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Political Performance and Leadership Persona: The UK Labour Party Conference of 2012

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2013

Abstract

This article is a contribution to an emerging scholarship on the role of rhetoric, persona and celebrity, and the effects of performance on the political process. We analyse party leader Ed Miliband at the UK Labour Party Conference in Manchester in 2012. Our analysis identifies how, through performance of ‘himself’ and the beginnings of the deployment of an alternative party narrative centred on ‘One Nation’, Ed Miliband began to revise his ‘received persona’. By using a range of rhetorical and other techniques, Miliband began to adapt the Labour narrative to the ‘personalized political’. The article sets out the theoretical framework for the analysis and returns to the implications for the theory of leadership performance in its conclusion.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2013 

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Footnotes

*

John Gaffney is Professor of Politics and Co-director of the Aston Centre for Europe at Aston University. Contact email: j.gaffney@aston.ac.uk.

Amarjit Lahel is a Research Fellow in Politics and International Relations at Aston University. Contact email: a.lahel1@aston.ac.uk.

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