Whips or Scorpions? The Maastricht Vote and the Conservative Party

Baker, David; Gamble, Andrew; Ludlam, Steve

doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.pa.a052409

Cited by 58 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Indeed, the word was coined in the 1980s to describe Margaret Thatcher's policies and attitude towards the EC at a time when she was reasserting British sovereignty against Brussels' plans for political and monetary union (Leconte 2010: 3). It was later applied to the antiEuropean wing of the Conservative Party when it battled against the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992(Baker et al 1993a, 1993b, Alexandre-Collier 2002, Forster 2002. At that time, Britain was considered as the 'awkward' or 'reluctant' partner, exceptional in the EC for the ambivalence of its political class and general public towards a project it had joined belatedly (George 1998, Young 1998, Gowland and Turner 2000.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Britain and the Crisis of the European Union

Baker

Schnapper

2015

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Britain and the Crisis of the European Union

Baker

Schnapper

2015

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“…6. The argument of this article builds on our earlier research findings which suggested that the split between interdependence and sovereignty is a crucial ideological dimension in accounting for the attitudes of national political elites (Baker et al 1993a(Baker et al , 1993b(Baker et al , 1994(Baker et al , 1996(Baker et al and 2000. 7.…”

Section: Modern British Conservatism and Hyperglobalismmentioning

confidence: 88%

Sovereign Nations and Global Markets: Modern British Conservatism and Hyperglobalism

Baker

Gamble

Seawright

2002

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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In this article we seek to trace through the major stands of British Euroscepticism and concentrate, in particular, on the importance of a powerful 'hyperglobalist' Eurosceptical strand within British Conservatism. We investigate the British Conservatives' recent divisions over European integration, against the background of the party's increasingly marginal status in British party politics. The piece also draws on findings from two recent surveys of the attitudes of British parliamentarians to European integration, carried out by the Members of Parliament Project for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). We explore how Conservative divisions of opinion are related in part to particular understandings of globalisation and regionalisation and attempt to show how globalist ideology has unexpectedly re-emphasised and bolstered the traditional nationalism of the Tory party and caused an increasingly hostile attitude amongst many British Conservatives towards the European project as it is presently constituted. We also examine recent attempts to map British Conservative Euroscepticism on to continental varieties using a mixture of ideological positioning and party system (Taggart 1998), arguing that this ignores the extent to which British Eurosceptics advance unique (in EU member state terms) hyperglobalist (rather than isolationist or protectionist) arguments in objecting to further European integration.

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“…Although Major finally succeeded-after a bitter struggle with sections of the parliamentary Conservative Party-in securing parliamentary ratification of the Maastricht Treaty (see Alderman, 1993;Baker, Gamble, & Ludlam, 1993;Baker, Gamble, & Ludlam, 1994;Gorman, 1993;Wincott, Buller, & Hay, 1999), this merely exacerbated the hostility and rebelliousness of many Conservative Eurosceptics. Many of them felt that they had effectively been bullied and blackmailed, by the Party's whips, into voting for the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty.…”

Section: John Major's Ill-fated Premiershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Exit from the EU: The Conservative Party’s Increasing Euroscepticism since the 1980s

Dorey

2017

PaG

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Since the 1980s, Britain's Conservative Party has become increasingly critical of the European Union, and of the country's membership of it. So contentious and controversial has this issue become that it was a significant factor in the downfall of three consecutive Conservative Prime Ministers, all of whom found it increasingly difficult to manage their Party in Parliament, and thereby maintain any semblance of Party unity. Initially, during the 1980s and 1990s, the intra-Party divisions were between Europhiles (pro-Europeans) and Eurosceptics, but this demarcation was subsequently superseded by a division between soft Eurosceptics and hard Eurosceptics. The development and deepening of these intra-Party divisions are attributable to a plethora of endogenous and exogenous factors, the combined and cumulative effect of which ultimately led to the 'Brexit' vote in the June 2016 referendum.

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Whips or Scorpions? The Maastricht Vote and the Conservative Party

Cited by 58 publications

References 0 publications

Britain and the Crisis of the European Union

Britain and the Crisis of the European Union

Sovereign Nations and Global Markets: Modern British Conservatism and Hyperglobalism

Towards Exit from the EU: The Conservative Party’s Increasing Euroscepticism since the 1980s

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