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Preface

There was a time in the early 2000s when British general elections were remark-ably predictable. Most people expected the then prime minister Tony Blair to call an election in the spring of 2001, and almost everyone expected a rerun of Labour’s 1997 victory over the Conservatives. No one was surprised, therefore, when Blair called an election to coincide with the May 2001 local elections or when Labour secured another thumping win. (The only surprise was the one- month postponement of polling day because of an outbreak of foot- and- mouth disease.) Similarly, almost everyone thought Blair would call a general election in the spring of 2005, and almost everyone thought Labour would triumph for a third time. Once again, expectations were fulfi lled.

Needless to say, such predictability led to two very dull contests. They were still hugely important, of course – general elections determine which party and group of politicians get to govern in Britain’s power- hoarding political system. The two elections were also fascinating for students of British party politics. They confi rmed the centre- left Labour Party’s unprecedented 13- year period of electoral supremacy over the centre- right Conservative Party, prompted much discussion of ideological convergence, and saw the further fragmenta-tion of Britain’s party system and the erosion of the two major parties’ electoral duopoly. Yet, their long- term signifi cance could not disguise their short- term monotony. It was no coincidence that turnout in both 2001 and 2005 was historically low.

The 2010 general election broke the run of predictable contests. To be sure, it was a good bet that polling day would occur in May 2010 once Gordon Brown, Blair’s successor as prime minister, decided not to call an election in the autumn of 2007. Also to be sure, most people expected Labour to be ejected from offi ce and for the Conservatives to return to power under their new leader, David Cameron. Nevertheless, it was unclear whether or not the Tories would win an overall majority, and, if not, form a minority government by themselves or go into coalition with another party, most likely Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. The campaign was further enlivened by the novelty of televised leaders’ debates. The outcome  – a hung parliament and the formation of the Conservative– Liberal

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Democrat coalition, Britain’s fi rst peacetime coalition government since before the Second World War – was itself hugely exciting.

The run of uncertainty and excitement continued in 2015. Once again, the date of the election took no one by surprise, this time because of the Fixed- term Parliaments Act 2011, a law introduced to underpin the coalition’s survival. But while pre- election opinion polls suggested the likelihood of another hung parliament and coalition government, it was by no means clear if Cameron’s Conservatives or Ed Miliband’s Labour Party would emerge as the largest parliamentary party. The coalition’s spending cuts  – Britain’s own variant of ‘austerity’  – were beginning to bite, and many voters had had enough of the fi scal retrenchment. The fi nal result – a narrow House of Commons majority for the Tories and their fi rst outright victory in a general election since 1992 – came as a shock. It also meant, of course, that the Conservatives would now have to make good on their promise to hold an in– out referendum on Britain’s member-ship of the European Union (EU).

The twists and turns of the following two years  – the period between the 2015 and 2017 general elections  – made many yearn for the certainty of the early 2000s. During that time, voters took part in only the country’s third ever national referendum and voted, by a narrow margin, in favour of Brexit and Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. The same period also witnessed Cameron’s resignation as prime minister, making him the fi rst occupant of 10 Downing Street to quit as a result of calling and then losing a referendum, and his replace-ment by Theresa May, who became Britain’s second female prime minister. It saw Labour’s apparent abandonment of moderation and the election of Jeremy Corbyn, its most left- wing leader in generations. And it ended with a snap election that took everyone by surprise and an even more shocking result: the unexpected loss of the Conservatives’ majority and May’s return at the head of a minority Tory government.

Indeed, there was almost nothing about the 2017 general election that followed the expected script. Over the course of seven weeks, British democ-racy experienced probably the most dramatic reversal in political fortunes since 1945, when voters decided to eject Winston Churchill from Downing Street in favour of Clement Attlee. The campaign witnessed a remarkable implosion in Theresa May’s standing, an equally remarkable improvement in Corbyn’s and Labour’s fortunes, the apparent collapse of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the resurrection of the Scottish Tories as a signifi cant electoral force, and the Liberal Democrats’ failure to harness the support of the ‘48 per cent’ who had voted against Brexit. By the end, and despite the formation of a minority government, British politics even seemed to be reverting to its trad-itional two- party character, but with the two main protagonists ideologically further apart than they had been since the 1980s.

This book tells the story of the unexpected 2017 general election and its equally unexpected outcome. None past the post: Britain at the polls, 2017 is the tenth book in the Britain at the Polls series, which has been published after every

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general election since February 1974, with the exception of the 1987 and 2015 elections. Its main purpose, as with all previous volumes, is to provide gen-eral readers, professional political scientists and students alike with a series of interpretations of the election. It does not seek to provide a blow- by- blow account of the campaign, nor does it seek to provide a detailed survey- based account of voting behaviour. Instead, and in keeping with the spirit of the series, the volume offers readers a broader analysis of recent political, economic and social developments and assesses their impact on the election outcome. It also addresses broader questions about the state of the political parties and the party system in the wake of the election, and refl ects on the future of British electoral and party politics.

British general elections are some of the best documented in the democratic world. In addition to Britain at the Polls , there are a number of other established book series, including The Times Guides to the House of Commons , which are standard works of reference, and the ‘Nuffi eld Studies’, formerly associated with David Butler and now with Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh, which provide detailed accounts of the campaigns. Since 1979, these books have been supplemented by the Political Communications series, which tends to focus on aspects of the parties’ campaign, communication and media strategies, and, since 1992, the Britain Votes series, which is based on a special issue of the journal Parliamentary Affairs . Lastly, but certainly by no means least, there are the outputs of the British Election Study, which provide sophisticated analyses of individual- level survey data.

Theresa May’s decision to call an early election caught almost everyone unawares. Most election books take some planning, with the groundwork usu-ally being laid over many months before polling day. The suddenness of the 2017 general election meant there was virtually no time to lay the usual groundwork. Other work had to be set aside, decisions swiftly taken, and outlines prepared. If that was not enough, the dramatic reversal in the political parties’ fortunes obliged almost all editors and authors to question their prior assumptions and set aside their plans. Interpreting and explaining events that confi rm existing theories and beliefs is relatively straightforward. Interpreting and explaining the unexpected requires additional reserves of intellectual energy. In the specifi c context of the 2017 election, it did not help that so many political scientists felt already overloaded with trying to make sense of the political turbulence of recent years.

Whereas some books try to offer a comprehensive treatment of every issue and aspect of an election, Britain at the Polls has traditionally taken a more selective approach, offering readers a smaller number of longer essays. The precise content of each volume has thus varied. The essays have always been selected on the basis of the key developments, the election outcome and what the editors judge to be important. Thus readers of the present volume will fi nd a chapter on Scotland, since electoral developments north of the border have had a signifi cant impact on the course of recent British politics and the outcome of

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the 2017 election, but no chapter on Wales, where developments have been far less impactful. We would like to have covered more, but limited space required us to make diffi cult choices.

In keeping with previous volumes, the fi rst chapter focuses on the record of the governing party. In Chapter  1 Nicholas Allen tells the story of the Conservatives in power and how the Brexit referendum was intended but failed to end their bitter divisions arising from Britain’s membership of the European Union. It also examines the records of the Cameron and May governments and how their two leaders both came to gamble their fortunes on the electorate  – and lose. Thomas Quinn in Chapter  2 describes the eventful journey of the opposition Labour Party after 2015 and how its left wing fi nally took control of the leadership. It explores the resulting tumult and how Jeremy Corbyn defi ed expectations by not leading the party to a catastrophic defeat and instead dra-matically increasing its vote share.

Chapters  3 and 4 then examine the mixed fortunes of two other national parties in British politics, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP. In Chapter 3 , John Curtice examines how the Liberal Democrats under their new leader, Tim Farron, struggled to recover from their membership of the coalition and subse-quent drubbing in 2015. The Brexit referendum was an enormous opportunity for the traditionally pro- European Liberal Democrats to reach out to all those who had voted Remain, and yet their message failed to have much of an impact. The party increased its presence at Westminster, thanks to the vagaries of the voting system, but experienced a decline in its vote share. In Chapter 4 , Paul Whiteley, Matthew Goodwin and Harold Clarke chart the rise and fall of UKIP. For a party that only ever won two seats in the House of Commons, its impact on British politics has been enormous. The surge in its support after 2010 was a major factor in David Cameron’s fateful decision to promise a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. But this surge was also driven by other factors, including economic conditions and concerns about both immigration and  national identity. With the Brexit vote won, UKIP’s job was essentially done, and its decline created a space that both the Tories and Labour sought in different ways to fi ll.

Robert Johns in Chapter  5 narrows the geographic focus to explore developments in Scotland. The Scottish National Party (SNP) had been gaining support ever since the creation of a Scottish Parliament in 1999, and, off the back of the 2014 independence referendum, dramatically ended Labour’s traditional predominance north of the border by winning 56 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats in 2015. The surprise event of the 2017 election in Scotland was not so much that the SNP lost ground  – it was almost inevitable given their previous high  – but that the Scottish Tories beat Labour to take second place with 13 MPs. This shift in fortunes was partly down to the Conservatives’ success in positioning themselves as the champions of Scottish unionism, and partly down to Scottish voters focusing on the implications of an anticipated Tory landslide in Westminster.

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The next two chapters take a step back to consider two longer- term issues in British electoral politics. Meryl Kenny in Chapter  6 considers the place of women in UK politics, a topic last covered in a volume of Britain at the Polls in 1979, after Margaret Thatcher became the country’s fi rst female prime min-ister. Theresa May’s election as Conservative leader and re- election as Britain’s second female prime minister provides an opportune moment to consider both how far women have come since 1979 – and how far there is left to go in terms of achieving gender equality at Westminster. Sarah Birch in Chapter 7 examines the integrity of British electoral politics, an issue that was relatively salient in 2017 thanks, in part, to a number of party- funding scandals, but also thanks to the rise of ‘fake news’ and concerns about ‘post- truth’ politics. While British elections, including the 2017 general election, were comparatively clean, the rise of new technologies and changing behaviour around social media raise important questions about their long- term integrity.

In Chapter 8 , John Bartle seeks to answer the all- important question of why the Conservatives lost their majority in 2017 – but still won the election. While the contest was supposed to be all about Brexit, voters were also concerned with more conventional issues, including the economy and the state of the public services. As a result of long- term forces and voters’ responses to seven years of austerity and cuts to public services, the electorate had also shifted leftwards, making it more receptive to the arguments now being articulated by a Jeremy Corbyn- led Labour Party. The Tories also gambled on targeting former UKIP voters who had voted Leave in the referendum, thereby reducing their ability to appeal to Remain voters. These developments, coupled with a Conservative campaign that highlighted Theresa May’s inability to conform to her own promise of providing ‘strong and stable’ leadership cost the party dear. In the last chapter , Rosie Campbell takes stock of the post- election landscape to con-sider the question of: what next? She describes how the Conservatives cobbled together a deal with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and considers the twin challenges posed by austerity and Brexit. She also examines the instability of the party system and the choices now facing each of the major parties.

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