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Despite having delivered devolution, the British Labour Party has faced significant challenges in adapting to, and competing effectively in, a multi-level political space. This article explores this dynamic in the context of a pivotal period of change (2015–2019), in which the party was led by Jeremy Corbyn, a political outsider, and when British politics was riven by Brexit. In this article we highlight the operation of a key strategic duality underlying the territorial politics pursued by both Scottish and Welsh Labour parties: an endemic and unresolved desire to seek greater autonomy from the UK party, on the one hand: and the preference to retain or gain influence at the centre of British politics, on the other. How these goals were pursued, and tensions between them managed by the territorial parties and their leaders, are central to an understanding of how the party handled the challenges created by devolution more broadly.

In the aftermath of Brexit there is frequent reference to an ascendant ‘English nationalism’ in British politics. This article challenges the conceptual and empirical adequacy of this epithet. It p...

This article explores how the British Conservative Party has dealt with the dilemmas arising from its pursuit of two increasingly discordant goals: delivering Brexit and maintaining the domestic Union. Drawing on interviews and analyses of parliamentary debates, we identify a resurgence in the 2016–2019 period of an older belief in a unitarist state, and a new form of pro-Union activism in policy terms. Against those commentators who depict Britain’s Conservatives as having abandoned their unionist vocation, we explore the coalescence of a more assertive and activist strain of unionist sentiment. But we also find a willingness among Conservatives at the centre to sub-contract thinking about non-English parts of the UK to ‘local’ political representatives such as the Democratic Unionist Party and the Scottish Conservatives, and a growing anxiety about how to handle emergent tensions between the competing priorities associated with delivering Brexit and maintaining the domestic Union.

SummaryIn this consistently low–oil–price environment, where infill drilling and new field developments struggle to meet economic metrics, production optimization continues to be a focus and driver for the industry. Currently, waterflooding contributes significantly to global oil production and is one of the main nonthermal techniques that can be applied to increase pool recovery. Although proper reservoir management of assets under waterflood (WF) is critical to reaching the highest recovery factor (RF) possible, it is difficult to achieve and maintain given the inherently dynamic nature of the production mechanism. Further, to achieve optimal reservoir management while providing the opportunity to leverage alternative enhanced–oil–recovery (EOR) technology, the existing subsurface and surface infrastructure should be fully optimized. Optimizing the subsurface and surface infrastructure in parallel with achieving optimal reservoir management will result in higher capital efficiency while improving key economic metrics such as operating costs (Opcost); reserves–replacement ratio; depreciation, depletion, and amortization; and overall earnings. Given the existing challenges that include reservoir–conformance problems, lack of reservoir energy, excess fluid production, wellbore/pipeline–integrity issues, and infrastructure constraints, how to fully optimize the current infrastructure while achieving optimal reservoir management in parallel is the main question and challenge.Husky Energy's medium–oil–reservoir–management strategy has been highly successful in reinforcing WF as a sustainable long–term recovery method. In this paper we will present a practical workflow to tackle the challenges highlighted by using a systematic reservoir/production–engineering approach with minimum additional capital expenditure (Capex). First, a robust framework was developed to answer three main questions: What is happening?, Why is it happening?, and How can it be improved? Then, a comprehensive dynamic surveillance methodology, consisting of both numerical and analytical techniques and a 10–step workflow for optimizing a WF project, is discussed. This is followed by the results achieved by using this strategy in three WF fields: the Wainwright Sparky, Wildmere Lloydminster, and Marsden–Manitou Sparky pools in the Lloydminster oil block. The positive effect that this reservoir–management process has had on all key financial metrics will be discussed. As an example, since the beginning of the optimization initiative, the Wainwright and Wildmere pool production has increased 21 and 23%, respectively, and the Opcost has decreased by 33 and 42%, respectively. Further, since implementing a similar strategy in 2016 at the Marsden–Manitou WF, its production has increased by 30% and its Opcost has decreased by more than 18%. Finally, we will present a WF–protocol checklist that has been developed as a guideline for engineers who need to optimize pool performance even in a capital–constrained environment.

Relatively little research has explored whether there is a systemic urban-rural divide in the political and socioeconomic attitudes of citizens across Europe. Drawing on individual-level data from the European Social Survey, we argue that there are strong and significant differences between the populations in these different settings, especially across western European countries. We suggest that this divide is a continuum, running on a gradient from inner cities to suburbs, towns and the countryside. The differences are explained by both composition and contextual effects, and underscore how a firmer appreciation of the urban-rural divide is integral to future place-based policy responses.

An unusual combination of factors meant that Northern Ireland featured prominently in British Conservative thinking during the course of the extended efforts by the UK governments led by Theresa Ma...

This chapter advances the case for a more ‘political’ reading of the Anglosphere discourse than is typically offered by its advocates, or by its academic commentators and critics. The authors stress the plentiful rhetorical resources and motifs associated with this shifting current of thinking, and the political opportunities and dilemmas associated with its recurrent deployment in high politics throughout the twentieth century. They give particular emphasis to the ways in which the Anglosphere ideal was re-worked and re-invented in different eras. And they explore its particular importance in the last three decades in British politics, highlighting its growing importance as a vehicle for an antithetical characterisation of the UK’s past and future to conventional ideas about the integral importance of the European Union to British prospects. They highlight the stirrings of this manner of thinking during the Thatcher years, its coalescence within a wider Anglo-American community in the 1990s, and its subsequent influence over leading campaigners for Brexit. They draw lessons from this account for wider debates about how the Anglosphere might be conceptualised and interpreted.

In 2015, the UK House of Commons adopted new procedures known as ‘English Votes for English Laws’ (EVEL). This article evaluates whether EVEL has succeeded in answering the West Lothian Question, a constitutional anomaly arising from the asymmetrical character of governance in the UK. After outlining the historical background against which EVEL emerged as a supposed solution to this iconic question, the article explains how the 2015 reform works, and proceeds to assess its operation during the 2015–2017 parliament. It concludes that these new procedures appear to have overcome the main practical and constitutional obstacles associated with this type of reform, but they have, so far, failed to provide meaningful English representation at Westminster—particularly in relation to supplying England, and its MPs, with an enhanced ‘voice’.

Brexit supporters often point to Anglophone countries as an obvious replacement for the UK’s relationship with the European Union. But where did this idea of an Anglosphere come from? And how significant is it? Michael Kenny and Nick Pearce explore.

Historian, activist and campaigner Edward Thompson is seen as an exemplar of an English radicalism which some see as a lineage with which the contemporary Labour party might fruitfully reconnect. This article examines how Thompson himself understood and characterised the ‘English radical idiom’ and traces his use and then abandonment of this idea in the middle years of his career. It offers some wider reflections about what the insights and lessons associated with his historical writings and reflections on the distinctive nature of English cultural and social thought.

Nostalgia is regularly depicted as an indication of a flawed political argument or allegiance, and framed as a virus more likely to take hold in places that are ‘left behind’. Its prevalence has been linked to the rise of populism in Western politics, the vote for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. This paper seeks to challenge the normative depiction of nostalgia as an alien presence within ‘normal’ political discourse, and critically evaluates theoretical attempts to distinguish between positive and negative forms of it. Instead, it sets out to explore some of the different affective, sentimental and ideational roles that various kinds of nostalgia practice perform, and highlights the particular importance of forms of political argument that accuse opponents of nostalgia while simultaneously employing some of its prevalent modalities and motifs. The paper finishes by exploring these themes in relation to the career and ideas of the iconoclastic and populist British politician, Enoch Powell.

This special edition reflects on the contemporary relevance of the insights and concerns of David Marquand's book The Progressive Dilemma. In this Introduction, the editors set the scene for these reflections. They consider the structural changes that have occurred in politics since the 1990s: the impact of globalisation, the erosion of class identities, the rise of ‘identity politics’ and the continued fragmentation of the party system. There has been no reconciliation between the parties of the centre-left, nor any re-examination of the ‘liberal tradition’ and the potential for a new synthesis with revisionist social democracy. On the one hand, Corbynism is a radicalised metropolitan species of liberalism, while on the other there are plenty in Labour who stress the need for the party to re-engage with the traditional, socially conservative values of the working class in a new ‘postliberal’ appeal. Yet the authors argue that those who broadly identify with progressive causes in British politics—animated by the various overlapping strands of social liberalism, social democracy and liberal socialism—have still to work out how to address the historic failings that Marquand so eloquently exposed, to create a new and inspiring intellectual vision that unites and energises the left and centre-left.

The constitutional position of England has become the subject of intense focus following the decision by the Conservative Party to table the question of English devolution in the immediate aftermath of the Scottish Referendum. Various pundits have argued that English nationalism has become a major factor in British politics and a source of deepening territorial tension. Academic commentators have been slower to interrogate the nature and implications of these assertions and, despite the ubiquity of references to English interests and anxieties in political discourse, there is a much less extensive analytical literature on the make-up and political dimensions of the national identity of the largest people of the United Kingdom. How, then, should the political status and character of the English identity be understood and studied? Notions of a politicised Englishness reflect various, often contentious, judgements of both interpretive and empirical kinds. This article highlights the different ways in which ‘politicisation’ in this context has been characterised, and shows that each of these established perspectives yields a different sort of political response and policy approach. I finish with some observations about how politicisation might be conceptualised, and identify the elements of a more comprehensive and fluid understanding of this phenomenon.

The nature and worth of Michael Oakeshott’s contribution as a political thinker have long been the subject of deep disagreement within the community of Anglophone political theory. This is partly the product of a partial familiarity with Oakeshott’s corpus. During his lifetime, his body of published work had a rather slender appearance, comprising two major monographs, separated by some forty years, and two rather more accessible collections of essays on politics and history. Following his death in 1990, however, a much larger body of writings has become available. In particular, with the publication of his Notebooks, we are afforded the chance to form a nuanced and informed understanding of how the thinking in his texts interconnected, and to appreciate the range of intellectual influences and political preoccupations that characterised his work.

The EU referendum will be a battle between competing visions of Britain's place in the world. Michael Kenny and Nick Pearce warn that the concept of an Anglosphere - an unlikely coalition of English-speaking countries, and a potent element of Eurosceptics’ vision of post-EU Britain - demands an equally optimistic rebuttal from pro-Europeans.

In October 2015, the Conservative Government introduced a reform to the procedures of the House of Commons known as ‘English votes for English laws’ (or EVEL). This chapter examines how the Conservative Party, which has historically been closely identified with unionism, became the architect of such a scheme. It documents how this topic emerged in political debate, following the implementation of devolution and, again, in the aftermath of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. And it analyses EVEL’s operation at Westminster in 2015–17, uncovering tensions within it that point to deeper strains within Conservative Party thinking. It concludes that EVEL needs to be understood not only as a response to the ‘West Lothian Question’, but also in relation to a longer-term disjuncture in the Conservative psyche arising from two competing conceptions of the nature and purpose of union.

This chapter examines whether, why and with what consequences there has been a disentangling of England from Britain in terms of its governance and national identity. The assumption has been that to distinguish between England and Britain risks destabilising the Union. However, the English seem dissatisfied with how they are governed, as demonstrated by support for Brexit, and less content for their nationhood to be poured into the larger vessel of Britishness. In response, the major UK political parties appear more willing to appeal to English national sentiment. But England has yet to engage in a reflective national conversation about its changing identity and its relationship with the rest of the UK and wider world. The fragmentary character of national consciousness in England, and deep divisions in its political culture, make it impossible to draw simple conclusions. This chapter sketches the outlines of a prospective research agenda on these issues.

This chapter proposes that much current talk of ‘English nationalism’ and its role in the vote for Brexit in 2016 is either empirically misinformed or conceptually misleading. Instead it proposes a historically informed perspective via an engagement with three different characterisations of the genesis of Englishness: the contention that the English are doomed to be ‘little Englanders’ until they cast off the shackles associated with the British state; the notion that it is empire above all that has moulded the character of English nationhood; and, finally, evolutionist accounts which trade upon familiar forms of national exceptionalism. Drawing selective insights from these accounts, while also questioning aspects of each, the author concludes that the ingrained habit of conflating Englishness with Enoch Powell’s anti-immigrant and anti-EU nationalism has stunted our understanding of this lineage of national sentiment and its politically contingent character.

In this consistently low oil price environment, where infill drilling and new field developments struggle to meet economic metrics, production optimization continues to be a focus and driver for the industry. Currently, waterflooding contributes significantly to global oil production and is one of the main non-thermal techniques that can be applied to increase pool recovery. Although proper reservoir management of assets under Waterflood (WF) is critical to reaching the highest recovery factor (RF) possible, it is difficult to achieve and maintain given the inherent dynamic nature of the production mechanism. Further, to achieve optimum reservoir management while providing the opportunity to leverage alternative enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technology, the existing subsurface and surface infrastructure should be fully optimized. By optimizing the subsurface and surface infrastructure in parallel with achieving optimum reservoir management it will result in higher capital efficiency while improving key economic metrics such as operating expenditure (Opex), reserve replacement ratio, depreciation depletion & amortization (DD&A), and overall earnings. Given the existing challenges that include reservoir conformance problems, lack of reservoir energy, excess fluid production, wellbore and pipeline integrity issues, and infrastructure constraints, how to fully optimize the current infrastructure while achieving optimum reservoir management in parallel is the main question and challenge. Husky Energy’s medium oil reservoir management strategy has been highly successful in reinforcing WF as a sustainable long-term recovery method. This paper will present a practical workflow to tackle the challenges highlighted by using a systematic reservoir and production engineering approach with minimum additional capital expenditure (Capex). First, a robust framework was developed to answer three main questions: "What is happening?", "Why is it happening?" and "How can it be improved?". Then, a comprehensive dynamic surveillance methodology, consisting of both numerical and analytical techniques and a 10-step workflow for optimizing a WF project, is discussed. This is followed by the results achieved by employing this strategy in three of Husky’s WF fields; the Wainwright Sparky, Wildmere Lloydminster and Marsden-Manitou Sparky pools located in the Lloydminster oil block. The positive impact that this reservoir management process has had on all key financial metrics will be discussed. As an example, since the beginning of the optimization initiative the Wainwright and Wildmere pool production has increased 21% and 23% respectively, while the Opex has decreased by 33% and 42%, respectively. Further, since implementing a similar strategy in 2016 at the Marsden-Manitou WF, its production has increased by 30% and its Opex has decreased by more than 18%. Finally, this paper will present a WF protocol check list that has been developed as a guideline for engineers who need to optimize pool performance even in a capital constrained environment.

How can social democracy relocate its sense of national purpose and orientation? Nick Pearce and Michael Kenny ask what the new centre-left ‘national project’ should be at a time when the institutions and hardy truths of the UK, and its primal values of unitary sovereignty and parliamentary government, face serious threats.

This article approaches the interpretation of elite and popular attitudes towards the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union through analysis of some of the rival perspectives on the national identity of the English that have become increasingly salient during the last two decades. It highlights their role as sources of some of the most influential ideas about nationhood, governance and state now shaping public discourse on the UK's membership of the EU. These include radical-democratic, restorationist and Anglo-British forms of patriotic discourse, which have prompted and responded to the growing prevalence of England as ‘an imagined community’ – a trend which has rendered other circles of attachment to the UK and Europe more tenuous and distant. A central conclusion of the article is that these emerging perspectives have spawned webs of belief that connect new and old ideas of nationhood to the political judgements that different actors are making about the EU.

This essay discusses E. P. Thompson's relationship with an English sense of tradition, exploring in particular his shifting characterisation of an English idiom in the three closely linked, polemic...

Michael Kenny and Nick Pearce ask how political leadership might be rehabilitated in the current anti-political climate, and argue that a widely held desire for popular self-government requires new kinds of leadership that can direct this sensibility towards, rather than against, democracy itself.

Research Highlights and Abstract This article Analyses a major shift in elite-political perceptions of the national identity of the English and current debates on Englishness. Is the first major evaluation of the arguments and implications of the McKay Commission. Gives a distinctive overview of academic and political debates about Englishness which assesses both sociological and political-science contributions and data, and argues the case for their better integration. Provides an original assessment of the implications of debates about Englishness for constitutional debates about the UK and normative arguments about national representation within the UK legislature This article draws attention to signs of an emerging consensus within British politics about the significance of recent shifts in the national identity favoured by the English. It focuses on the nature and assumptions of this emergent perspective, and critically evaluates the prevalent understanding of the ‘politicisation’ of Englishness and the different kinds of constitutional and normative argument that have become prominent in response to the resurgence of this form of identity. Drawing upon a bevy of recent social-scientific studies of the qualitative dimensions of Englishness, I make the case for a different, interpretive approach to ‘politicisation’, which reflects a richer and broader understanding of the causes and implications of the renewal of English nationhood. The article then explores the findings and underpinning arguments of one particular expression of this new consensus about the politicisation of English identity—the report published by the McKay Commission in March 2013. Attention is drawn to the particular blend of arguments that undergird its proposals for reform in relation to the West Lothian issue. Tensions between some of its main normative claims are, it is suggested, symptomatic of a deeper set of dilemmas facing the UK policy community.

There is growing evidence for the effectiveness of choice architecture or ‘nudge’ interventions to change a range of behaviours including the consumption of alcohol, tobacco and food. Public acceptability is key to implementing these and other interventions. However, few studies have assessed public acceptability of these interventions, including the extent to which acceptability varies with the type of intervention, the target behaviour and with evidence of intervention effectiveness. These were assessed in an online study using a between-participants full factorial design with three factors: Policy (availability vs size vs labelling vs tax) x Behaviour (alcohol consumption vs tobacco use vs high-calorie snack food consumption) x Evidence communication (no message vs assertion of policy effectiveness vs assertion and quantification of policy effectiveness [e.g., a 10% change in behaviour]). Participants (N = 7058) were randomly allocated to one of the 36 groups. The primary outcome was acceptability of the policy. Acceptability differed across policy, behaviour and evidence communication (all ps, Highlights • Public acceptability varies across nudges and taxes and behaviour targeted. • Labelling was the most acceptable policy, then Size, Tax, and Availability. • Targeting tobacco use was more acceptable than targeting alcohol or food. • Asserting effectiveness increased acceptability; quantifying it had no added impact. • The more participants engage in the targeted behaviour, the lower their support.

The resurgence of English identity, Michael Kenny explains, is being driven by an internal struggle between the competing cultural strands that make up contemporary Englishness. He argues that politicians need to recognise and embrace this heterogenity if they're to answer the English question.

Three decades on from its emergence as a major source of political and intellectual debate, Michael Kenny asks what lessons Marxism Today holds for the contemporary left.

This article explores the normative dimensions of a growing political focus upon the grievances of the white working class. It asks whether these can be considered as forms of recognition claim, rather than framed simply as expressions of resentment. I assess the character of three different forms of ‘recognition’ that are invoked in the rhetoric which this group has attracted—recognition as (i) liberal-egalitarian restitution; (ii) political inclusion; and (iii) cultural politics. And I observe the difficulties and dangers of pursuing the third of these strategies, while pointing to the potential significance for liberals of the first two. I conclude by alluding to the difficulties that the political theory of recognition faces from the proliferation of claims to recognition among groups in contemporary democratic society.

To re-engage with its traditional working-class base, Michael Kenny argues that the centre-left must embrace the politics of recognition, building a project that creates a new, progressive sense of belonging across a range of geographic and cultural communities.