Political scientists have devised a number of ways of measuring and comparing the positions of political parties.
The Comparative Manifesto Project (www.tinyurl.com/ldrxjmw) codes ‘quasi-sentences’ in party manifestos across different policy dimensions, then estimates the party’s left– right position. Using these data, Figure 1 shows that Labour moved to the right in 1997 before moving back towards the left. The Liberal Democrats were to the left of Labour in 1997 but had moved to the right by 2010. The Conservatives have moved towards the centre since 1992, but are further away from it than their rivals. All three parties moved rightwards in 2010.
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