ABSTRACT
INTEREST IN the north-south divide is rather high in Britain. Many political scientists and sociologists have grappled with the question of what is happening to British parties and how the geographic changes described in Chapter Two affect British politics. Some say Britain is undergoing a major transformation of its political system and that this has made the electoral system less responsive to changes in public opinion.1 They maintain that, despite the current public repudiation of the Conservative Party, the end result of the divide will be Conservative rule for years to come. Others say that nothing at all is happening that cannot be explained through shortterm factors, such as leader popularity, and that these effects are just as likely to be reversed tomorrow as to continue.2 Still others trace the emergence of the divide to concrete changes in social structure and regional economic performance or to perceptions about that performance.3 A fourth group sees the origins of the divide in rising nationalism in the Celtic periphery of the country.4 This chapter examines these competing explanations for geographic polarisation with a view to showing that the answers offered so far are radically incomplete.
