Factions in practice
This is a follow-up to my previous story on Liberal Democrats and factions, as there were some comments and questions about it that got me thinking and it felt worthwhile to expand on them in a linked post rather than letting them disappear into the Twitter ether.
One of the main objections and challenges people had to the previous post is that they’ve seen how bad factionalism has been in the Labour Party, and so because of that they don’t want to see any factions in the Liberal Democrats. I do understand where that argument is coming from, but I think it’s taking the wrong lesson from the situation.
Let’s continue the analogy from my previous post, where we look at factions as playing a similar role in the internal politics of a party as the parties themselves play in the politics of a country. To say that the problem with Labour is entirely down to its factions is like saying the problem with British politics is entirely because of political parties. While there may be some problems with the parties, the bigger problems are with the system they operate in, and the same applies to factions at the lower level — a lot…
