13,320 ‘Are British political Parties converging at the “Centre Ground”?’ Madelaine Lee Abstract Keywords: Ideology, policy, valence, median voter Through a focus on electoral competition between the Conservative and Labour parties at general elections from 1997-2010, this article seeks to investigate the idea, becoming increasingly prevalent in British politics, that British political parties are moving towards a point of convergence at the centre ground. The theoretical basis to party convergence is first established through an analysis of Downs’s ‘median voter theorem’, which is also contrasted with Giddens’s ‘third way’. Target audience, policy, valence and ideology are then assessed as signifiers of party positioning at each election. The article concludes that ideology continues to play a significant role in party position, and that between the period of 1997- 2010, the two major British political parties remained distinct within a smaller and less varied political space situated at the centre-ground of the left-right political spectrum. Page 1 of 39