Accounts of British voting behaviour in the 1980s stressed the development of growing spatial divides within the country, especially a north-south divide which reflected economic success in the increasingly Conservative-dominated south and depression in the Labour-supporting north. A new geography of recession was emerging in the early 1990s, however, and the first general election since (in April 1992) suggests that the period of divergence has ended, to be replaced by convergence in the electoral geography of Britain though at spatially varying rates and at a pace insufficient to close the political divides entirely and lead to the government's demise.
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