British Conservative Leaders
As the party that has held power more times than any other, the Conservatives have played a crucial role in the shaping of British society. And yet the leaders who have stood at its helm - from Sir Robert Peel to Rishi Sunak, via Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher - have steered the party vessel with enormously varying degrees of success, particularly latterly, when the short but destructive tenures of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss did much to damage the party's reputation for competence.
The requirements, techniques and goals of Conservative leadership since the party's nineteenth-century factional breakaway have been forced to evolve almost beyond recognition - and not all its leaders have managed to keep up.
This comprehensive and enlightening book - now fully updated with chapters on all Conservative leaders up to Rishi Sunak and an assessment of the party's leadership in relation to Brexit - considers the attributes and achievements of each leader in the context of their respective time and diplomatic landscape. Offering a compelling analytical framework by which they may be judged, it also provides detailed personal biographies from some of the country's foremost political critics and exclusive interviews with former leaders themselves.
An indispensable contribution to the study of party leadership, British Conservative Leaders is the essential guide to understanding British political history and governance.
Charles Clarke was Member of Parliament for Norwich South from 1997 to 2010. He served as a minister in the Department for Education and then the Home Office before joining the Cabinet as Minister Without Portfolio and Labour Party chair. From 2002 to 2004 he was Secretary of State for Education and Skills and then Home Secretary until 2006. Charles now holds visiting professorships at Lancaster University and King's College London and co-leads the Baltic Geopolitics Programme at Cambridge University.
Toby S. James is professor of politics and public policy at the University of East Anglia and visiting professor at the London School of Economics. He has written widely on democracy, electoral integrity and political leadership. His books include The Trump Administration: The President's Legacy Within and Beyond America.
Tim Bale is professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. He is author of The Conservative Party After Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation and co-author of The Modern British Party System and The British General Election of 2024.
Patrick Diamond is professor of public policy at Queen Mary University of London, a former government special advisor and author of The British Labour Party in Opposition and Power 1979-2019.