PhD candidate and Teaching Associate, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London
I am interested in interpretive approaches to understanding how politicians and political parties behave - principally the Labour Party. The drivers of political change are many, and complex. My research focuses on the 'ethos' of the Labour Party, and how different interpretations of that ethos help explain the political direction the party has taken.
After graduating I briefly worked for an online newswire before taking a job in Labour politics. During nearly a decade of working in Westminster, I advised senior politicians, developing policy and writing speeches. Being immersed in Labour politics every day led me to appreciate the complexities involved in political decision-making, and how Labour in particular seemed affected by its myths, traditions and sentiments.
My research takes Henry Drucker's classic work, Doctrine and Ethos in the Labour Party, and seeks to expand the concept of ethos into an interpretive framework for analysing political change. It looks at how different interpretations of the party's ethos on matters of theory, democracy, policy, and the history of Labour as an 'outsiders' party affect political action and the direction of the party in Westminster.
I research and teach at Queen Mary, University of London and live in the East End.
Labour conference: a major stress test for the 'broad church'
Sep 24, 2018 07:13 am UTC| Insights & Views Life Politics
Jeremy Corbyn has promised Labour MPs that their party will remain a broad church. This years Labour Party conference will no doubt test that commitment. The Labour Party, MP Gerald Kaufman wrote in 1966, would not be...
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