With tomorrow, 27th January, marking one hundred days until the 2015 UK general election, polling figures are showing us something interesting. The main two parties are weakening, falling as low as 30% each, and the third parties, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and UKIP, are all pushing 10% (Clark, 2015).
It is a sign of something seen in many other countries: the established political mainstream is fracturing (Nardelli, 2015). There is an upside: choice becomes a realistic possibility. People will, however, have to prepare themselves for what it will mean to be represented by many diverse parties. The parties they vote for will have to co-operate with other groups to form governments. Coalitions will be necessary.
The Liberal Democrats' choice to go into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010 has been seen by many as a controversial betrayal (Harris, 2011), but multi-party politics means multi-party governments. Those alliances often have to stretch
across odd-parts of the political spectrum, working with what they find, and not everyone will get all of the
things that they voted for, even if their choice makes it into government.
If we are to see greater choice between parties, all with realistic chances of governing, then people will have to get used to the idea of coalitions and the compromises that come with them. The alternative is to keep the partisan two-party system that divests all of the power upon one vision for the country, a method that can often exclude far more than half of the electorate.
The electoral battle ahead between the mainstream parties and the anti-establishment movements is already provoking fears about the impact it will have - fears that it will simply inflame the antagonism and polarisation that feeds nationalists and extremists (Behr, 2015). Fears that pluralism will bring instability, and that it will be exploited by one of the opposing factions, progressive or conservative, to crush their divided opponents.
The response of commentators has tended towards the same old framework (Jones, 2015), justifying the same old tactics: the mainstream parties (in particular Labour) need to head off and crush the small parties (in particular the Greens), and all of it to protect the position of the establishment party and its vague vision, in opposition to that of its old enemy.
But there has to be a better answer. Instead of crushing other groups on the Left, Labour could be co-operating on common issues, forming electoral alliances and creating a space on the Left for healthy debate. The alternative for the Left is more of the same old party system that has driven whole generations away from the political process.
"Political parties maintain their existence because they represent major cleavages which are persistent and long-lasting. These cleavages may be socio-economic, religious, ethnic or political. Political parties are, as it were, an institutional expression of a country's historical continuity, a mirror-image of the conflicts which past generations have found important...
...However, these traditional stances no longer coincide either with social reality, or with the natural division of opinion on political issues. The two major parties, therefore, appear less as cohesive agencies of political representation than as uneasy and incompatible coalitions held together as much by the needs of electoral survival as by common political beliefs." (Bogdanor, 1983)
When the two-party dynamic breaks down, the major parties survive by being big tents for all viewpoints, though none in particular, and dominate their traditional places on the political spectrum mostly through historical allegiance and fear-mongering about the dangers of vote-splitting. Their major concern becomes technocratic government, aiming to govern technically well according to whatever is the dominant economic system of the day, to justify their own suitability to govern. They become a refracting lens, directing and redirecting public political opinion rather than representing it (Bogdanor, 1983).
The Labour Party, as one of those mainstream, big-tent, technocratic parties, are finding themselves beset upon either side by these new political factions - UKIP, representing an older and more nationalistic crowd on the Far-Right, and the Greens, representing those younger and more liberal upon the Left (Helm, 2015; Ford, 2015).
These two parties, UKIP and Green, have two things in common: they represent a general discontent with the old system, and a fracturing of the old dualistic system into a number of separate factions of varied agendas. The old system is losing its grip. Top down control of policy and priorities is no longer in the hands of a single-faction government.
This is a function of a more open and representative democracy. It means many more viewpoints being brought into political debate, with new third parties emerging to drive change on new issues. The victory of the radical left-wing party Syriza in the Greek elections is a testament to what can be achieved in a multi-party system. However, the need of that party to form a coalition with a small right-wing anti-EU party in order to govern is a strong reminder of the compromises that follow.
The collapse of the established status-quo, and the fracturing of the system into a more open form, is far from complete. But more parties, with realistic chances of governing, and the possibility of electoral reform (Jones, 2015), mean that a more representative politics isn't far away. In that new form, the political Left - particularly the Labour Party - will have to adapt and rid itself of its own top down, patronising tendencies inherited from the present system.
The Left will need to find a way to co-operate, and to facilitate the presence of diverse views and fragmented factions. Those diverse groups, divisions and debates have always been a part of how the Left works, and that's fine. Its natural diversity is a positive, not a weakness. Openness to debate and the divisions that come with it are the lifeblood of progress.
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References:
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+ Tom Clark's 'Labour lead falls as Greens hit 20-year high in Guardian/ICM poll'; in The Guardian; 20 January 2015.
+ Alberto Nardelli's '2015 election: five key themes'; in The Guardian; 23 January 2015.
+ Evan Harris' 'The myth of Lib Dem 'betrayal''; in The Guardian; 6 May 2011.
+ Rafael Behr's 'The general election could unleash a new wave of contempt for politics'; in The Guardian; 21 January 2015.
+ Owen Jones' 'How Labour should respond to the ‘Green surge’'; in The Guardian; 22 January 2015.
+ Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-party politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press, 1983. [Buy Now
]+ Toby Helm's 'Green surge could hit Labour in 22 election battlegrounds, new study finds'; in The Guardian; 24 January 2015.
+ Robert Ford's 'How Green party surge threatens Labour’s election hopes'; in The Guardian; 24 January 2015.
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