Theme: Parties & Elections | Content Type: Journal article

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The Good, the Not so Good, and Liz Truss: MPs’ Evaluations of Postwar Prime Ministers

Royal Holloway Group PR3710

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Guillaume Briard

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This article reports the findings from a 2023 survey that invited all MPs to evaluate the performance of postwar prime ministers from Clement Attlee to Liz Truss. It also compares MPs’ responses with those from a similar survey conducted in 2013. Among the MPs who responded in 2023, Margaret Thatcher was ranked as the most successful postwar prime minister, and Truss was ranked as the least successful. The results further suggest that prime ministers’ historical reputations among MPs are relatively sticky, closely associated with their length of tenure in 10 Downing Street, and greatly affected by party loyalties. Lastly, the rankings based on parliamentary opinion in 2023 are broadly comparable with those based on recent surveys of academic and public opinion.

  • Royal Holloway Group PR3710

    Royal Holloway Group PR3710 were a group of staff and undergraduate students at Royal Holloway, University of London, led by Professor Nicholas Allen, Professor of Politics, and comprising John Abbott, Bilan Cali, Isaac Crosby, Amanpreet Dhami, Tom Donnelly, Harry Footman, Aleena Khan, Meera Saravanan, Tom Simpson, Aaron Sterlin, Kia Tomczak-John, Alfie Vines and Theo Williams.

    Articles by Royal Holloway Group PR3710
Volume 96, Issue 3

Latest Journal Issue

Volume 96, Issue 3

This issue features a collection titled 'The Intellectual and Political Legacy of David Marquand', who died in April 2024, edited by Colin Crouch, Ben Jackson and Peter Sloman. In this collection, authors including Jean Seaton, Will Hutton and Hilary Wainwright consider Marquand's legacy as a great progressive thinker, his biography of Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first prime minister, and the role of socialism for Marquand. Other articles include a commentary by Deborah Mabbett titled 'Welfare reform by numbers'; Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams on 'The Vices of Values: Matthew Goodwin and the Politics of Motivation'; Helen McCarthy on 'Why the WASPI has no Sting: Gender, Generation and Pension Inequalities'; and Sam Taylor Hill, Tariq Modood and John Denham on 'Multicultural Nationalism: Saving the White Working Class from Blue Labour?' A selection of book reviews feature Edmund Fawcett's review of 'Nationalism: A World History' by Eric Storm and Samuel Cohn's review of 'Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from the Black Death to Covid' by Sheilagh Ogilvie.

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