Even when I changed, it was to preserve.
Lord David Cecil, 1912
I don’t look back at anything. I look forwards.
Nigel Farage, 2024
1The British party system is one of the oldest in the world, but the Conservatives and Liberals have survived for centuries only by changing their appeals as politics and society have changed. The same is true of the Labour Party, which has replaced conventional socialist policies with Herbert Morrison’s definition of socialism as “what the Labour government does.” Whether the system that has survived is a two-party system depends on which part of the system is referred to and when.
2Since 1945 Downing Street has alternated between two parties, Labour and Conservative, with temporary deviations of minority and coalition governments in a dynamic equilibrium. However, the number of “third” parties nominating candidates has grown from a mean of 2.2 parties in 1951 to 6.9 in 2024. The wider choice of parties on the ballot has met with a positive response by the electorate. In a big majority of constituencies, five parties – Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, Reform and Greens – now win sufficient votes to save their deposits; in Scotland and Wales six parties do so. Thus, the extent to which the two governing parties can claim a monopoly of votes has fallen from 96.8 per cent in 1951 to 57.4 per cent in the 2024 election.
3The pages that follow empirically chart the three stages in the dynamics of the British party system three-quarters of a century. From 1951 to 1970 there was a stable two-party system in fact as well as in theory. The Conservative and Labour parties were the only parties controlling government and averaged nine-tenths of the vote and almost all the seats in the House of Commons. The “Who governs?” elections of 1974 created dynamic change. The Liberals nominated candidates nationwide, and their vote more than doubled, while both Labour and the Conservatives saw their share of the vote go down. The two governing parties followed the Cecil strategy of accepting change. They recognised the Liberals as a junior participant in a three-party system, while preserving their shared monopoly of government. The system’s resilience was demonstrated in the 2019 election, when the Conservatives under Boris Johnson won with virtually the same share of vote as Margaret Thatcher had gained four decades earlier and the Liberal Democrats again took one-eighth of the vote as they had done in 1979.
4The 2024 general election disrupted the three-party model. The two parties competing for government nationally are the two leading parties competing for seats in less than half of the UK’s 650 constituencies. The Labour Party maximised disproportional representation, winning a massive parliamentary majority with only one-third of the popular vote and the Conservatives won the lowest share of the vote in their history. The parties competing at the constituency level offered voters a choice along multiple dimensions, nationalist, environmentalist and populist, as well as a left/right choice of social and economic policies.
5A single extraordinary election can disrupt the existing system but leaves open whether the election due to follow in 2029 will restore a three-party system that Lord David Cecil defended or confirm the introduction of a multi-dimensional party system that Nigel Farage looks forward to. The Conservative Party will need to show considerable resilience to regain millions of votes from the Reform Party and hundreds of seats from Labour. A relatively small slump in the Labour government’s popular vote would result in a big loss of seats and the creation of some form of minority or coalition government. These alternative scenarios are discussed in the essay’s conclusion.
- 1 Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (London, M (...)
6In a two-party system, the same pair of parties win the great majority of votes and seats in Parliament. The system is democratic as long as control of government rotates between the two competing parties from time to time. It is stable because the change in each party’s share of the vote is limited.1
- 2 William L. Miller, Electoral Dynamics in Britain since 1918 (London, Macmillan, 1977).
7The two-party system of Whigs and Tories emerged in nineteenth-century Britain well before the introduction of the secret ballot and democratic franchise. It was stable for decades and then experienced a period of dynamic equilibrium, before reverting back to two-party competition with the pair of parties altered. The Liberals replaced the Whigs in the 1850s, and in the 1880s Irish Nationalists created a three-party system, which ended with Irish Home Rule. The Labour Party became a governing party in the 1920s after the Liberals split, and a Conservative-controlled National Coalition was formed in the 1931 economic crisis.2 A three-party coalition government was formed to conduct the Second World War but when peace returned the Conservatives, Labour and Liberals engaged in three-party competition. The outcome of the 1950 election was a disaster for the Liberals. The party failed to save its deposit in two-thirds of the seats it fought and even though it won 9 per cent of the vote, it gained only nine MPs.
8A textbook two-party system emerged from the 1951 election (Table 1). Together, the Conservative and Labour Parties nominated 89.7 per cent of all candidates and won 96.8 per cent of the popular vote. The two parties together won 616 of 625 seats in the House of Commons and in 94 per cent of these seats did so with an absolute majority of the constituency vote. This was assured because the only candidates in the great majority of seats were nominees of the two governing parties. The Liberals nominated candidates in barely one hundred seats, winning six and losing their deposit in a majority of the seats they fought.
Table 1: The classic two-party system, 1951-1970
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Candidates
|
|
Vote
|
|
MPs
|
|
|
|
N
|
|
%
|
N
|
|
%
|
|
1951
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conservative
|
|
617
|
|
|
48.0
|
321
|
|
51.4
|
|
Labour
|
|
|
617
|
|
|
48.8
|
295
|
|
47.2
|
|
Two-party share
|
89.7%
|
|
|
96.8%
|
616
|
|
98.6%
|
|
Liberal
|
|
|
109
|
|
|
2.6
|
6
|
|
1.0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1955
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conservative
|
|
624
|
|
49.7
|
345
|
|
54.7
|
|
Labour
|
|
620
|
|
46.4
|
277
|
|
44.0
|
|
Two-party share
|
88.3%
|
|
|
96.1%
|
622
|
|
98.7
|
|
Liberal
|
|
110
|
|
2.7
|
6
|
|
1.0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1959
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conservative
|
|
625
|
|
46.6
|
365
|
|
57.9
|
|
Labour
|
|
621
|
|
43.8
|
258
|
|
41.0
|
|
Two-party share
|
81.1%
|
|
|
90.4%
|
603
|
|
98.9%
|
|
Liberal
|
|
216
|
|
5.9
|
6
|
|
1.0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1964
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Labour
|
|
628
|
|
44.1
|
317
|
|
50.3
|
|
Conservative
|
|
630
|
|
43.4
|
304
|
|
48.2
|
|
Two-party share
|
71.6%
|
|
|
87.5%
|
621
|
|
98.5%
|
|
Liberal
|
|
365
|
|
11.2
|
9
|
|
1.4%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1966
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Labour
|
|
622
|
|
48.0
|
364
|
|
57.77
|
|
Conservative
|
|
620
|
|
41.3
|
253
|
|
40.16
|
|
Two-party share
|
72.8%
|
|
|
89.3%
|
617
|
|
97.9%
|
|
Liberal
|
|
311
|
|
8.5
|
12
|
|
2.0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1970
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conservative
|
|
628
|
|
46.4
|
330
|
|
52.4
|
|
Labour
|
|
625
|
|
43.1
|
288
|
|
45.7
|
|
Two-party share
|
68.2
|
|
|
89.5%
|
618
|
|
98.1
|
|
Liberal
|
|
332
|
|
7.5
|
6
|
|
1.0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The number of constituencies varied between 635 and 659 between 1951 and 1970.
Source: Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher (ed.), British Electoral Facts 1832-2012 (London, Biteback, 2012).
9In the six elections between 1951 and 1970 the party system remained stable while control of government rotated three times between two governing parties and six prime ministers: Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. Together, the Conservative and Labour Parties dominated every stage of electoral competition
-
Candidates. The Conservative and Labour parties consistently nominated more than 600 candidates in a House of Commons with up to 630 seats, while the Liberal Party could field candidates in an average of only 240 constituencies.
-
Votes. The Conservative and Labour parties respectively averaged 47 and 48 per cent of the vote while the Liberals averaged only 6 per cent. At the constituency level 99 per cent of Conservative and Labour candidates saved their deposits by winning at least 12.5 per cent of the constituency vote, while 36 per cent of Liberal candidates trailed so far behind the two major parties that they lost their deposits.
-
Seats. At every general election in the period the Conservative and Labour parties together won at least 98 per cent of seats in the House of Commons. Competition between parties was close. In the House of Commons, the winning party held 317 to 365 seats. By contrast, the Liberals had between 6 and 12 MPs.
10The major studies of British party politics in the period reinforced the model of Britain as a paradigm of two-party politics. In British Political Parties, Robert T. McKenzie (1955) compared how power within the Conservative and Labour Parties was affected by their experience of government. The Liberal Party was relegated to an appendix on the grounds that it was of only limited interest because it was irrelevant to the two-party competition for government. In Modern British Politics, Samuel H. Beer (1965) devoted half a chapter to nineteenth-century liberal (with a small l) ideas as part of a historical prelude to analysing the post-1945 struggle between the Conservative and Labour Parties and their ideologies.
11After a decade in which a Labour government had devalued the pound and an economic crisis led trade unions to challenge the authority of a Conservative government, in 1974 voters fled from both parties instead of moving between them in pendulum fashion. The two “Who governs?” elections destabilised the two-party system. In the February election, the Conservative vote dropped 8.5 percentage points and the Labour vote fell by 6.9 per cent. Their combined share of the total vote was down 14.4 per cent from 1970 and 21.7 per cent below what it was when two-party competition became established in 1951. When the Labour minority government called another election in October, the result confirmed the two-party system was no more. The two governing parties again received only 75 per cent of the vote and Labour won only three MPs more than the minimum needed for a parliamentary majority.
12In the February 1974 election the Liberal Party nominated more candidates than at any election since 1906. Its share of the national vote rose from 7.5 per cent in 1970 to 19.3 per cent, its highest total since 1929. Liberal candidates saved their deposits in 95 per cent of the 517 seats that they contested. In the October election the Liberal vote held up, and four-fifths of its 619 candidates saved their deposits.
13However, its substantial third-place share of the vote was consistently penalised by the first-past-the post electoral system. In the 1974 elections the Liberals won only 2 per cent of MPs. The party has consistently contested almost every British constituency and after the threshold for saving a constituency deposit was lowered to 5 per cent lost few deposits. In 13 elections between 1974 and 2019 the Liberal share of the vote has ranged between 25.4 per cent in 1983 and 7.4 per cent in 2017. Its parliamentary representation has gone up and down from 62 MPs in 2005 to 8 MPs in 2025 with the fortunes and misfortunes of the Labour and Conservative parties (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Fluctuation in votes in three-party system, 1974-2019
14In the course of five decades the three-party system has faced multiple challenges as new parties have formed and added new political cleavages about Europe, nationalism and the environment to the familiar left/right dimension with Labour on one side, the Conservatives on the other and Liberals in the middle (Figure 1). These dynamic challenges showed the resilience of the three-party system, as each additional new party, even when temporarily having an impact, was unable to win as many votes as the Liberals or gain a place in government.
- 3 David Butler and Uwe Kitzinger, The 1975 Referendum (London, Macmillan, 1996).
15Europe became a cleavage within both governing parties after the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. To resolve divisions in the Labour Party, Prime Minister Harold Wilson called a binding referendum in 1975 about retaining membership. Instead of collective responsibility, ministers in both the Cabinet and the shadow Cabinet divided. Roy Jenkins and Edward Heath campaigned to stay in the EEC while Enoch Powell and Tony Benn campaigned to leave.3 There was a 67.2 per cent majority in favour of remaining in Europe.
- 4 Ivor Crewe and Anthony King, SDP: the Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford, (...)
16The division within the Labour Party was followed by four strongly pro-European ex-Cabinet ministers, led by Roy Jenkins, splitting from the Labour Party in 1981 in protest against its shift to the left; they founded the Social Democratic Party (SDP).4 Given the overlap in its principles and policies with the Liberal Party, the two groups formed an electoral alliance with the aim of becoming one of Britain’s two governing parties. The alliance won 25.4 per cent of the vote at the 1983 election, only 2 per cent less than Labour, and it took 22.6 per cent of the vote in 1987. However, the SDP won only six seats in 1983 and five seats four years later. In 1988 the SDP merged with its ally in what was renamed the Liberal Democrat Party. This restored the equilibrium of the three-party system.
17After the Maastricht Treaty furthered integration by turning the EEC into the European Union, anti-EU parties began to form with the aim of having a second referendum held on EU membership. At the 1997 general election the Referendum Party, funded by multimillionaire Sir James Goldsmith, nominated 547 candidates. Its candidates polled an average of 3.1 per cent of their constituency vote, and more than nine-tenths lost their deposit. After the death of Goldsmith shortly after the 1997 election, the Referendum Party dissolved.
18The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), founded in 1993 to protest against EU membership, nominated 192 candidates in the 1997 election but gained only one-half of one per cent of the national vote. The only candidate to save his deposit was Nigel Farage. When proportional representation was introduced for elections to the European Parliament in 1999, UKIP started winning seats there, thereby gaining the financial and political resources needed to carry on. However, in first-past-the-post elections between 2001 and 2010, the 400 plus candidates it nominated could not win any seats and the party never took more than 3 per cent of the national vote.
- 5 Ian McAllister and Richard Rose, “When Institutions Change, Voting Changes”, in Richard Rose (ed.), (...)
19UKIP candidates began to have an impact on Conservative MPs who were ideologically anti-EU and on Conservative prime minister David Cameron, who feared it would take votes and seats from his party. Cameron fought and won the 2015 general election with a pledge to call a referendum on EU membership. At that election, UKIP nominated candidates in 624 constituencies, 86 per cent of whom saved their deposits. The party came third in votes, with 12.6 per cent, but was tied for tenth in seats, gaining only one MP. When a majority voted for Brexit in 2016 and began negotiating withdrawal, this punctured UKIP’s support. It won only 1.8 per cent of the vote at the 2017 election, and the following year Nigel Farage left to found the Brexit Party to campaign for a hard break with the EU. It won the most seats and votes at the low-turnout European Parliament election in May 2019. However, it won only 2 per cent of the national vote at the December 2019 election since it did not nominate candidates in hundreds of Conservative constituencies.5 UKIP was reduced to a shell, nominating only 44 candidates, all of whom lost their deposits.
20Nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have also contributed to the break-up of the traditional two-party system. However, because they nominate candidates in a limited number of constituencies and win few MPs, their impact on British party competition has been of slight importance compared to their impact in the devolved parliaments.
21A handful of Scottish National Party (SNP) candidates began standing for election to the British Parliament in 1929, but it was not until a by-election in 1967 that the SNP gained its first MP. Since 1970 it has contested virtually all of Scotland’s constituencies. In the October 1974 general election, the SNP won 11 of Scotland’s 71 Westminster constituencies with 30 per cent of the Scottish vote. In subsequent elections, the SNP gained between 12 and 22 per cent of the vote and a handful of Scottish MPs. After coming within 4.4 percentage points of winning a referendum on independence in 2014, the SNP took 50 per cent of the Scottish vote in the 2015 Westminster election and 56 of Scotland’s 59 MPs, a result it could not maintain.
22In Wales, Plaid Cymru advocates bilingualism as well as national independence. Since less than one-quarter of the electorate is Welsh-speaking, this has limited its electoral appeal. It began nominating a few candidates in 1929, but it was not until 1970 that it began contesting nearly all Welsh constituencies. Plaid Cymru gained 2 MPs in the February 1974 election. Since then, it has normally had 3 or 4 Westminster MPs and won between 7 and 14 per cent of the Welsh vote.
23In Northern Ireland, nationalism has been the primary dividing line between parties. In contrast to Irish nationalist candidates, Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) candidates are British nationalists, emphasising loyalty to the British Crown. They took the Conservative Party whip at Westminster, and controlled the devolved Stormont Parliament until 1972. Between 1951 and 1997, the Unionists won an absolute majority of the popular vote and from 8 to 12 of the region’s 12 Westminster seats. Successful Irish nationalist candidates usually followed the Sinn Fein republican principle of abstaining from the British Parliament. Following the suspension of the Stormont Parliament by the Conservative government in 1972, the UUP became independent of the Conservative Party. New parties entered competition on the Irish side (the Social Democratic and Labour Party) and the Unionist side (the Democratic Unionist Party of Dr Ian Paisley). Since then, up to half a dozen Northern Ireland parties, differing in their nationalist nuances, have shared the region’s 18 Westminster seats.
24The environmental movement began as a pressure group and then very gradually began contesting elections when the Ecology Party nominated 53 candidates in 1979. As the Green Party it increased its nominees to 245 in 1992. However, its share of the vote never exceeded one-half of one per cent, and all its candidates lost their deposits at every election until 2001. The Green Party nominated candidates in a majority of British constituencies in 2010; it saved seven deposits, won 1.0 per cent of the national vote and elected its first MP. The Greens’ best showing in the three-party system was in the 2015 election. It nominated 573 candidates, won 3.8 per cent of the national vote and saved 129 deposits, and its single MP was re-elected.
25The Liberal breakthrough in 1974 did more than temporarily disrupt a stable two-party system; it created a new three-party system. The process differed from the inter-war period, in which the Labour Party replaced the Liberals as one of the two parties competing for control of government. It also differed from third-party challenges in US presidential elections. Although many third parties have temporarily challenged the Republicans and Democrats, these two parties have rotated in and out of the White House since 1860. US third-party candidates have won a significant share of votes in a single election, but were soon re-absorbed in the two-party system.
26In the 13 elections from February 1974 to 2019, three parties consistently competed in England and four in Scotland and Wales.
-
Candidates. The Labour and Conservative Parties consistently nominated candidates in virtually every British constituency and the Liberal Democrats did so in all but 2 of 13 elections. In Scotland and Wales, nationalist parties nominated candidates in virtually every constituency within their nation.
-
Votes. The Conservative and Labour parties no longer enjoyed a virtual duopoly of the popular vote. Their combined share ranged from 65.1 per cent in 2010 to a high of 82.3 per cent in 2017. The Liberal Democrat vote ranged widely: it won at least 22 per cent of the vote at four elections but fell below 8 per cent in two contests. The Scottish National Party’s share of its national vote ranged between almost 12 per cent and 50 per cent. Plaid Cymru’s share of the Welsh vote was lower. It ranged from 7.3 per cent in 1987 to a high of 14.3 per cent in 2001.
-
Seats. The first-past-the-post system enabled the Conservative and Labour Parties to win at least 86 per cent of the seats at every election between 1974 and 2019, and their combined share rose to 96 per cent of seats in 1979. From 1974 onwards a variety of Northern Ireland parties won all the seats in the province. The SNP has won as few as two MPs in 1979 and 1983, while coming first in Scottish seats in three elections from 2015 to 2019. Since 1987 Plaid Cymru has consistently won 3 or 4 seats in Wales.
27A dynamic equilibrium extended through five decades by the Liberal Democrats becoming a competitor at the constituency level but not a competitor for control of the British government. The resilience of the two governing parties was shown by their response to challenges to their control of Downing Street. After falling 20 seats short of an absolute majority in 2010, the Conservatives formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. It benefited the Conservatives most. In a referendum on changing the electoral system the following year to the less disproportional alternative vote system, 67.9 per cent rejected a change. In 2015 the Conservatives won a parliamentary majority and the Liberal Democrats dropped to their fewest MPs since 1970. Two minority governments were formed as a result of three-party competition. In both cases the result did not weaken the duopoly control of government. The Labour Party formed a minority government in February 1974 and in an election eight months later won a parliamentary majority. The Conservatives formed a minority government in 2017 but Boris Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” policy won an absolute parliamentary majority in 2019.
28The 2024 election was called at a time when the Conservative government and its three prime ministers had lost the public’s confidence and the Labour Party’s leader, Keir Starmer, had repudiated the policies of his left-wing predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. It thus set the scene for a major rotation in office as in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher led the Conservatives to a sweeping victory, or in 1997, when Tony Blair did likewise for Labour. In both cases three-party competition was maintained as the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats collectively took more than 90 per cent of the total vote. This did not happen in 2024; the election result disrupted the three-party system. Collectively, the three parties won less than 70 per cent of the vote.
-
Candidates. For the first time five parties – Reform and the Greens as well as Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats – nominated more than 600 candidates at the constituency level, and in Scotland and Wales a sixth party, the nationalists, contested every seat. By contrast, at the 2019 election only three parties fought nearly every seat.
-
Relevant candidates. In 2024 seven candidates were on the ballot in the average constituency, but more than a thousand were irrelevant, standing as independents or candidates of unknown parties. To be relevant, a candidate must save their deposit by winning 5 per cent of the constituency vote. In 2019 only the two governing parties won their deposit in a majority of constituencies. By contrast, in 2024 seven parties – Reform, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the two nationalist parties as well as Labour and the Conservatives – kept their deposits in the great majority of constituencies. As a result of this fragmentation, in 553 constituencies the MP won the seat with a minority of the vote.
-
Votes. The Labour Party won a parliamentary majority with 33.7 per cent of the vote, the lowest share of any governing party since the introduction of competitive elections. The Conservatives won only 23.7 per cent of the vote, the lowest share in their history. Together, the Labour and Conservative Parties won a smaller share of the total vote, 57.4 per cent, than in any previous democratic election. However, the division of the third-force vote among six relevant parties meant that the Conservatives remained the official opposition. The third-largest party, Reform, won only one-seventh of the UK vote (Table 2).
Table 2: Third-force parties win most votes, 2024
|
|
|
|
|
Votes
|
|
|
|
Seats
|
|
|
|
|
%
|
|
|
%
|
|
N
|
|
Third-force parties
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reform
|
|
|
14.3
|
|
|
|
0.8
|
|
5
|
|
Liberal Democrat
|
|
|
12.2
|
|
|
|
11.0
|
|
72
|
|
Greens
|
|
|
6.7
|
|
|
|
0.6
|
|
4
|
|
SNP
|
|
|
2.5
|
|
|
|
1.4
|
|
9
|
|
Plaid Cymru
|
|
|
0.7
|
|
|
|
0.6
|
|
4
|
|
N. Ireland parties
|
|
|
2.7
|
|
|
|
2.7
|
|
18
|
|
Others
|
|
|
3.6
|
|
|
|
1.0
|
|
6
|
|
Total for Third-force parties
|
42.6%
|
|
|
18.2
|
%
|
118
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Labour
|
|
33.7%
|
|
|
63.2
|
%
|
411
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conservative
|
|
23.7%
|
|
|
18.6
|
%
|
121
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Source: Compiled from House of Commons Library, 2024.
-
Seats. Labour gained the maximum benefit from the disproportional way in which the first-past-the-post system translates votes into seats. It won 63.2 per cent of MPs with barely one-third of the popular vote. To win a similarly large landslide in 1997 Tony Blair had to win 43.2 per cent of the vote. Disproportional representation discriminated between opposition parties. The Liberal Democrats won a similar share of seats, 11.0 per cent, and votes, 12.2 per cent, while the Reform Party got less than one per cent of seats for its 14.3 per cent of the vote.
29The fragmentation of votes at the 2024 election has disrupted competition at the constituency level. Although the Labour and Conservative parties finished a clear first and second in the national vote, they failed to do so consistently. A third-force candidate is the MP in 118 constituencies, and in an additional 226 constituencies they are the chief challenger, finishing second. The Labour and Conservative candidates come first and second in fewer than half of the country’s 650 constituencies.
30In the classic two-party system, the Labour and Conservative Parties competed by taking different positions on the same socio-economic dimension, with Labour on the left and the Conservatives on the right. In the three-party system the Liberal Democrats placed themselves in the centre by being to the left of the Conservatives and to the right of Labour on economic issues. In 2019 the Conservatives gained votes with an anti-Europe as well as a right-wing appeal, but their very success in getting Brexit done meant that by 2024 the issue no longer had any salience with the electorate.
31This classic model of electoral competition no longer holds. In 2024 the parties winning seats in Parliament do not confine their appeal to a single left/right dimension. Parties in Parliament now emphasise additional dimensions: national independence – the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Northern Ireland parties; protecting British culture from dilution by immigrants – the Reform Party; the environment – the Greens; and Muslim interests –four Muslim MPs sitting nominally as independents.
32In a majority of constituencies the two leading candidates are competing on different dimensions. When third-force candidates appeal for votes on a new dimension, this does not mean that their principal opponent takes up the same dimension. Table 3 shows the extent to which constituency competition was fragmented at the 2024 election. Along seven different dimensions, there are 26 groups differentiated by the parties finishing first and second. In a majority of constituencies parties appeal for votes on two different dimensions, for example socio-economic interests or immigration as against socio-economic issues.
Table 3: 26 dimensions of constituency competition, 2024
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Constituencies
|
|
|
Socio-economic dimension
|
|
|
(311)
|
|
|
Labour & Conservatives
|
|
219
|
|
|
|
Labour & Socialists
|
|
5
|
|
|
|
Conservatives & Labour
|
|
87
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Socio-economic & Europe
|
|
|
(92)
|
|
|
Lib Dems & Conservatives
|
84
|
|
|
|
Lib Dems & Labour
|
|
8
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Socio-economic & immigration
|
|
(103)
|
|
|
Reform & Labour
|
|
92
|
|
|
|
Reform & Conservatives
|
|
11
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
National independence & socio-economic
|
(65)
|
|
|
SNP & Labour
|
|
47
|
|
|
|
SNP & Conservatives
|
|
10
|
|
|
|
Plaid Cymru & Labour
|
|
6
|
|
|
|
Plaid Cymru & Conservatives
|
1
|
|
|
|
Plaid Cymru & Lib Dems
|
|
1
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Environment & socio-economic
|
|
(44)
|
|
|
Green & Labour
|
|
42
|
|
|
|
Green & Conservatives
|
|
2
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Religion & socio-economic
|
|
|
|
|
Muslim & Labour
|
|
|
(17)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Northern Ireland Nationalist & religion
|
(18)
|
|
|
Sinn Fein & Unionist
|
|
5
|
|
|
|
Sinn Fein & SDLP
|
|
2
|
|
|
|
Sinn Fein & Socialist
|
|
1
|
|
|
|
Dem. Unionist & Alliance
|
3
|
|
|
|
Dem. Unionist & Sinn Fein
|
2
|
|
|
|
SDLP & Alliance
|
|
1
|
|
|
|
Ulster Unionist & Dem Unionist
|
1
|
|
|
|
Alliance & Dem. Unionist
|
1
|
|
|
|
Traditional Union & Unionist
|
1
|
|
|
|
Independent Unionist & Alliance
|
1
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Source: House of Commons Library (2024). Author’s classification of parties.
33Labour MPs were challenged on six different dimensions at the constituency level (Table 3). Barely half their second-place opponents were Conservatives and only eight were Liberal Democrats. The votes that Reform candidates took from also-ran Conservatives made it the chief challenger to more than one-fifth of Labour MPs. In Scotland and Wales, Labour and nationalist candidates were the principal competitors in half the constituencies. The Green Party, with its focus on the environment, was the major competitor in a tenth of Labour-held seats. Muslim candidates stood as independents but shared common causes such as Palestine; they were competitive in 17 seats where Muslims form a significant portion of the electorate. The five socialists included one MP, Jeremy Corbyn, plus George Galloway and two other Workers’ Party candidates.
34Conservative candidates fought major competitors on five political dimensions. The socio-economic dimension was the most important, albeit the party was second to Labour in 219 constituencies. In these seats Conservatives can seek tactical votes from Reform where the latter is an also-ran party. However, if the Tories were to win all the 306 seats where they are Labour’s chief competitor, they would still lack a Commons majority. At the next election in the 64 seats where Conservative candidates are second to Liberal Democrats, they could try to win tactical votes on the grounds that a Liberal Democrat vote is a wasted vote since that party has no chance of forming a government. In Scotland and Wales Conservatives have become an also-ran party, coming first or second in only 11 of the 89 seats there.
35The Liberal Democrats, by contrast with the two governing parties, have differentiated themselves by taking an unambiguous pro-Europe position, an issue of little importance in the 2024 election. Nonetheless, the party gained 64 MPs in constituencies where it had come second in 2019 by gaining tactical votes from supporters of also-ran parties on the grounds that it was best placed to eject a Conservative MP. However, the rise of the Reform Party deprived the Liberal Democrats of their previous monopoly position as the country’s major protest party.
36While neither the Labour nor the Conservative Party wanted to debate immigration, voters saw it as an important issue. The Reform Party became the third-largest party, taking 14.3 per cent of the vote in 2024 by stressing the protection of British (sic) culture from dilution by a high level of immigration. This gave the party a nationwide appeal: it saved 95 per cent of its deposits while the Liberal Democrats saved fewer than two-thirds. However, the nationwide spread of its votes meant that Reform gained only five MPs. Reform did much better in constituencies where the Conservatives were weak than where they were strong. It came second in 89 Labour seats but only 11 Conservative seats.
37Thanks to devolution, the Scottish National Party has succeeded in making itself a governing party in Scotland whilst opposing the parties governing the UK. The SNP emphasises national independence, while the British parties emphasise the economic advantages of union. The SNP fell from 48 MPs to 9 at the 2024 election. Nonetheless, the SNP remains second when not first in all of Scotland’s 57 Westminster constituencies, with Labour its chief opponent in 47 of those seats. By contrast, in Wales Plaid Cymru came fourth in the total Welsh vote, and won four of the Principality’s 32 seats. It also finished second to Labour in four seats.
38In seven of Northern Ireland’s 18 constituencies the principal divide is between an Irish nationalist party and a British one. In three constituencies pro-Ireland parties compete with each other on nationalist and socio-economic dimensions for the Catholic vote, and the two Unionist parties challenge each other for the Protestant vote. The non-sectarian Alliance Party is a leading opponent of a Unionist party in five constituencies and in one seat it leads the challenge to the pro-Ireland SDLP.
39Even though Green candidates emphasise protecting the environment, an issue that is relevant everywhere, their appeal is concentrated in a minority of constituencies, ones that have more educated and younger post-materialist voters. In 44 seats, all but two of them Labour, Green candidates are one of the two leading contestants. In a majority of seats, the Greens are an also-ran party, but by gaining enough votes to save their deposit they reduce the vote of Labour, their principal competitor.
40In constituencies with a substantial Muslim population, four Muslim candidates standing as independents became MPs, and in 13 more Muslims finished second. All stressed their support for Palestinians, albeit the vast majority of British Muslims come from the Indian sub-continent rather than the Middle East. Two of the four successful Muslim candidates won their seats fighting other Muslims who stood as Labour, emphasising left/right issues more than religious themes.
41A constituency ballot with candidates competing on five or six dimensions gives voters a much greater variety of choices than a ballot that offers competition only on a single dimension. The two dozen combinations of choice replace the one-dimensional metaphor of an electoral pendulum with a patchwork quilt, with each patch having a different combination of partisan colours.
- 6 Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher (ed.), British Electoral Facts 1832-2012 (London, Biteback, 201 (...)
42For a general election to be general, the Conservative and Labour parties must rank first and second not only in the national vote but also in the great majority of constituencies. Insofar as this happens, then individuals can cast a ballot endorsing the same party to represent their constituency and govern the country. This was invariably the case in the two-party system and normally the case in the three-party system.6 Multi-dimensional competition introduces a meta-choice: whether to vote for the candidate who best represents one’s views but has virtually no chance of winning the seat or for a candidate who has a chance of winning the seat, thereby providing second-best representation.
43Many expected and unexpected events will occur before the next British general election and the preceding pages offer evidence to support more than one possible outcome. This does not mean that all scenarios are equally likely, for example, that the odds are the same for the Conservatives gaining a parliamentary majority by winning 215 seats and Labour keeping its majority even though losing 85 seats. While two of the five scenarios that follow lack political precedent, they cannot be dismissed as impossible.
44Single-party majority government. This outcome depends on the first-past-the-post electoral system continuing to maximise disproportionality. Labour benefited from this in 2005 when it won 35.2 per cent of the vote, and David Cameron gained a Conservative majority in 2015 with 36.8 per cent of the vote. For Labour to be confident of winning re-election it will need to increase its share of the vote compared to the last election, since it cannot rely on its opponents dividing 42 per cent of the national vote to Labour’s advantage. For the Conservatives to win a parliamentary majority they would need their vote to increase by at least 10 percentage points, a bigger gain than achieved by either Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair in leading their parties to office after a lesser setback than that experienced by the Conservatives in 2024.
45A penny-farthing coalition would be a two-party government in which one party is the big wheel and the other tags behind, as in a late nineteenth-century bicycle. If the Liberal Democrats could hold on to the 72 seats they won in the last election, their MPs would be sufficient to provide a secure majority to a party winning at least 260 MPs. The prospect of joining a coalition government would face Liberal Democrat leaders with a quandary. There is the attraction of gaining seats in Cabinet and sponsoring legislation. But joining a coalition with the Conservatives after the 2010 election led the Liberal Democrats to electoral disaster five years later, as the party lost five-sixths of its MPs. Currently, there are ideological barriers to the Liberal Democrats joining a coalition with the Labour Party. However, this opportunity would only arise if Labour did badly, losing a quarter or more of its current MPs.
46Minority government. A party that wins a substantial plurality of MPs may remain in office indefinitely by making a transactional arrangement with another party to be sure of having a majority in votes of confidence. After the Labour government lost its majority during the 1974-79 Parliament it received such support from Scottish National Party MPs in exchange for the government delivering devolution to Scotland. However, when devolution was rejected on a technicality in a referendum, the SNP withdrew support and the Labour government collapsed. In a new Parliament in which the SNP held the balance of power, its price for support would be legislation granting the Scottish Parliament the right to call an independence referendum at a time of its choosing. In the 2017 Parliament the Conservative government of Theresa May was nine seats short of an absolute majority of MPs, and it negotiated an agreement for the support of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. When that broke down in 2019, her successor, Boris Johnson, called a general election that gave the Conservatives a secure majority.
47A jumping majority. A minority government does not need to rely on the same party to maintain control of government. It can be supported by a jumping majority, in which the MPs providing the margin of victory differ from issue to issue. When the American President does not have a majority in both houses of Congress, then the White House must negotiate with individual members of Congress to secure enactment of the president’s programme. Majorities can be created by including clauses in a bill to benefit the constituencies of key legislators. This creates ad hoc coalitions across party lines that vary in membership from bill to bill. In European countries with many parties in coalition governments, such as Italy and Belgium, coalitions can keep control of government by changing prime ministers during the life of a parliament.
48Disruption reinforced. The above scenarios are consistent with the maintenance of a three-party system of government. But what if the outcome of the next general election requires coming to terms with the Reform Party achieving a breakthrough in the House of Commons? This does not require it to win a majority of MPs or even to come first in the number of seats. It is sufficient for Reform to win upwards of one hundred seats, enough so that neither Labour nor the Conservatives have enough MPs to form a minority or coalition government or to rely on a jumping majority without stumbling.
49The Labour government of Keir Starmer has already shown how vulnerable its disproportional majority is. Instead of taking years to reach a mid-term slump in the opinion polls, within nine months of taking office its support in the polls had fallen to 25 per cent and sometimes lower. Concurrently, the Conservatives were polling lower than their 2024 result, the party’s worst in its electoral history. The big winner has been the Reform Party of Nigel Farage. Its support has risen by 10 percentage points since the general election to a level equal with Labour and above that of the Conservatives.
50In a disrupted system of government, the seats of the three leading parties – Labour, Conservative and Reform – are so divided that a majority government can be formed only if two of the three parties form a coalition. Neither a Conservative-Liberal Democrat nor a Labour-Liberal Democratic coalition would constitute a majority. For example, Electoral Calculus calculates that a nearly equal three-way division of the vote would give Labour 189 MPs, the Conservatives 189 MPs and Reform 143 MPs.7 In simple arithmetical terms, there are three ways in which a government could be formed. But political arithmetic is never simple. For example, a coalition of Labour and Reform MPs would have a parliamentary majority on paper, but lacks political credibility in practice. Both parties would almost certainly split if their leaders sought to combine in order to share the fruits of office.
51A coalition government of the Conservative and Reform Parties would have some affinities on policy as well as a parliamentary majority. Moreover, the bulk of Reform voters are ex-Conservative voters, and Conservative voters are much closer to Reform voters in their political outlook than to Labour. However, the incentive for such a coalition for Reform – it would make Farage either deputy prime minister or prime minister – is a warning light to many Conservatives. They fear that joining together would be the end of the Conservative Party and its absorption in a Reformed Conservative Party as the SDP was absorbed by the Liberals.
52The rejection of the Reform Party as beyond the pale would leave a Labour and Conservative coalition the only possible government. As long as neither party lost more than a dozen or so MPs objecting to this coalition of enemies, it would have a parliamentary majority. Such a coalition governed Britain during the Second World War. But in peacetime it would be a cartel in which party leaders combined to deprive voters of a choice of government. This would play to Farage’s populist claim that governing parties do not care about ordinary voters and raise the prospect of a vengeance vote at a subsequent election.
53In default of a new government being formed after a general election, a caretaker Labour government would remain in office until a second election could be held. In October 1974 this gave a minority Labour government a majority that enabled it to remain in office until 1979. However, in 1951 a follow-up election turned Labour’s bare majority into a Conservative majority and inaugurated a 13-year period of Conservative government.
54If rolling the dice in a second election again produced a three-cornered distribution of seats, something would have to be done. At that point both the Liberal Democrats and the Reform Party would give the same answer: introduce proportional representation. Even if the nationalist Greens joined in, there would not be a parliamentary majority for such a radical change. Twice-defeated Conservative and Labour leaders would have a choice between coming up with an alternative way of forming a government or put an end to the stress of disruptive elections by abstaining on a vote to change the electoral system and introduce a new system based on coalitions of parties competing in proportional representation elections.
55The massive majority that Labour won in 2024 gives it years to recover from its rapid post-election slump. It also gives the Conservatives years to experiment with leaders and recovery strategies until they find one that works. It means, too, that Nigel Farage’s current party has ample time to disrupt itself as his previous parties have done.