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This chapter explores the complex, intertwined Conservative politics of protectionism and empire in the Scottish city of Dundee, dubbed Juteopolis, during the 1930s. In the anti-Labour landslide of 1931, Dundee elected its first Conservative MP since the Great Reform Act, Florence Horsbrugh. Re-elected in 1935, for the whole of the decade Horsbrugh was faced with responding to the desperate economic plight of Juteopolis as it suffered from the collapse of international trade, but most of all the competition from India's jute industry. In the face of the shrinkage in markets for its products, Dundee suffered from the worst unemployment rate of any major city in Britain in the 1930s. In the early 1930s both the question of the British Empire's economic policy and the question of India were central to political debate in the Conservative Party. This chapter considers the Conservatives' failure to protect Juteopolis from Calcutta competition; Indian competition, based on low wages and hence low overall costs, was rapidly successful in out-competing the British goods.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of the leadership strategies pursued by the Conservatives in two full terms of opposition, between 1997 and 2005. It analyses the Conservative reaction to landslide defeat in 1997, and considers how the competing interpretations of defeat influenced the strategies pursued by the party leadership. The chapter contends that these were sub-optimal in electoral terms, characterised by uncertainty and inconsistency. This assessment includes an examination of electoral strategy across the period, particularly the two general election campaigns of 2001 and 2005. It also involves tracing the key phases of leadership strategy, notably Hague's initial efforts to ‘reach out’ and subsequent change of direction; Duncan Smith's efforts to forge a new narrative of Conservatism based around public services and ‘championing the vulnerable’; and Howard's pursuit of narrowly-focused managerial appeal, centred around his personal accountability. The chapter concludes that the strategies pursued by Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard were sub-optimal: they underachieved even within the inauspicious context that they faced.

The concluding chapter draws together the findings of the research, briefly reviewing what the book has shown about leadership strategy between 1997 and 2010. The book argues that the ideological legacy of Thatcherism played a central role in framing and shaping these intraparty debates, and that an appreciation of this is vital for explaining the nature and limits of the Conservatives’ renewal under Cameron. As such, the evaluation of ‘Cameronism’ finds that this was essentially a project aimed at detoxifying the Conservative brand rather than undertaking a more far-reaching reappraisal of contemporary conservatism.

This is a short introduction to the key themes of the book: the Dirty Harry films, and their relationship to their location, San Francisco; Clint Eastwood’s career; and conservative politics. It introduces readers to the theoretical approach to film taken by the book before offering a brief précis of each chapter.

Among the political and ideological effects of the Emancipation Proclamation was a more deeply divided white population in the middle border states in 1862 and 1863, pitting white and black civilians and military personnel. More than any other issue, emancipation disrupted the white consensus of the middle border region as residents consolidated all other controversial war initiatives: confiscation, conscription, and the suspension of habeas corpus. The term “Conservative” arose in organized politics as a designation among white residents, whether Republicans or Democrats, for a blend of patriotism, opposition to wartime emancipation, protest against racial equality, and even outright support for slavery. The backlash against emancipation and the 1862 midterm elections ignited a civil war within the middle border’s free states and troops. Republicans used harsh measures to rein in new Democratic majorities, and partisanship emerged in the form of the rise of empowered dissenting groups, or “Copperheads.”