This research is a detailed analysis of the Conservative Party leadership's understanding of British nationhood and national identity and its use of those concepts as part of its strategy during the 1997-2001 parliament. The evolution of Hague's strategy will be examined and both the leadership's conception of British nationhood and national identity and its utilisation of those concepts as part of its strategy will be analysed. Why did Hague use those concepts and why did he believe an appeal to the electorate's sense of national identity was an important part of his overall strategy? Was the leadership united in its understanding of nationhood and national identity and in agreement as to the role that those concepts should play within the party's strategy? Did the strategic role played by those concepts change during the parliament? Why did those concepts fail to adapt the party to being in Opposition and enable it to maximise its electoral support? Amongst the most important findings is that when conceptualising national identity, the leadership can be split into two groups, modernisers and traditionalists and both believed they were appealing to the majority of British people. As the 2001 General Election approached, Hague abandoned a long-term modernising approach to party renewal and emphasised policies which he believed would shore up the party's core support base, whilst also broadening its support. The politics of nationhood were central to this traditionalist approach. The issues that Hague emphasised were not salient and succeeded only in deepening, not broadening, the party's support.

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This dissertation explores the social factors influencing large British corporations' decisions to make a donation to the Conservative Party. The largest 250 British Corporations in the 1995 financial year were selected and the donations they made over the 1992-1997 parliament were examined. It is contended in the thesis that the decision to make a donation resembles the contribution to a public good. As a consequence it is not necessarily individually rational to make a donation. The probability of making a donation is increased if a corporation has social capital. Interlocking directorates, social club ties, school ties and attribute variables were explored as examples of social capital. The analyses demonstrated that social factors had greater impact on the decision to make a donation than purely attributional variables. Each of the relational variables had an influence. The various findings were unified by the association of school and club ties with issues of identity formation and political preference, and interlocking directorates with issues of control and influence. These findings contrast with inner circle theories where issues of identity and control arise simultaneously from more bureaucratic organisational factors. Ultimately, the findings lend strong support to elite theories that hypothesise that corporate political behaviour has a strong class basis.

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Consideration of recruitment of Liberal politicians into the Conservative party, in the first third of the twentieth century, is an important but under-explored aspect of the political realignment which saw the demise of the Liberal party and the rise of a new duopoly between the Conservative and Labour parties. A specific and detailed investigation of the phenomenon is necessary. This study provides an opportunity to appreciate the nature of how individual Liberal politicians reacted to changing political circumstances with the weakening of the Liberal party. It examines a range of relevant factors – both of a long-term and immediate nature – and undertakes comparative analysis of the careers of the relevant politicians, including not only prominent politicians but also less well-known ones to assist in ensuring that the topic avoids being merely a study of high politics. All findings point to a diverse range of issues which influenced political thinking about party allegiances, but broadly these relate to the growth of a shared political agenda, between Liberals and Conservatives. Some Liberals wanted positively to coalesce with Conservatives, forming relationships, both in Parliament and in the constituencies, which eventually brought them inside the Conservative party or close to it, whilst others, by contrast, almost fell into working with the Conservatives due to political pressures over time. All seemed to suffer some level of disaffection from the Liberal party, which was therefore a key ingredient in hastening their change of party.

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This thesis analyses the Conservative Party's electoral demise in Scotland from 1979 to 1997. This subject has already been extensively explored elsewhere. However, whilst acknowledging the validity and importance of what might be described as the canon of traditional reasons given for the Party's problems north of the border, this thesis identifies and explains the importance of a previously undervalued dynamic in the Scottish party political process. The central argument of this thesis is that the role of local party politics in Scotland has a significant impact on General Elections. The hypothesis under consideration is whether the Conservative Party found it particularly difficult to recover in General Elections subsequent to notable losses in levels of Local Government representation north of the border. Thus, the more qualitative aspects ofthis thesis establish why this might have been the case. This extra aspect of the party political system in Scotland is developed through a series of studies that analyse primary and secondary sources and the results of an elite and Local Councillor interview programme. These studies assess what Conservative Governments in London were hoping to achieve with their policies, how Local Government in Scotland reacted and what effect these dynamics had on the electorate north of the border. After a case study on Stirling that examines how the matters in hand impacted upon a specific community, the Conclusion is then informed by a study of General and Local Government Election results from across the whole of the UK from 1979-1991. This thesis is not a comparative study of Local Government in Scotland and England. However, as the results in Chapter 1 demonstrate, the Conservatives did seem to find it much more difficult to recover from Local Government representation losses in subsequent General Elections north of the border. This suggests that the variable under consideration is a significant addition to the canon of reasons for their electoral demise in Scotland.