The future of conservatism in the UK and in particular the future of the Conservative Party

This event is part of the Visiting Parliamentary Fellowship Series at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

The Rt. Hon. Lord Robertson (Former NATO Secretary)in conversation with Baroness Arminka Helic and Lord Jonny Oates. Talk followed by Q & A.

Booking is recommended.

Professor Gillian Peele is an Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and an Emeritus Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford where she taught politics from 1975 until 2016. She is the author of a number of works on British, American and comparative government including Governing the UK (2004) and (with David Hine) The Regulation of Standards in British Public Life: Doing the Right Thing? (2016). From 2013 until 2019 she served as an independent member of the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC).

Professor Peele was appointed to the Committee for Standards in Public Life on 1 August 2021 for a five-year term.

Lord Patrick Cormack, DL, FSA, FRHistS is a British politician, historian, journalist and author. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for 40 years, from 1970 to 2010. Cormack is a member of the Conservative Party and is seen as a one-nation conservative. He was a Heathite and was a frequent rebel under Margaret Thatcher

Before entering Parliament, Cormack was a teacher. He was elected for Cannock at the 1970 general election. Following boundary changes, he was elected for South West Staffordshire in 1974, renamed South Staffordshire in 1983. He was elected chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee in 2005. Since standing down from the House of Commons in 2010, he has served as an active life peer in the House of Lords.

Sir Patrick is a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Hull. He was a Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford in 1994/5, and a Senior Academic Member from 1995-2003. He has lectured and spoken extensively in this country and the USA. A frequent broadcaster, he was a team captain on BBC Radio 4’s Parliamentary Questions for eight years. He edited the House Magazine for 23 years, becoming Life President and Chairman of the Editorial Board. He has written countless articles and six books, including one on the Palace of Westminster, others on English cathedrals and British castles, and on the life of William Wilberforce.

Tim Bale is Professor of Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London. Following a few years spent working in finance for the NHS (the UK’s National Health Service), he returned to academia to do a PhD at the Department of Politics at Sheffield University. After Sheffield, he taught politics at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and then at Sussex University back in the UK until 2012. In 2008 he won the Political Studies Association’s Bernard Crick Prize for Outstanding Teaching.

In 2011 he received the W.J.M. Mackenzie prize for his book The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Cameron. Other books he has written or co-written in recent years include The Conservatives since 1945: the Drivers of Party Change, Five Year Mission: The Labour Party under Ed Miliband, and Footsoldiers: Political Party Membership in the 21st Century, the research for which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). He helped write three books published in 2021: The Modern British Party System; The British General Election of 2019, and Riding the Populist Wave: Europe’s Mainstream Right in Crisis and is currently finishing a book The Conservative Party after Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation (Polity).