Ideology and politics in Britain today

Ian Adams is Lecturer in Politics at Durham University

• Part I Background: politics and ideology - what is politics?, the nature of ideology?, ideologies and political parties; British liberal democracy - liberalism and modern history, achieving a liberal democratic constitution, liberalism and modern politics; economics and consensus - the age of "laissez faire", the post-war consensus, the decline of consensus, a new consensus?. Part II Mainstream: Whigs and Liberals, Levellers and Whigs, revolutionaries and radicals, free market or "laissez faire" liberalism, liberalism and progress; new Liberals and Liberal Democrats - new liberalism, triumph and decline, the continued development of New Liberal thinking, the Alliance and the Liberal Democrats, Liberal Democrat thought and prospects; traditional Conservatism - Tories, Whigs and Edmund Burke, Tories to Conservatives, late Victorian Conservatism, return to moderate conservatism, traditional conservatism versus Thatcherism; Thatcherite Conservatism - neo-liberalism, against socialism, government's role in the economy, neo-liberalism and the new right, Thatcherism in practice, the Conservatives after Mrs Thatcher; British socialism and the Labour movement - classical and liberal ethical socialists and British socialism, the rise of the Labour party; social democracy to New Labour - classical to liberal socialism, the resurgence of classical socialism, Labour under Kinnock, the Blair revolution; nationalism and the politics of Europe, the concept of nationalism, nationalism in Scotland and Wales, Irish nationalism, British nationalism and Europe. Part III The fringe: Green politics - threats to the environment, Green doctrine, industrialism and its alternatives, shades of Green, criticisms of Green ideas; the extremes and the fringe - the extreme left, fascism in Britain, the non-extreme political fringe. Part IV The future: the future of ideology? - the fading of the nation state, late modern or postmodern?