The Parties and Parliament

Abstract

In recent years two of the long-immobile building blocks of British politics, the party system and Parliament, have begun to shift. From 1945 to the early 1970s, Britain had a stable two-party system of government and electoral competition. Two large parties, Labour and Conservative, took the reins of office in turn, depending on which of them was the more popular. No other party mattered. All the major interests sympathised with one or other party and all accepted the authority of the party that had won the most recent election. The mechanism that translated victory at the polls into government power was Parliament. The party that won the majority of seats in the House of Commons formed the government. Its MPs could be depended on to do as the party bade. The party leaders, therefore, had unchallenged authority.