The party I studied was the Conservative Party.

A dominant idea of the Conservative Party I studied was Thatcherism. Thatcherism is the name given to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s, policies that changed many aspects of British life. She was in power from 1979-1990 and was nicknamed the Iron Lady. The policies were to take the government back to a laissez-faire state with the public left to themselves. An area that was affected by Thatcherism was housing; she changed the law in 1980 to allow tenants to purchase council houses. This boosted support for her as we can see through the results of the 1983 general election where she boosted her majority by 58 seats compared to 1979. She also privatised industries which was a shock to most post-war people. During the war, the government controlled industry and society as they believed it was the only way to “win the peace”. Thatcher rejected state-owned business and socialist central planning. This allowed British Telecom, British Airways and British Gas to be put back in private hands. This was all throughout the 80s where she managed to get a clear majority at both general elections with 61% of the seats in 1983 and 58% of the seats in 1987. A key manifesto policy for the 1987 election was taxation. Thatcher slashed the high tax bracket rate from 83% to 40% and the standard rate to 25% which came into effect in 1989/90 (England and Wales) and 1990/91 (Scotland). Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was deeply controversial. The clause stated that a local authority shall not “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. From the voting information, we can see that the turnout was higher and the conservative majority dropped to claiming 57% of the seats in 1987. This shows us that although there was a lot of support for Thatcher’s government, when different policies, such as taxation, came into the manifesto, people turned up to try and stop them from happening. 

Another dominant idea of the Conservative Party I studied was One Nationism. The idea was first proposed by Disraeli in the mid 19th century. The idea of one-nationism aimed to reduce the social divide between the upper class and the lower class in order to merge the 2 forming nations and create one nation increasing equality for all. Disraeli felt that a paternalistic government was the way to go. One nationalism formed a powerful opposition to Thatcherism, many characters claimed to be social unifiers that opposed the new individualist and free-market policies, however, they were named ‘wets’ by Thatcher’s supporters. They argued that her policies were threatening to divide Britain into two nations. They ultimately lost the fight but remain a significant minority within the Conservative party. One nationalism is in support of a United Kingdom and has become its dominant idea recently. During the 2019 General Election, Borris Johson used many one nationism policies to appeal to all classes. He stated that he would reject any effort for an independence referendum with no negotiations. This can be called a one nationism approach and will appeal to all Unionists. However, this repelled the majority of the population of Scotland where they voted for the SNP, an independence party, in 48/59 constituencies showing that they reject the conservative government that they’ve not voted for since 1955, 66 years ago. He also stated that income tax for high earners would be slashed. In 2019 the conservatives claimed a majority with 365 seats. A voting statistic that is interesting is that Labour claimed the most votes from people with a degree or higher within the UK.