How has the whitewashing of race science and eugenics shaped racist ideologies in the present-day political mainstream? Anne Hanley argues that genetic determinism continues to shape deep-seated assumptions about ‘natural’ racial and gender differences.
After the Conservative Party leadership election, and on the eve of the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, David Hitchcock argues that the Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s persona is animated by a picaresque politics that is closely allied to tropes of early-modern roguishness.
On Sunday 9June 2019, the foreign secretary and Conservative leadership candidate Jeremy Hunt told Sky News’ Sophie Ridge that he maintains his personal support for lowering the abortion ban in Great Britain from 24- to 12-weeks and that he would vote for a private member’s bill to this effect if one were brought forth while he was leader. While he later clarified that he would not bring forward government legislation to change the country’s abortion law, his statements raised alarm bells with many pro-choice advocates.
The film The Iron Lady has again focused attention on Margaret Thatcher and her leadership of an otherwise male-dominated Conservative Party. Steven Fielding, Nottingham University, assesses how other cultural representations of Tory women produced in the immediate aftermath of Thatcher’s downfall show how less prominent female figures reflected on the position of women in the party
