This module introduces students to debates over party politics, devolution, media, rhetoric, voting behaviour, and gender via analysis and discussion of academic debates and literature. Students engage with the political and intellectual debates by highlighting or challenging their ongoing significance and our understanding of the transformation of British Politics in the 2020s into a vibrant yet deeply contentious political culture.
These concerns raise questions about the future faces of conservatism, social democracy, and liberalism in the UK, which in turn challenge long-standing assumptions about how older parties fit within the functioning representative democracy of British Politics. This results in the Conservative and Labour Party seeking to answer core questions about what they stand for, who do they represent, and why? These impact on the electorate and their voting behaviour as they become ever less partisan and more volatile; the rhetoric used to appeal to voters via the media and other means of communication; which in turn produces ongoing questions over gender representation and the culture of Parliamentary politics.
In response to these contexts, scholars have found renewed interest in the state of British Politics and the wider health of the UK liberal democratic system which centres the study of British Politics as a core subject in contemporary political and international studies.