Political Parties in the UK

Alistair Clark

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781350312067
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The second edition of this popular textbook provides a systematic and comprehensive introduction to UK party politics, combining chapters on each of the main parties (Conservative, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party) with an assessment of post-devolution Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Clark analyses the extraordinary recent developments in UK politics, including Brexit, the 2015 and 2016 Labour leadership contests, and the surprise 2017 general election, exploring how these events have impacted the political parties, the people of the UK and the UK's position in the world. The book also covers the rise of minority parties such as UKIP, the influence of the media and party campaigning, organisation and funding. Written in an accessible style, this new edition is an essential companion for students taking modules on British Political Parties, Party Politics or British Politics more generally, as well as functioning as a useful background text for modules in Comparative Political Parties. It is an ideal introduction for all readers new to the topic. New to this Edition:
- A new chapter on the Scottish National Party takes account of their rise, their role as a governing party in Scotland, and becoming the third largest party at Westminster.
- Up-to-date coverage of all the latest developments affecting UK political parties including the Scottish referendum, the 2015 and 2017 general elections, the 2016 devolved elections and Brexit.
- Extended coverage of the rise and fall of UKIP.

1INTRODUCTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UK PARTY SYSTEM

The UK has experienced a number of remarkable electoral events in recent years. Some of these have had profound constitutional consequences. They have all suggested a UK party system in flux, revealing a political class and political parties in disarray, struggling to interpret the result of unclear public opinion. They have undermined leaders, and left parties often looking unable to adapt to events. They have challenged the UK’s political parties in a multitude of ways that would have been unexpected only a decade before. They ultimately left Britain’s place in the world in some doubt on a number of occasions.

First, on the morning of Wednesday 12 May 2010, Conservative Party leader David Cameron stood with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg on the steps of Number 10 Downing Street. After an election campaign conducted against the backdrop of the most serious economic crisis for decades, the Conservatives returned to power for the first time in 13 years. While the Conservatives’ electoral recovery from their 2005 position had been impressive, the party had not done well enough against an unpopular Labour administration to achieve a majority in Parliament and form a single-party government. Claiming that an unstable minority government might have led to a further economic crisis, the ­Conservatives and Liberal Democrats negotiated a coalition agreement after both sides had made a number of concessions. Later that afternoon, the two leaders gave a press conference in the garden of Downing Street, commented on widely for the congeniality with which it was conducted. While the relationship between the two parties later soured, this had been a stark contrast to the traditionally competitive and oppositional debate of British party politics, epitomised in the public mind by, for instance, weekly jousting at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Second, just over four years later, the UK came within a whisker of breaking up in the Scottish independence referendum of 18 ­September 2014. This referendum had been granted by Cameron after the ­Scottish National Party (SNP) had won a majority in the 2011 Scottish Parliament election and claimed a mandate for an independence poll. The result saw 55 per cent of Scots vote to remain in the UK. Yet, the effect of the campaign had been to increase the proportion of those Scots prepared to leave the UK from around a third in most pre-referendum polls to 45 per cent willing to become an independent country. The UK political parties appeared panicked towards the end of the campaign after a poll put the pro-independence camp marginally ahead. The result had profound consequences for Scottish and UK politics. The SNP a year later became the third-largest party at Westminster on the back of a remarkable surge of Scottish public opinion. Labour’s consequent decline in Scotland had consequences across Great Britain, restricting its ability to win a majority. Considerable further powers were eventually given to the Scottish Parliament.

Third, on Friday 8 May 2015, the UK awoke to the surprise news that the Conservative Party had been returned to office with a small overall majority in the House of Commons. This was a considerable triumph for Conservative Party leader David Cameron, after a seemingly tumultuous period of political and economic developments. The Conservative-led coalition government had been much criticised, not least for an economic strategy that sought to make large cuts to public spending, perceived as hitting the most vulnerable and benefiting the well-off. The Liberal Democrats endured much unpopularity after some major policy U-turns. Opinion polls in the run-up to the 2015 general election had consistently suggested that another hung parliament was the likely result. A further round of coalition or minority government looked all but inevitable. A Conservative majority government was therefore quite a surprise.

Shockwaves from 2015 went further. Another major development, predicted by few, saw the veteran left-winger and serial rebel, Jeremy Corbyn, elected as Labour Party leader in September 2015, in a move that had profound consequences for the party. Corbyn had struggled even to be nominated as a candidate, and was seen as a rank outsider. Yet, due to a change in how the party elected its leader, a remarkable movement got behind him, electing him by the largest winning margin at that point in the party’s history. Rarely had British party politics seemed so unpredictable.

The unpredictability only increased when Cameron called a referendum on the UK remaining a member of the European Union (EU) to be held in June 2016. This fulfilled a promise made in a speech in 2013 to hold such an in-out EU referendum by the end of 2017. This promise was meant to satisfy demands from many of the Conservative Party’s highly Eurosceptic MPs for such a vote. The assumption was that the status quo would prevail, Britain would vote to remain in the EU and the party’s Eurosceptics would be silenced, making the party more manageable with its small majority. This gamble failed spectacularly, providing a major shock to the political system. The UK voted to leave the EU by 52 per cent, against 48 per cent who voted to remain. Cameron effectively resigned the next day, triggering a Conservative leadership contest. A constitutional crisis also developed because Scotland and Northern ­Ireland had both voted to remain in the EU, while England and Wales voted to leave. Consequently, the threat of a second Scottish independence referendum returned. Theresa May succeeded David Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister after a bizarre leadership contest which saw the frontrunners and other competitors fall, leaving May acceding to the leadership uncontested and unelected. The complications of disentangling the UK from decades of EU law only gradually became apparent. Conservative ministers looked ill-prepared for the magnitude of the task before them. The result of the referendum had an impact on other parties too, triggering a major revolt by Labour MPs and another leadership contest in the Labour Party, and considerable infighting and more than one leadership contest in the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Convinced that the Conservative Party would romp home with an increased majority against a supposedly weak Labour leader and opposition, Theresa May called a wholly unnecessary general election in June 2017. This will be remembered as one of the great misjudgements of British electoral history, a seminal moment in the study of campaigning and also Britain’s preparations for leaving the EU. The claim was that an increased majority would give the UK greater negotiating power in its discussions with the EU. May promised a ‘strong and stable’ government, against the ‘coalition of chaos’ that would ensue were Labour under Corbyn returned as the largest party. The result was that May and the Conservative Party lost their majority, ending up dependent on the 10 MPs of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in a formal ‘confidence and supply’ relationship, which fell well short of a coalition. May looked a weak Prime Minister after a dismal and repetitive campaign which showed her limitations as party leader. Corbyn’s Labour Party defied predictions by performing far better than most expected, although it still fell well short of forming a government. The SNP, while remaining the third-largest party, also lost 21 seats, hit by a negative reaction to attempts to link a second Scottish independence referendum to the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. 2017, then, was an election with no real winners. May’s minority government appeared anything but ‘strong and stable’, and was divided on various issues around Brexit and the EU.

These changes caught many by surprise. Nevertheless, the British party system had been gradually changing in nature for several decades. These changes were not necessarily immediately obvious to casual onlookers, having been downplayed not only by media coverage but also largely suppressed by the first-past-the-post electoral system used for elections to Westminster.

In his seminal volume British Political Parties, McKenzie (1963: p.3) argued that ‘party is now the overwhelmingly dominant factor in British politics’. Despite the volatility of the events described above, the centrality of parties to political life remains, although whether they are ‘overwhelmingly dominant’ is at least now open to question given that they command fluctuating loyalties among electors and struggle to appear in control of events. To assess whether or not McKenzie’s claim remains the case requires an up-to-date understanding of the role played by parties across the UK. Yet, as Heffernan (2009: p.457) observes, the literature comparing political parties in the UK is much thinner than that which focuses on just one party at a time. The aftermath of the significant and novel period from 2010, the 2016 EU referendum and 2017 general election is therefore an opportune time to be examining developments in UK party politics, both within individual parties and comparatively across parties. There are a number of important questions to answer to understand how British party competition arrived at this juncture. What have the challenges that parties have faced in the UK been, and how have they responded and adapted to meet these challenges? Continually the topic of political dissatisfaction among voters, to what extent can we say that political parties are fulfilling their democratic functions in the UK? As one academic asked ‘are British political parties in decline?’ (Webb, 1995). Alternatively, to what extent do political parties in the UK remain ‘fit for purpose’?

This book is dedicated to these questions, each of which is discussed in the chapters to come. To provide context for the discussions to follow, this chapter introduces debates about the party system and party competition in the UK. The first section provides an understanding of party systems and the various criteria by which they might be understood. It introduces the idea of political ‘cleavages’, and outlines the cleavages around which party systems are said to have developed and become ‘frozen’. It then builds upon this to briefly introduce a number of ways of classifying party systems, and understanding and categorising the nature of party system change. The second section begins to apply these ideas to the main features of the British party system from 1945 to the early 1970s. Discussion revolves around the dominant cleavages structuring party competition, primarily class, but also stable partisan loyalties, and the post-war British party system is placed firmly in the stable, ‘two-party’ category. The third section begins to assess the nature of change in the British party system from the early 1970s onwards. Discussion relates to the increasing importance of different cleavages, for instance the centre–periphery and sectoral cleavages, and the increasingly ­dealigned British electorate and its impact upon party competition. The consequences of this for the classification of the British party system are then discussed.

Understanding Party Systems

The idea of a party system relates to more than the sum of the number of parties evident in a country. While some countries – notably authoritarian regimes – can be run by one party, the notion of a one-party system is at least problematic since there is no meaningful democratic competition between different party options. In short then, the idea of a party system relates to the patterns of conflict, competition and co-operation between different parties (Sartori, 2005 [1976]).

A historical distinction is often made between parties that formed through co-operation of representatives within Parliament, and those parties that initially formed by organising in society to challenge established interests, before being elected to Parliament. The roots of party systems are therefore often traced back to the development of social and political conflicts within societies. The classic statement of this is by Lipset and Rokkan (1967), who identify four major cleavages, or sources of political conflict, in the development of West European party systems. Simplifying their argument considerably, the initial conflicts involved in consolidating the nation-state as a political entity revolved around church–state and centre–periphery issues. Somewhat later, the second major juncture related to the Industrial Revolution. Economic interests were central to political interests and the two key cleavages to emerge were the urban–rural (sometimes called land–industry) cleavage and the owner–worker class cleavage. In different countries, different parties formed around these cleavages. Lipset and Rokkan’s argument was that the widespread extension of the franchise in the early twentieth century essentially ‘froze’ these political conflicts and the party options that had been dominant at that moment in time. Indeed, writing in 1967, they noted how these party options remained dominant more than 40 years after the extension of voting rights in most countries. Party systems, their argument went, were thus more stable than changing.

Early approaches to understanding party systems used numerical criteria to differentiate between different types. Duverger (1964) makes a simple distinction between two-party systems and multi-party systems i.e. systems with more than two parties. Blondel (1968) attempted to include the relative strength of parties, thereby distinguishing between two-, two-and-a-half and multi-party systems. What these accounts lacked, however, was an emphasis on how parties interacted with each other. The seminal classification was provided by Sartori (2005 [1976]). He argues that parties should only be counted as ‘relevant’ if they have either coalition potential, or can hold the business of government and government formation up through what he calls ‘blackmail’ potential. Sartori innovates by introducing the concept of ideological distance, or left–right polarisation, into his classification. He therefore proposes four different types of party system. Predominant party systems are those where one party has governed alone for a considerable period of time, winning at least three if not more elections. Two-party systems are marked by minimal ideological distance on the left–right spectrum, centrist competition and alternation in office. Moderate pluralist systems also operate in a centrist manner, have a low degree of ideological polarisation and involve between three and five parties competing for a position in governing coalitions. Finally, extreme or polarised pluralism is multi-polar, characterised by a high degree of ideological distance and the presence of anti-system parties at both ends of the ideological spectrum. The centrifugal pressures, pulling outwards to the ideological extremes, that such a configuration brings result in radical and bilateral oppositions to the centre-placed governing party or parties.

Five main sources of party system change can be identified. First, institutional or constitutional changes can lead to party system change. These can take various forms, but might most often be seen in the adoption of a new electoral system and electoral laws with different thresholds of representation. Second, changes in social structure can lead to changes in support for parties. Third, value change can impact upon party ­competition. Thus Inglehart (1990a) highlights a move towards values concerned less with material security and more with quality of life issues. Fourth, the combination of social and value change has led to a weakening of political cleavages as electorates become increasingly dealigned. Finally, the strategy adopted by parties themselves can also contribute to party system change (Wolinetz, 1979).

Smith (1989) endeavoured to combine both stability and change by defining this in relation to a party system’s ‘core’. The core consists of the features of that system which appear most resistant to change. This means the party, or parties, that have been in leading positions for a considerable per...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: The Development of the UK Party System
• 2 The Role of Political Parties in the UK
• 3 The Conservative Party
• 4 The Labour Party
• 5 The Liberal Democrats
• 6 The Scottish National Party
• 7 Beyond the Mainstream
• 8 The UK’s ‘Multi-Level’ Party Systems
• 9 Parties and the Media
• 10 Developments in Party Organisation and Funding
• 11 Party Campaigns and Elections
• 12 Conclusion: Political Parties in the UK
• References
• Index