Conservative Party Statecraft and the Johnson Government

Abstract

This article uses the statecraft framework outlined by Andrew Gamble to analyse the Conservative government of Boris Johnson. It argues that under Johnson, the Conservative Party is pursuing its most far-reaching statecraft strategy since the Thatcher era, aimed at re-establishing the conditions for Conservative hegemony. At the heart of Johnson's statecraft lies Brexit itself, which serves as a national cause around which to organise the politics of support. Leaving the EU demands a renewal of the national community which, for the Conservatives, is framed as a narrow Anglo-Britishness, centred on an essentially English understanding of the Union of the United Kingdom and of Britishness itself. This assertive politics of national identity shapes the party's approach to territorial statecraft and its ideological struggle to ensure that the dominant narratives of British politics are once again Conservative ones.