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- Title
The Death of May's Law: Intra- and Inter-Party Value Differences in Britain's Labour and Conservative Parties.
- Authors
Wager, Alan; Bale, Tim; Cowley, Philip; Menon, Anand
- Abstract
Party competition in Great Britain increasingly revolves around social or 'cultural' issues as much as it does around the economic issues that took centre stage when class was assumed to be dominant. We use data from surveys of members of parliament, party members and voters to explore how this shift has affected the internal coalitions of the Labour and Conservative Parties – and to provide a fresh test of 'May's Law'. We find a considerable disconnect between 'neoliberal' Conservative members of parliament and their more centrist voters on economic issues and similarly significant disagreement on cultural issues between socially liberal Labour members of parliament and their more authoritarian voters. We also find differences in both parties between parliamentarians and their grassroots members, albeit that these are much less pronounced. May's Law, not for the first time, appears not to be borne out in reality.
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; POLITICAL parties; LABOUR Party (Great Britain); CONSERVATIVE Party (Great Britain); INTRA-party disagreements (Political parties); REALIGNMENT (Political science); VOTERS; POLITICAL attitudes
- Publication
Political Studies, 2022, Vol 70, Issue 4, p939
- ISSN
0032-3217
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/0032321721995632