Slightly less dramatically, Tony Blair faced a large rebellion in September 2006 led by ministers such as Tom Watson that forced him to promise to step down after a year had passed. Therefore party pressure has been able to bring down the most able Prime Ministers of recent years, however in both cases the parties only acted because the Prime Minister was increasingly unpopular and were therefore damaging their election prospects. However this was not the case with Gordon Brown in the 2010 general election campaign when after he spoke to a voter in he was still wearing a broadcast microphone and was heard to say "that was a disaster" and when asked what she said, he replied: "Ugh everything! She's just a sort of bigoted woman." This along with his almost comically poor television persona lead to Brown becoming unpopular, yet still he
Although this happens infrequently there have been cases where Commons has voted against government. Good examples of this are with the Gurkhas row in 2008 and more prominently Blair’s plans to extend the The powers of the whip and party loyalty are diminishing during this coalition. Reports suggest that the voting behaviour of coalition MPs show that rebellion is at a postwar high. Similarly the last Labour government towards the end had major difficulties from backbenchers, with 112 Labour backbenchers going against the government at least once. Backbench rebellions have been more frequent than any since the second world war and for some MPs rebellion against the coalition is becoming a habit.
By finally giving in and devaluing the pound, Labours coherent reputation and authority was damaged. The whole issue surrounding the devaluation of the pound weakened the Labour party further by causing divides within. This weakening contributed to the election defeat in 1970. Furthermore Source 2 however does show direct evidence why labour had lost the election as it states “began for me as badly as it could of done” this tells us that the day had gone badly Roy Jenkins had done a relatively okay interview which didn’t relatively well amongst the public. However in the afternoon it became apparent that the export figures were down £45 million.
Furthermore, Thatcher’s monetarist policies to tackle inflation faced opposition due to their highly controversial nature. Although these policies were successful in reducing inflation from 19% in 1979 to 5% in 1983, they had detrimental effects on the social sector. Unemployment rose to almost three million, which in turn caused social upheaval and massive unpopularity for Thatcher; leading to riots in Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester. This therefore highlights the reason for opposition in this area of Thatcher’s economic policy, as the controversy of her monetarist policies ultimately lead to implications and increased resistance against her social policies, which is reflected when Thatcher abandoned her monetarist policies in 1985. However, although many aspects of Thatcher’s social and economic policies facing opposition were down to their controversial nature, her attack on the union powers was also an influence to opposition due to its
If house Prices fall it will cause significant problems for the UK economy. There will be a fall in consumer wealth, and declining house prices can lead to negative equity. (house prices are less than what people bought them for). Therefore, some people will have their home repossessed and will also owe money on their old mortgages. The effects of a fall in consumer wealth will be to reduce confidence and consumer spending; equity withdrawal will slow down sharply – this has been a significant contributor to increasing AD in UK).
However, Americans, regardless of all these progressions, feel unhappier in their government as they feel that their country has a fundamentally flawed political system; and have declining faith in their democracy. The Implications of this are that political participation has declined dramatically, since the 1960’s the voter turnout for presidential elections has fallen 20%. Voting is the least demanding of civic duties, other civic duties include party membership or participation in a school council. The past 40 years has seen an even more dramatic decrease in these kinds of political engagement. Some people blame this loss of faith in democracy on Watergate and Vietnam; however the doubt in government began before these events.
One of the reasons why the economy weakened after the Second World War was because of the resources Britain needed for warfare. Three industries which were the “engines of power”, cotton, coal and engineering, were declining (Darwin, 1988: 60). Without the means to modernize her industrial technologies Britain’s influence in the world declined. Furthermore, many factories, houses and shipping ports were destroyed during the bombing. According to Darwin (1988: 65), twenty five percent of the national wealth was needed for war supplies, restoration of industries and reconstruction of the buildings.
Unemployment and Its Impact On American Cities Michael Collins Marygrove College Abstract The United States, its cities, and regions for decades have been trying to maintain low unemployment rates. It is a well know fact that the economy in America is facing tough times and many companies are being forced to pass out pink slips. As a result, America and its cities have being confronted with some of the highest unemployment rates in the 21st Century. Politicians have employed many strategies and ideologies to help regulate the unemployment rate. Unfortunately, over the past 10 years these strategies and ideologies have failed.
This incompatibility stifled the coalition's progress. The high hopes of a "land fit for heroes" meant this lack of progress especially hurt his reputation in office. This internal factor was thereby key in helping the Conservatives engineer his downfall. This lack of progress was also due to a general downturn in the economy: caused by WW1 and the growth of competition abroad. A policy of retrenchment was introduced after a short boom.
Conflict politics is the opposition of previous government policy and a complete change. The post war consensus hit a brick wall in 1979 with the election of Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher was a conviction politician with a hatred for consensus. Her years in government saw the end of consensus with a direct attack on trade unions and monetarism economic policy. Politics since 1997 has not been as black and white as it had been and it is not easy to clearly label the era as conflict or consensus.