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The Disunited Kingdom
Aug. 6th, 2018 08:20 pmBook Review: The End of British Party Politics?, by Roger Awan-Scully
I picked this up in the most recent work book sale; it seemed like physical click-bait. The author's thesis is derived from the 2015 and 2017 General Election results, in which different parties came top in each of the four nations of the UK. But first, there's some history: the formalisation of Conservative and Liberal parties in the nineteenth century, with the latter being increasingly replaced by Labour since World War I. In the post-World War II world, through to the 1960s, the UK had essentially a two-party system (with the caveat that political parties have always been a thing apart in Northern Ireland, and with the slowly growing SNP eventually emerging in Scotland). The slow Liberal recovery (which can substantially be attributed to Jeremy Thorpe) and the rise of the SNP and Plaid Cymru reached a peak in the first decade of the new millennium; since then, of course, the Lib Dems have crashed, the SNP have triumphed in Scotland, and Plaid have mostly held their own.
Without getting into too much detail, there is still useful information in the book: for example, the data show that class doesn't determine party allegiance (which makes you wonder what on earth Labour are up to), but education level is a significant indicator (graduates being disproportionately left leaning). Devolution and indifferent leadership in the two main UK parties has led to party leaders in Scotland and Wales experimenting with putting clear blue/red water between their own national party and the UK umbrella (the Welsh Tories are an exception, notes the author, and have not achieved the success of their Scottish counterparts). The DUP have a vision of the UK that isn't shared by anyone else in numbers; and England, with slightly more than 80% of MPs, will effectively choose which party should form a government. The increasing differentiation between the nations manifests itself in a variety of "dog-whistle" ways, and the collapse of the political centre probably has the same root cause. The author isn't in the business of discussing much whether any of this is a good thing, or what should be done about it, but instead concludes by revisiting history, highlighting that the United Kingdom is a relatively recent and possibly transient political phenomenon.
I picked this up in the most recent work book sale; it seemed like physical click-bait. The author's thesis is derived from the 2015 and 2017 General Election results, in which different parties came top in each of the four nations of the UK. But first, there's some history: the formalisation of Conservative and Liberal parties in the nineteenth century, with the latter being increasingly replaced by Labour since World War I. In the post-World War II world, through to the 1960s, the UK had essentially a two-party system (with the caveat that political parties have always been a thing apart in Northern Ireland, and with the slowly growing SNP eventually emerging in Scotland). The slow Liberal recovery (which can substantially be attributed to Jeremy Thorpe) and the rise of the SNP and Plaid Cymru reached a peak in the first decade of the new millennium; since then, of course, the Lib Dems have crashed, the SNP have triumphed in Scotland, and Plaid have mostly held their own.
Without getting into too much detail, there is still useful information in the book: for example, the data show that class doesn't determine party allegiance (which makes you wonder what on earth Labour are up to), but education level is a significant indicator (graduates being disproportionately left leaning). Devolution and indifferent leadership in the two main UK parties has led to party leaders in Scotland and Wales experimenting with putting clear blue/red water between their own national party and the UK umbrella (the Welsh Tories are an exception, notes the author, and have not achieved the success of their Scottish counterparts). The DUP have a vision of the UK that isn't shared by anyone else in numbers; and England, with slightly more than 80% of MPs, will effectively choose which party should form a government. The increasing differentiation between the nations manifests itself in a variety of "dog-whistle" ways, and the collapse of the political centre probably has the same root cause. The author isn't in the business of discussing much whether any of this is a good thing, or what should be done about it, but instead concludes by revisiting history, highlighting that the United Kingdom is a relatively recent and possibly transient political phenomenon.