The British party paradox
Britain is not short of crises right now. The post-referendum period has been filled with a series of political, constitutional and economic crises, feeding off each other, multiplying and becoming more complicated as ever possible solution only seems to lead to further crisis.
Somewhere within this Gordian morass of problems, there’s a major problem with our political parties. In fact, there are two problems with them, and those two problems appear to contradict each other, giving us a paradox that goes right to the heart of why our politics is so terrible right now.
The problems are these: first, British political parties are too strong. Second, British political parties are too weak. At the points where the our current political situation needs them most to be weak, they’re too strong, and at the points where they need to be strong, they’re too weak.
Let’s start with where they’re weak. One of the key roles of political parties is to provide a link between the people and the political system (Parliament and Government), providing a way to aggregate people’s opinions into various coherent viewpoints so they can be expressed within the system. In an ideal view of party democracy, the parties lay out their plans and manifestos, and the voters carefully consider which of them lies closest to their views before casting their vote to enable that party…
