Presentation

"Hello, In May 2015 the Conservative Government won a majority government by 12 seats. This has resulted in another 5 years of Tory agenda. Cuts to the working class, tax breaks for richest. I intend to examine how the Tory’s came into power again and what can be expected in the future.

Meanwhile, for a long time, there hasn’t been a very strong opposition to the Conservative government - this in largely due to the failure of the Labour Party, who for some months didn’t have a leader until Jeremy Corbyn was elected in mid-September. Jeremy Corbyn’s win came about due to people being disenfranchised with the usual ‘Tory Lite’ politics that the labour Party has become known for, so instead voted for someone with more leftwing politics than any others on offer.

Now you may be wondering what Left and Right Wing politics are - the Left is generally associated with the working class and believe in an equal voice and shared gain whilst the right is usually tied to the attitude of power for the minority and less freedom etc. How left or right a party can be judged with a relatively new measure called the Overton Window. This a framing of what can be described as acceptable within politics - anything outside of the frame is considered to be somewhat extreme. What the Tory government are doing is moving the this frame more to the right, so anything outside of this to the left used to be acceptable is now being portrayed as extreme.

To do this the Conservative Government are using their greatest tool the media. Over the years the media has been used to manipulate people’s beliefs and expectations (see my Level 5 essay ‘To What Extent Has the Role of Political Cartoons Changed Over the Years?’ as an example). The media, a largely Tory supporting force, now as a the propaganda machine for the Conservative Government. Since being elected as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn has been scrutinised for his extremist left wing views, which, even 10 years ago would probably have been considered somewhat acceptable. Meanwhile the media, for the large part, glosses over most of the Tory’s attacks on the poor, instead commenting on the random insignificant acts that Corbyn does.

My belief is that more can be done to combat the bias attention the media is portraying of the left (specifically Corbyn) so whilst I write my dissertation about how the Conservative Government have changed the game of politics to suit them, I will additionally be responding to topical news articles about the Conservative Government. For example there was recently the Piggate scandal, in which Lord Ashcroft, a disgruntled ex-Tory donor, accused David Cameron of performing a sexual act with a dead pigs head. I responded to this by creating a strip to reflect my opinion. As a practical piece my goal is to create a series of comic strips satirising the Tory’s and picking up on their flaws that the media so often ignores. These strips could potentially be collected together to form a book of some sort.

However, there is more that I feel I need to do in terms of research to help inform both my physical work and theory. I need a greater understanding of the Conservative Government’s history. This will need to be done as an act to inform readers of my dissertation who don’t know much about the Conservative government, being that they are the subject of my work. Additionally I need to look more at who is currently being worst hit by this governments cuts - Doctors, Teachers, Trade Unionists etc. These are all people that oppose the Tory Government and I feel would make interesting “chapters” within my dissertation. Finally I would like to research those who support the Tory Government but have been alienated by them, such as Lord Ashcroft for example. Other people are the middle class who were lured in the Tory policies in the last election, but are now too feeling the sting of the Conservative rhetoric to a degree.

I feel that there is more to be researched beyond this but for the time being don’t want to go too far into possibilities as I don’t want to get lost within research that would potentially convolute my dissertation, however any suggestions would be more than welcome."