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This book sheds academic light on the role of strategy in contemporary British party politics. It discusses the concept, nature and role of political strategy, introducing a new way of discovering how parties behave and re-examines events over the last quarter of a century. This book fills an important gap in the politics and history literature. There is no study of strategy in contemporary British politics. Furthermore, unlike other books where strategy is seen as either a communication or campaigning term or, in pure political science, just about theoretical positioning, this book makes use of the strategy literature (which sits outside of political science) for the first time to help better understand the behaviour of political parties. Drawing on political history and taking a comparative approach, the book describes strategic behaviour in three arenas: leadership and organisational culture; the creation of critical mass, momentous, electoral support; and the state of strategic disorder when the party endures a failure of direction. Including ten extended interviews with key political players such as Charles Kennedy, Norman Lamont and Tony Wright, the book combines the theoretical discussion with select case studies producing a series of narrow pieces of contemporary history. The book is a study of contemporary British politics, producing a strategic history of the period. This ranges from the ascension of Thatcherism, to the rise of New Labour; the leadership decline of Foot to the deterioration of Duncan Smith; The disorder endured by Major to the struggles of Kinnock; the battle lines between Blair and Howard; the creation of the SDP, the spawning of the Liberal Democrats and its future under Kennedy.
