This book takes an authoritative look at the policies and politics of Britain’s Conservative Party to discover if it has developed a distinctive approach to the post-war welfare state. After exploring the record of the wartime Conservative-led coalition government, attention is focussed on the progressive One Nation wing of the party. The author explores the efforts that were made to embrace the features of the welfare state that were compatible with underlying Conservative philosophy. The modern technocratic Conservative approach of the Heath government (1970-74) is then put under the spotlig ... More

This book takes an authoritative look at the policies and politics of Britain’s Conservative Party to discover if it has developed a distinctive approach to the post-war welfare state. After exploring the record of the wartime Conservative-led coalition government, attention is focussed on the progressive One Nation wing of the party. The author explores the efforts that were made to embrace the features of the welfare state that were compatible with underlying Conservative philosophy. The modern technocratic Conservative approach of the Heath government (1970-74) is then put under the spotlight as a prelude to a discussion of the neo-liberal Conservative approach to the welfare state which was instigated under successive Thatcher governments (1979-90) and solidified during John Major’s Premiership (1990-97). David Cameron’s progressive neo-liberal Conservative strategy (2005-15) is discussed in the penultimate chapter of the book. The epilogue discusses whether a distinctive Conservative approach to the welfare state emerged in the post-war era.