The British Political Scene Since the General Election

1929 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 892-907
Author(s):  
Roger H. Soltau
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
General Election ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Labor Party ◽  
Minority Candidate ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
Clear Majority

A general election has been aptly compared to an instantaneous photograph of a galloping horse. It is a static representation of a public opinion that is by its very essence perpetually changing, and a newly elected House of Commons has not yet met before it is in a sense out of date and no longer fully representative. Even if a general election photograph had permanent significance, it would be open to the criticism of inaccuracy at the time of taking. Readers of this Review are aware of the misleading character of the British electoral machine—of the fact that whenever more than two candidates contest a constituency, the one elected may very well represent but a fraction over a third of the electorate; so that election statistics show a serious discrepancy between the distribution of votes and the allocation of seats.On the eve of dissolution, the House of Commons comprised 400 Conservative, 162 Socialist, and 46 Liberal members, with seven Independents. The new House comprises 289 Socialists, 260 Conservatives, 59 Liberals, and seven Independents. This distribution of seats, we have said, does not accurately correspond to that of votes cast, since the Socialists polled 8,370,005 votes, the Conservatives 8,641,170, and the Liberals 5,295,308. The usual explanation of the discrepancy is that the Labor party had all the luck of the three-cornered contests in which a minority candidate was returned. This, however, happens to be false; that luck went to the Conservatives: of 313 successful “minority” candidates, 153 are Conservatives, 122 Socialists, and 38 Liberals; while of 291 seats held by a clear majority, Socialists have 166, Conservatives 105, and Liberals 20.

Some Suggestions respecting the Care of the Feeble-minded under the Mental Deficiency Bill, 1913

1913 ◽  
Vol 59 (246) ◽  
pp. 487-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Mental Deficiency ◽  
The Other ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Standing Committee ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control

In dealing with any subject in connection with the burning question of the care and control of the feeble-minded, some reference will be expected to the second Mental Deficiency Bill recently introduced into the House of Commons by the Home Secretary. For the purposes of this paper it is unnecessary to do more than quote the Clause, which defines the classes of persons who are mentally defective and deemed to be defectives within the meaning of the Act. Taken all round, it is a much better Bill than its predecessor of last year, but it should be noted that in the present measure no allusion is made to the undesirability of procreation of children by defectives, or to any intention to penalise persons wittingly bringing about a marriage between defectives. These proposals, which were likely to arouse uncompromising disapproval, may be the less regretted, as their inclusion might doubtless have been instrumental in the blocking of the Bill as a whole. Their effacement, it is hoped, may do away with the opposition which is at present invariably evoked by any attempt to infringe upon the so-called liberty of the subject, and may also give opportunity for educating public opinon, so that in time it may be clear to all that the prevention of amentia can only be attained by life segregation on the one hand, and by the prohibition of marriage on the other. The promoters of the Bill have gone as far as they possibly could in the face of uneducated public opinion, and those of us who were present at the discussion of last year's measure in Standing Committee cannot but admire the courage and resourcefulness of Mr. McKenna in presenting the new Bill after the repeated discouragement which he had to face in connection with his first effort last year.

The Canadian Election of 1926

1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-113
Author(s):  
Walter R. Sharp
Keyword(s):  
General Election ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Party Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
Clear Majority

For the second time within twelve months, the continuing parliamentary tangle in Canada gave rise, on September 14, 1926, to a general election which not only was one of the most bitterly contested in years, but was focused, on the surface at least, upon a constitutional crisis without precedent in the history of the dominion. The outcome, however, proved to be considerably more decisive than the conflict of a year before, the Liberal party winning 119 seats—only four short of a clear majority in the House of Commons—which, with its Progressive and farmer allies, should mean that it will be able to restore relatively stable party government to Canada for the next few years.

The British General Election of 1970 - Impressions of an Academic Candidate

1971 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-57
Author(s):  
William Wallace
Keyword(s):  
General Election ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Levels Of Reality ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Political Battle

THE STUDENT OF POLITICS AND THE PRACTITIONER OF POLITICS approach the same problem from different ends. The student is concerned with searching for the underlying realities which can explain the surface shifts of political ephemera; or perhaps with disentangling the different levels of reality which he discerns from his dispassionate observation of the political scene. The practitioner is concerned above all with the intricacies of day-to-day politics. He is interested in long-term patterns of political behaviour only insofar as they affect his political chances, or insofar as foreknowledge will enable him to change and shape the developing pattern. At the opposite ends of this division of interest in the phenomena of politics one may imagine, as ideal types, the ‘pure’ political scientist, the neutral observer of the political battle whose attitude to the contestants and their fluctuating fortunes is one of scholarly detachment, and the dedicated politician, glorying in the clash and chaos of the battlefield, with little more than contempt for those who stand aside and watch. For those who stand towards either end of this division, there are now two separate worlds of politics.

scholarly journals Changes in political trust in Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020: integrated public opinion evidence and implications

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Davies ◽  
Fanny Lalot ◽  
Linus Peitz ◽  
Maria S. Heering ◽  
Hilal Ozkececi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
General Election ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Gradual Decline ◽  
The Uk

AbstractIn this paper, we document changes in political trust in the UK throughout 2020 so as to consider wider implications for the ongoing handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analysed data from 18 survey organisations with measures on political trust (general, leadership, and COVID-19-related) spanning the period December 2019–October 2020. We examined the percentage of trust and distrust across time, identifying where significant changes coincide with national events. Levels of political trust were low following the 2019 UK General Election. They rose at the onset of UK lockdown imposed in March 2020 but showed persistent gradual decline throughout the remainder of the year, falling to pre-COVID levels by October 2020. Inability to sustain the elevated political trust achieved at the onset of the pandemic is likely to have made the management of public confidence and behaviour increasingly challenging, pointing to the need for strategies to sustain trust levels when handling future crises.

scholarly journals LEXICAL METHODS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EVALUATION CATEGORIES IN THE GERMAN NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-25
Author(s):  
E. A. Zimina
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Target Audience ◽  
Evaluative Judgments ◽  
German Press ◽  
German Newspaper ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

Te article is focused on the most effective lexical ways that serve to create evaluation in the news and comments of the electronic German press. Pragmatic adequacy, which is determined by the interaction of the evaluation component and content, specifes the requirement for the effectiveness and efciency of communication between the recipient and the target audience. Te article describes the examples of metaphors expressing implicit evaluation in the texts of publicistic discourse. Conceptual metaphor is effectively used in newspapers with pragmatic purposes, aiming at transforming the worldview of the addressee. Vivid images created by evaluative metaphors exert a psychological affect on the mind; impose a distorted idea of reality, not coinciding with the one of the recipient, which ultimately leads to the information perceived at a desired angle. Te article analyzes the metaphorical meanings of military, medical and theatrical terms, emphasizes their ability to express the implicit evaluative judgments of the addressee and influence public opinion. Successful political metaphor has argumentative and heuristic potential; it forms the attitude to reality in question.

scholarly journals The Official Social Philosophy of the French Third Republic: Léon Bourgeois and Solidarism

1961 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. S. Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Third Republic ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Voluntary Association ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
The Welfare State

At the turn of the century, the authoritative political theorist Henri Michel had this to say of the characteristic approach in France to all problems, and in particular to political problems. “We are infatuated withisms, it is part of the national temperament. It is significant that a large number of our fellow-citizens like them so much, that every time they are presented with a new one, they greedily seize upon it, without asking themselves whether it can be accomodated alongside the one with which they were previously enamoured.”; The accuracy of this observation has not substantially diminished over the last half-century, the parties left of centre being particularly addicted to doctrinaire formulations of their political philosophies and programmes and to the consequent verbal fetishism and pompous dogmatism. The rise of Socialism in the late nineteenth century overshadowed the contemporary crystallisation of Radical attitudes and aims into the doctrine of Solidarism. Solidarism, however, played a major part in galvanising and rallying the protagonists of state intervention and voluntary association; uniting them in the task of building, by a series of piecemeal reforms inspired by a simple principle and a multiplicity of imperative needs what has come to be known as the “Welfare State”. Despite the doctrinal fragility of Solidarism, its practical programme was inspired by and was appropriate to the social and political needs of a society in transition from individualist and non-interventionist liberalism to associationist and statist socialism, just as liberal economism had secured the transition from corporativism and mercantilism to private enterprise, laisser faire and laisser passer. To-day it is Gaullism that dominates the political scene, but the tenacious Radical tradition of the Third and Fourth Republics may yet reassert itself, transforming in retrospect the tidal wave of to-day into a ripple, as it has so frequently done during the last eighty years of France's tormented history.

Black Politics in South Africa Today

1990 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-13
Author(s):  
Joe Latakgomo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
White Minority

The political scene in South Africa today is perhaps one of the most complex in the modern world. The easiest analysis would be to have the white minority government on the one hand, and the back resistance and liberation organizations ranged against it on the other. Unfortunately, it is not that easy. The white minority itself is torn by divisions and differences in ideology, with essentially two divisions into the right-wing and the centrists. Both camps, however, are themselves divided into various notches on the scale to the right, but never beyond to the left of centrist. That position has been reserved for black politics, which is also positioned at various points on the scale to the left.

appealed to the Queen on being besieged by the wild sense, especially in the concluding cantos, of leaving Irish (see Vi4.1n). In reading this ‘darke conceit’, an iron world to enter a golden one. But do these no one could have failed to recognize these allusions. ways lead to an end that triumphantly concludes the The second point is that Spenser’s fiction, when 1596 poem, or to an impasse of the poet’s imaginat-compared to historical fact, is far too economical ive powers? For some readers, Book VI relates to the with the truth: for example, England’s intervention earlier books as Shakespeare’s final romances relate in the Netherlands under Leicester is, as A.B. Gough to his earlier plays, a crowning and fulfilment, ‘a 1921:289 concludes, ‘entirely misrepresented’. It summing up and conclusion for the entire poem and would seem that historical events are treated from for Spenser’s poetic career’ (N. Frye 1963:70; cf. a perspective that is ‘far from univocally celebratory Tonkin 1972:11). For others, Spenser’s exclamation or optimistic’, as Gregory 2000:366 argues, or in of wonder on cataloguing the names of the waters what Sidney calls their ‘universal consideration’, i.e. that attend the marriage of the Thames and the what is imminent in them, namely, their apocalyptic Medway, ‘O what an endlesse worke haue I in hand, import, as Borris 1991:11–61 argues. The third | To count the seas abundant progeny’ (IV xii point, which is properly disturbing to many readers 1.1–2), indicates that the poem, like such sixteenth-in our most slaughterous age, especially since the century romances as Amadis of Gaul, could now go matter is still part of our imaginative experience as on for ever, at least until it used up all possible virtues Healy 1992:104–09 testifies, is that Talus’s slaughter and the poet’s life. As Nohrnberg 1976:656 aptly of Irena’s subjects is rendered too brutally real in notes, ‘we find ourselves experiencing not the allegorizing, and apparently justifying, Grey’s atrocit-romance of faith or chastity, but the romance of ies in subduing Irish rebels (see V xii 26–27n). Here romance itself ’. For still others, there is a decline: Spenser is a product of his age, as was the Speaker ‘the darkening of Spenser’s spirit’ is a motif in many of the House of Commons in 1580 in reporting studies of the book, agreeing with Lewis 1936:353 the massacre of Spanish soldiers at Smerwick: ‘The that ‘the poem begins with its loftiest and most Italians pulled out by the ears at Smirwick in solemn book and thence, after a gradual descent, Ireland, and cut to pieces by the notable Service of a sinks away into its loosest and most idyllic’; and with noble Captain and Valiant Souldiers’ (D’Ewes Neuse 1968:331 that ‘the dominant sense of Book 1682:286). As this historical matter relates to Book V, VI is one of disillusionment, of the disparity between it displays the slaughter that necessarily attends the the poet’s ideals and the reality he envisions’; or that triumph of justice, illustrating the truth of the common the return to pastoral signals the failure of chivalry in adage, summum ius, summa iniuria, even as Guyon’s Book V to achieve reform (see DeNeef 1982b). destruction of the Bower shows the triumph of tem-Certainly canto x provides the strong sense of an perance. This is justice; or, at best, what justice has ending. As I have suggested, ‘it is as difficult not to become, and what its executive power displayed in see the poet intruding himself into the poem, as it is that rottweiler, Talus, has become, in our worse than not to see Shakespeare in the role of Prospero with ‘stonie’ age as the world moves towards its ‘last the breaking of the pipe, the dissolving of the vision, ruinous decay’ (proem 2.2, 6.9). In doing so, Book and our awareness (but surely the poet’s too) that his V confirms the claim by Thrasymachus in Plato’s work is being rounded out’ (1961a:202). Republic: justice is the name given by those in power Defined as ‘doing gentle deedes with franke to keep their power. It is the one virtue in the poem delight’ (vii 1.2), courtesy is an encompassing virtue that cannot be exercised by itself but within the book in a poem that sets out to ‘sing of Knights and Ladies must be over-ruled by equity, circumvented by mercy, gentle deeds’ (I proem 1.5). As such, its flowering and, in the succeeding book, countered by courtesy. would fully ‘fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline’ (Letter to Raleigh 8). Courtesy: Book VI

2014 ◽  
pp. 36-36
Keyword(s):  
Strong Sense ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

Postscript

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tan See Kam
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Peking Opera ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Two Systems ◽  
One Country Two Systems ◽  
The One ◽  
Chinese Democracy

Peking Opera Blues presents a jiegu fengjin metafiction to the 1980s Hong Kong of the film’s making and release. This is done by Tsui Hark evoking a past (Republican China), that draws on historical hindsights for allegorizing lessons of history with respect to colonial Hong Kong’s post-1997 future under the “one country, two systems” provision. While Peking Opera Blues does not have an explicit agenda for exerting pressure on the powers that be and for swaying public opinion in favor of democracy as an alternative to political China’s authoritarianism, it is nevertheless a commentary on the long, unsuccessful, march to Chinese democracy and its impact on contemporary society, most especially Hong Kong. Tsui Hark achieves this by particular forms of editing and mise en scène, and also by referencing Chinese cultural forms such as Peking opera, mandarin duck and butterfly fiction, the “three-women” films, and Canto-pop and Mandarin songs.

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