New Labour And The English Local Council Elections

As an unitary state, UK has been being cautious to devolution for a long time. Since the nationwide " local rule " request which Ireland problem caused late in thel9th century and early in the 20th century, the problem of devolution has existed more than 100 years in UK and not been solved. Devolution was not really put on the agenda and came true until New Labour was in power in 1997.During 1997 general election, UK has already got bogged down layer after layer of constitutional crises. In order to make UK get away from the crises as soon as possible and establish modern political framework based on devolution and partnership, New Labour government carried out large-scale constitutional revolution after in power. A very important measure in constitutional revolution is devolution. Then central government granted many powers to Scotland, Wales, North Ireland and Great London, and established a parliament and assemblies there, namely Scotland parliament, National Assembly of Wales, Northern Ireland Assembly and London Assembly. In addition, New Labour government introduced Single Transferable Vote and Additional Member System, a hybrid voting system of first-past-the-post and proportional representation, in the devolved institutions elections.For campaigning in the parliament and assemblies elections, New Labour made great efforts from central party to local party and formed a new set of election operation mechanism. In terms of the selection of candidates, Labour used selection board and adopted twinning, all-women shortlists and affirmative nomination etc. to give more opportunity to women. Labour's policy forums where every local parliament and assembly were established arc mainly in charge of formulating electoral programmes. For electoral costs and campaigning staff, local Labour remained heavily reliant on the national party. So far, every local parliament and assembly all has hcld only two elections. From election results, we can see that New Labour's election performance presents the following characteristic: its performance is not very good, but it maintains the weak superiority. Why New Labour's election performance presents so characteristic is that it's mainly influenced by the following...