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Central bank independence (CBI) has been one of the most significant regulatory state developments of the last three decades. Following the 2008 financial crisis, many central bank mandates were extended to include a responsibility for financial stability. Some commentators claim this jeopardizes CBI by drawing central banks into contested political issues that can impact financial stability, in what we term an independence in decline thesis. Through a detailed study of the Bank of England's financial stability communications employing the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) codebook, we subject this independence in decline thesis to scrutiny. We show that since the extension of the Bank's mandate in 2011, Bank officials have discussed a wider range of more contentious policy issues. However, these communications appear to date to have largely reinforced the Bank's reputation for technical competence and political neutrality. In this sense, central bank "communicative agency" can be deployed to protect CBI performatively, while CBI can in turn be studied and understood as an ongoing communicative performance act. We find that repoliticization is a more contingent process than much central banking literature has allowed for, while financial stability communications are a potentially powerful regulatory instrument deserving of more scholarly attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Second World War, the Labour Party has alternated between periods in which it has been positioned further to the left and others when it has been further to the right. The standard explanation for those oscillations is electoral–ideological. Labour moves to the right (towards the political centre) when it prioritises electoral considerations, usually after a period in opposition. It moves to the left when it prioritises ideology, usually after periods in government. Against this we propose a political economy–policy explanation. Labour moves to the right and a redistributive economic strategy when the economy is performing reasonably well. It moves to the left and adopts a structural economic reform programme when the economy is perceived to be in crisis. We argue that the political economy–policy explanation offers a more satisfactory account of when and why Labour has changed its spatial policy positioning in this period. By acknowledging the role of what we term 'policy reasoning' in the processes by which political parties (and the public) adopt and change spatial policy positions, our approach provides an alternative to the mechanistic models deriving from Downsian rational choice theory. It suggests that, contrary to general expectation, the Labour Party under Keir Starmer does not need to react to its 2019 election defeat by shifting significantly to the right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]