motivations of Conservative parliamentarians in the final ballot of the Conservative Party leadership election of 1997. Conservative parliamentarians had a clear choice between the political characteristics and the ideological disposition of the candidates. Should they endorse a senior, experienced and electorally attractive candidate, Kenneth Clarke, or a junior, inexperienced and less electorally attractive candidate, William Hague? and should they endorse the socially liberal, economic damp, and Europhile Clarke or the socially conservative, economic and Eurosceptic Hague? By constructing a data set of the voting behaviour of Conservative parliamentarians in the final party leadership ballot, this paper seeks, through the use of bivariate analysis, to test a series of hypotheses relating to the political characteristics and ideological disposition of the candidates vis-a`-vis their electorate. The paper demonstrates that attitudes to the European ideological divide alone do not fully explain the rejection of Clarke and the endorsement of Hague. The paper concludes that ideological disposition was a key determinant of voting behaviour across all three of the ideological determinants of post-Thatcherite Conservatism (i.e. the social, sexual and morality policy divide, the economic policy divide and the European policy divide). Moreover, it confirms that ideology was not the sole determinant of voting behaviour; the political characteristics of age and parliamentary experience were significant in explaining how a youthful, inexperienced, Thatcherite Eurosceptic secured the party leadership. British Politics (2008) 3, 63–91. doi:10.1057/palgrave.bp.4200079 Keywords: Conservative party; party leadership elections; conservative ideology; post-Thatcherism; voting behaviour; parliamentary behaviour
Introduction It is now over a decade since the curtain came down on the Prime Ministerial tenure of John Major and he decided to leave the political stage. By his immediate resignation, Major plunged the Conservative Party into a highly personalised, ideologically divisive and traumatic leadership election.
Timothy Heppell and Michael Hill Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1997
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Conservative parliamentarians then rejected the following political and electoral indicators: the most experienced candidate available was the erstwhile Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke; the candidate most popular with the electorate was Clarke; the candidate most popular with the membership of the Conservative Party was Clarke; and the candidate who the Labour Party most feared was Clarke.1 However, the war of the Major succession was to be won by William Hague, an inexperienced pol
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