The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the Labour Party’s programmatic trajectory under Keir Starmer, a trajectory which helped set the parameters for the often-contentious policy choices in government. Though Starmer had fought the election to succeed Corbyn on a left-wing platform, this was soon abandoned. Policy evolution was mainly driven by strategic considerations, more specifically, by what came to be called ‘the Ming vase strategy’, defined in this article by two principles, opinion alignment and power accommodation. Together, these principles are conceptualised in the article as amounting to an ‘operating code’ which is then used to analyse and critically evaluate Starmer’s strategic choices in opposition and government. The application of this ‘operating code’ is seen as a major cause of the serious problems the new government experienced in its first year in office.

"The modernisation of the labour party." Contemporary British History, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

Riker’s concept of heresthetics, which is a dominant party strategy for destroying the existing equilibrium in the party competition to reach the dominant party’s objectives. The book reveals three important consequences of mainstream party strategies on ethnic issues with the example of Turkey, but it can also be generalised to new democracies. First, the intertwining of the dominant party’s rhetoric is likely possible due to the dominant party’s goal of catching median voters. Second, issue compartmentalisation is adopted as a strategy by the dominant party to attract ethnic median voters. Third, the dominant party’s attempt to create a new dimension integrates different dimensions in favour of the said dominant party. As a case-specific inference, the author concludes that the aim of the AKP in approaching the ethnic dimension was to catch Kurdish median voters without losing Turkish nationalist voters, as well as removing the ethnic issue from the political arena to establish two-party presidentialism in Turkey. The strength of the book is its well-organised structure, with clear theoretical and methodological explanations and comprehensive methodology, merging quantitative and qualitative text analysis – as well as suitable concepts from previous seminal works – to understand the nature of mainstream party strategies and ethno-territorial parties (ETPs), both from generalisability points and case-specific levels. The book suffers, however, from some weaknesses, handling the ethnic dimension only on the level of party competition, which is a macro-level dynamic, without touching on micro-level electoral dynamics affecting both Turkish and Kurdish voters in terms of voting behaviour. Unequivocally, the nature of the research question is limited to the party strategies, but this over-emphasis on macro-level dimensions inherently leads to the problem of over-determination, which the author already underlined as the limitation of the adopted theory. Lastly, I would recommend this book for academic readers with a background in political science, because the over-arching methodology and comprehensive terminology regarding party politics may be difficult for general readers.

During Jeremy Corbyn's period as leader, Labour was convulsed by a row over claims of widespread anti-semitism in the party, with Corbyn under sustained attack for his alleged complacency-and even connivance. The main purpose of this article is to help explain how the Corbyn leadership managed the 'anti-semitism crisis'. The first section reviews the sequence of events, the key aspects of the crisis and the various steps taken by the Corbyn leadership. The article then analyses the two sets of factors which drove Corbyn's response. The second section utilises the concept of 'schemas', cognitive shortcuts to shed light on how the leadership framed the problem of alleged endemic anti-semitism. It argues that the Corbyn leadership's schemas of Israel were integrally linked to those it held on anti-semitism and played a major role in determining the course of action it took. The third section contends that the Corbyn leadership's decisions and choices were also governed by its approach to party management, in particular by its two central precepts, 'the adversarial frame of reference' and the 'ethic of ultimate ends'. The overall conclusion is that the inadequacy of the Corbyn leadership's schematic understanding of anti-semitism and of its managerial precepts help explain its failure to resolve the anti-semitism crisis.