past four elections. The Labour victory in 1997 suggests that the two party model may
be more appropriate after all but to complicate matters the Liberal Democrats got 16.8%
of the National votes and 46 seats – the highest number of Liberal MPs since 1929 during
Lloyd George’s Indian summer. This hardly suggests they should be written off as minor
and insignificant as in McKenzie’s thesis. Indeed, had it been proportional today, they
would have got about a 100 of 500 pages. (Though content should be taken into account
it highlights the inaccuracies today).
At the time McKenzie was writing (1955) it seemed that McKenzie had correctly
categorised the period - 1945 to 1979 – a period of 34 years both Labour and
Conservatives held office for exactly the same amount of time. Though as Stephen Ingle
points out, ‘the pattern of party politics, moreover, has changed just as dramatically with
long spells of dominance by one party and with parties constantly breaking up and
regrouping. And even in the period 1945 to 1979, seemingly two party rule is open to
reinterpretation – as between 1951 and 1964 Labour lost three elections in a row. So to
those who had lived through 13 years of Conservative rule it wouldn’t much look like a
two party system. Since the 1970s, the Liberals have won a considerable number of
seats. Between 1970 and 1997 the two main parties share of the vote declined
markedly. The Alliance won almost a quarter of the National vote – 25.4% in 1983.
Since 1974 the plurality-rule voting system has always given around one fifth of the seats
to parties not justified to hold them in terms of their share of the National vote. Labour
and the Conservative can still jointly run an unreformed House of Commons as a kind of
two-party majority government on their own. For example, in the 1997 General Election,
Labour won about 60% of the seats on about 40% of the National vote – clearly the
present system, isn’t representative as it leads to these ‘elected dictatorships’ (Lord
Hoarsham).
In the United States the Democrats and Republicans are solely dominant (although not
in presidential elections). So, of course, the plurality system converts citizens votes into
seats as accurately as the proportional representation systems in Western Europe.
Scotland and Wales have a permanent four party system which is radically different from
the three party politics of England. For example, in 1999 elections to the Scottish
Parliament, the Conservatives got 18 seats, Labour 56 seats, Liberal Democrats 17
seats and the Scottish National Party got 35 seats. In all three of the party systems of
Mainland Britain, votes have also moved a long way from the ‘classic’ picture drawn by
political scientists in the 1960s and 1970s of people with customary, ‘natural’ or
unquestioning party loyalties (Butler and Stokes 1970).
In no currently foreseeable future will we see a return to Lab-Conservative conflicts
defining the main dimension of party competition in Scotland and Wales. Even in
London, the heart of England, the weakening grip of two party conflicts was evident at an
institutional level in the run-up to the GLA elections 2000, when the prospect of
Livingstone running as an independent candidate for mayor, influenced the Labour
nomination process. And in the 1999 elections for the European parliament, the success
of fourth and fifth parties i.e. the Greens and British Independent Party in winning multiple
seats in English regions notched up another small milestone in the arrival of multiparty
politics.
It is too hard to describe Britain as a whole - Dearlove & Saunders – Britain can be
characterised as a two party system in the commons. As a multiparty system in the
country and as a dominant party system in the corridors of power. Because the electoral
system and the multiparty politics have together enabled the Conservatives to
monopolise the control of the state for more than a decade in a way that has mocked the
close competition of the country at large.
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