UK prime minister will likely remain in power for now

Significance As many as a dozen lockdown parties are now alleged to have been held at Downing Street, significantly damaging Johnson’s support among the public and his Conservative Party. His position as party leader and prime minister is gravely threatened. Impacts Johnson’s domestic troubles, coupled with rising economic concerns, increase the chance of an agreement with the EU over Northern Ireland. Disillusionment with Johnson, opposition to net-zero and culture wars open the door for Nigel Farage’s Reform Party to revive its appeal. Rising inflation threatens to undermine consumer confidence and slow the economic recovery over the coming year.

SPEECH BEHAVIOR: COMMUNICATIVE AND PRAGMATIC ASPECT (ON POLITICAL DISCOURSE BASIS)

The article is devoted to the communicative and pragmatic aspect of an utterance. A review of the basic principles and maxims leading to successful communication is made by the author. The purpose of the investigation involved is to identify actively used speech tactics, their structural features to achieve the perlocution. The material of the research is the political speeches by D. Cameron, a representative of the British Conservative Party. Based on the investigation, some conclusions can be made. In the political discourse self-presentation and accusation / blame tactics are regarded as the most active ones created on the explicature and implicature basis.

The United Kingdom’s exposure to corruption is rising

Significance This reflects long-standing dynamics linked to the United Kingdom’s role in facilitating illicit global financial flows. In addition, recent political developments under Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government have fuelled the perception that UK rule of law standards are declining. Impacts Surging real estate prices and increasing wealth inequality facilitate money laundering. Academic freedom in the United Kingdom is potentially impacted by the increase in private donations to universities. The ruling Conservative Party is particularly vulnerable to charges of corruption, given its reliance on private funding.

The domestic and foreign policy of the Canadian Liberals under Justin Trudeau in 2015-2020: achievements and challenges

The key idea of this article is that, for the first time, on the example of the domestic and foreign policy of the Canadian Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau, we discuss the problems and prospects of Canadian Liberalism. The recent defeat of the Conservative Party of Canada in the 2019 parliamentary elections gave the impression that only the Liberal Party contributes to the prosperity of the modern Canadian state. The closest attention to the activities of the Liberal Party allows us to identify its absolute advantages and corresponding shortcomings. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to analyze and investigate both the indisputable advantages and current shortcomings of the Liberal Party in power, and against this background to determine the effectiveness, or vice versa, the incompetence of Canadian liberalism as a political ideology. At the same time, according to the author, it is necessary to separate objective and subjective factors associated with the presence of liberals in power. The objective ones are related to how the Liberals program settings meet the needs of the time, while the subjective ones characterize how an individual, and, above all, the party leader, implements the partys requests and the electorates hopes. In this regard, the reputation of its leader is of crucial importance. On the basis of the considered source base, and, first of all, the electoral programs of Liberals under Trudeau, since coming to power in 2015. In the first part of the article, the author presents a comparative analysis of the results of the liberals in the parliamentary elections in 2015 and 2019, explaining the reasons for the victory of the latter, and obtaining, respectively, a parliamentary majority, and then a minority. The second part of the article is devoted directly to the aspects of the domestic and foreign policy of the Liberals in 2015-2020. The author comes to the conclusion that the Canadian liberalism, implemented by Justin Trudeau is currently the leading political ideology that unites a significant part of the electorate.

Association between cigarette smoking status and voting intentions: Cross sectional surveys in England 2015-2020

Background and aims Cigarette smoking takes place within a cultural and social context. Political views and practices are an important part of that context. To gain a better understanding of smoking, it may be helpful to understand its association with voting patterns as an expression of the political views and practices of the population who smoke. This study aimed to assess the association between cigarette smoking and voting intentions and to examine how far any association can be explained by sociodemographic factors and alcohol use. Methods Pooled monthly representative repeat cross-sectional household surveys of adults (16+) in England (N = 55,482) between 2015 and 2020 were used to assess the association between cigarette smoking status and voting intentions, and whether this was accounted for by age, occupational grade, gender, region and alcohol use. Voting intention was measured by asking ‘How would you vote if there were a General Election tomorrow?’ Respondents chose from a list of the major English political parties or indicated their intention not to vote. Results In adjusted multinomial regression, compared with intending to vote Conservative (majority party of government during the period), being undecided (aOR1.22 [1.13-1.33] <0.001), intending to vote Labour (aOR1.27 [1.16-1.36] <0.001), to vote “Other” (aOR1.54 [1.37-1.72] <0.001), or not to vote (aOR1.93 [1.77-2.11] <0.001) was associated with higher odds of current relative to never smoking rates. Intending to vote for the Liberal Democrats was associated with a significant lower odds of current smoking prevalence (aOR0.80 [0.70-0.91] <0.001) compared with intending to vote Conservative. Conclusions Controlling for a range of other factors, current as compared with never-smokers appear more likely to intend not to vote, to be undecided, to vote for Labour or a non-mainstream party, and less likely to vote for the Liberal Democrats, compared with the Conservative party.

The Representation of Syrian Refugees in Canadian Online Media: A Focus on the Topos of Burdening

Background: This study focuses on the representation of Syrian refugees in Canadian online news media. It examines 375 articles selected from three of the most visited Canadian news sites, namely the Toronto Star, which favours the Liberal Party, and the Toronto Sun and National Post, which favour the Conservative Party. Analysis: The basis of this research is a topoi analysis, whereby instances of the topos of burdening are identified, examined, and categorized as either positive or negative. Conclusion and implications: A distinction is drawn between the depiction of Syrian refugees in conservative- and liberal-leaning news sources. The findings aim to provide some insight into the possible impact of media representation on both the Syrian refugees and the Canadian public. Contexte: Cette étude porte sur la représentation des réfugiés syriens dans les médias d’information canadiens en ligne. Elle examine 375 articles choisis à partir de trois des sites de nouvelles canadiens les plus visités, à savoir le Toronto Star, partisan du Parti libéral, le Toronto Sun et le National Post, partisans du Parti conservateur. Analyse: Cette recherche se fonde sur l’analyse de topoï pour identifier, examiner et catégoriser des topos sur les fardeaux comme étant positif ou négatifs. Conclusion et implications: Cette étude établit une distinction entre la manière dont les sources de nouvelles à tendance conservatrice dépeignent les réfugiés syriens et la manière dont les sources à tendance libérale le font. L’objectif est de mieux comprendre l’impact possible des représentations médiatiques sur les réfugiés syriens ainsi que sur le public canadien.

Cognitive maps of discourses of British conservative and Australian liberal political manifestos

The research endeavors to study and determine the influence of cognitive maps on production of political manifestos discourse. The research has been conducted in the framework of Sociocognitive Discourse Studies. The results show that discourse cognitive structure of British Conservative Party and Australian Liberal Party manifestos is characterized by different sets of cognitive maps on the level of communicative strategies and somewhat similar sets of cognitive schemas on the level of communicative tactics. Applying the method of interpropositional semantic analysis, the communicative strategy and communicative tactic of comparison was identified in Australian Liberal Party manifesto. Despite the close affinity between political discourses of the UK and Australia, there are significant differences in patterns of information organization in online manifestos of the ruling parties to engage the community and enhance persuasion.

PollBasePro: Daily Estimates of Aggregate Voting Intention in Britain from 1955 to the Present Day

Political scientists often use public opinion polls to test their theories. Yet these data present some difficulties. First, they are noisy. Second, they occur at irregular intervals. Third, they measure both public preferences and pollsters’ survey design choices. We introduce a new dataset, PollBasePro, that accounts for these issues. It includes voting intention estimates for each of Britain’s three largest parties on each day between the 1955 general election and the present. As the dataset covers 24,106 days in total, it is perhaps more comprehensive than any other existing time series of British political opinion. We then use our estimates to test a question of pressing importance: how daily deaths attributable to COVID-19 have influenced support for the governing Conservative Party.

Exploring the Political Discursive Lock-Ins on Sustainable Aviation in Sweden

This article analyses the political discourse about governing the future of the aviation industry in Sweden and how a polarized and entrenched discursive path dependency around aviation makes it difficult to invest into aviation’s possible futures as a sustainable transport. We find three different politically merged frames in the political discussion about governing the road to sustainable aviation: (1) Neoliberal sustainable aviation, (2) Green Keynesian sustainable aviation and (3) National environmentalists’ aviation. We can see a discrepancy between two merged frames that believe sustainable aviation will be possible with more or less government support and steering (Neoliberal sustainable aviation and Green Keynesian sustainable aviation) whereas the third merged frame (National environmentalists’ aviation) argues that aviation is bound to be environmentally inferior to trains and, therefore, all focus should go to the later. We can see that there is not just a path dependency in the merged frame of National environmentalists’ aviation that discounts the possibility that both the role of aviation or its sustainability can change as the technology changes. There is here a static perceived view of technology as being forever clean or dirty. Another path dependency is the linkage of aviation transport with particular political parties where the green party, for instance, oppose aviation while the conservative party wants to support aviation and innovation in aviation. This polarization is actually the largest and most important aspect of the discursive lock-in as this undermines any compromises or large-scale future investments in sustainable aviation.