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This chapter concentrates on the reform opportunities that emerge when a government exploits its parliamentary majority. For example the privatizations and pension reforms carried out in the UK by the Thatcher government. When backed by a large parliamentary majority, the policy-makers' only constraint is the need to win a future election, which provides freedom of action in most cases. Yet, this strategy is not always valuable. The mix of successes and failures suggests that other institutional elements are crucial, such as the (lack of) internal cohesion in coalition governments or the existence of strong opposition. A strong parliamentary majority can thus be insufficient to generate sufficient coalition building.

This chapter covers the remainder of the Thatcher government’s first term of office, from 1981 until the June 1983 election. As the Conservative right tightened its grip on the government, so the National and Local Government Officers Association (NALGO) strengthened both its policies and its structures. The political economy of Thatcherism is described. The government’s main attack on public services fell onto local government, with reductions in local accountability, finances, and relative pay. The NALGO policy and practice, and the collective bargaining and local disputes, are reported as well.

This chapter discusses Prentice‘s experience of gaining acceptance within his new party, including the difficulties he faced in securing a parliamentary candidature for a safe Conservative seat in the immediate aftermath of his defection. It also considers the role he played, alongside other converts, in appealing to disaffected Labour supporters to vote Conservative in the watershed general election of 1979, and his subsequent ministerial experience at Social Security during the first Thatcher Government. His satisfaction at the defeats suffered by the Labour Left in the 1980s were tempered by the continuation of the excessively adversarial style of British politics. However, despite his retirement from the House of Commons in 1987, he continued to campaign in favour of overseas development and to argue for the fundamental principles of liberal democratic politics right up until his death in 2001.

This chapter provides a brief historical introduction which emphasises the importance of the temporal to the description and evaluation of regeneration initiatives. Based on the assumption that an appreciation of contemporary urban issues requires an understanding of the historical context, this chapter highlights change and continuity in urban regeneration in east Manchester and the wider UK. An overview of the distinctive history of the various neighbourhoods of east Manchester is provided and an analysis of how current regeneration initiatives both draw on and differ from earlier initiatives under the Thatcher Governments such as City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget.

This chapter suggests that health policy under ‘New Labour’ is not entirely what it seems, exploring a number of contradictions in health policy and the role of ‘spin’ in government at the same time. It asks how it is that, despite Labour's health policy being more radical than even the previous Conservative Thatcher government, there is relatively little debate around the direction of policy, even despite the British people's emotional attachment to the NHS. It suggests that Labour's presentation of their health policy has been extremely important in understanding these tensions because they have managed to present their reforms as modernisation rather than privatisation, they have been able to claim significant increases in health expenditure, which again act as a distraction from their increased use of non-public providers of healthcare, and finally, that ministers have claimed to have achieved far greater say in the NHS despite the absence of virtually any kind of accountability checks in Labour's reforms.