Third force for good?
Vernon Bogdanor
In British general elections between 1945 and 1974 only two possible outcomes were likely — a Conservative or a Labour government. In this week's general elec-+ tion, however, not only were there three political groups competing for power, but the possibility of a hung parliament was greater than it had been at any election since the war. Moreover, what was at stake in the election was not only the type of government which Britain was to enjoy for the next five years, but the nature of the political system itself. For proportional representation, to which the SDP/Liberal Alliance is commit- ted — and which could well result from a hung parliament — would permanently alter the terms on which the political parties compete with each other.
The British electoral system, whatever its theoretical merits and demerits, works reasonably well with a two-party system. With three major groups competing for power, however, it leads to all sorts of anomalies and oddities lovingly pointed out by psephologists and computer experts. Indeed, the more the three groupings approach an equal division of the vote, the more unpredictable and volatile the rela- tionship between votes and seats. At pre- sent in British politics, three political group- ings exist within an electoral system geared to the alternation of two parties in office; they reside uneasily in a two-party political system.
If the Alliance were to be successful in securing proportional representation, hung parliaments might well become a permanent feature of the British political scene. They would certainly do so unless one party was able to secure nearly 50 per cent of the vote, something which has eluded both Labour and the Conservatives since the 1950s. With regular hung parliaments, the Alliance might hope to be permanently open to coalition from Left or Right. Many Liberals have looked with envy at the role of the Free Democrats in Germany who have established for themselves a pivotal position in the political system. There is, in Ger- many, a bi-polar alternation in power, but it is an alternation between two coalitions rather than between single parties. Never- theless there is a genuine choice between governments of the Left and the Right. Paradoxically, therefore, it could be argued that electoral reform is essential if a three- party system is to be able to sustain a bi- polar alternation of government.
Whether the first-past-the-post electoral system survives or not will depend less upon the arguments of academics and propagan- dists than upon developments in electoral politics. If a three-party system survives, the gross discrepancies between votes and seats will so offend the sense of fairness of the British electorate, and make the results of the elections so unpredictable, that its retention will become impracticable. If, on the other hand, either the Alliance disap- pears, or there is a political realignment of the kind which occurred in the 1920s such that one party on the Left is permanently replaced by another, and the two-party system reasserts itself, then the debate about electoral reform will die away. Either, therefore, Britain will return to a two-party system through the collapse of the Alliance or the replacement of Labour by the Alliance as the main party of the Left; or the first-past-the-post electoral system will become insupportable. There seems to be no possibility of the electoral system co-existing for long with a three- party system.
The reform of the electoral system would constitute explicit recognition that the third force in British politics could no longer be contained, and that British politics would remain multi-party politics for the foreseeable future. Until recently such an outcome would have been greeted with hor- ror by most observers of the political scene,
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who held to what might Spectator a tob relic aJuned1983 the Gilbert and Sullivan view of politics (were they secret electoral reformers?) according to which every little boy or girl born alive was either a little Liberal or else a little Con- serv-a-tive. Yet increasing awareness that economic success and social stability are, as in the cases of Austria, West Germany and the Scandinavian countries, perfectly comPati- ble with multi-party politics, should have given pause to unthinking defenders of the status quo. Why should a two-party system be any more 'natural' than a multi-party one? A two-party system is more natural only if one assumes that there are just two main interests in society deserving represen- tation — capital and labour. But if one believes that in a modern industrial society there is a far wider diversity of interests seeking representation than can be accom- modated by only two parties whose raison d'être is a socio-economic cleavage based on class, then a multi-party system would , fbeeelminog and with social more waictcorsdnanaclerebaolitthy.with popular Furthermore, the present party system' far from accurately reflecting the division of political opinion, works badly by locking incompatible elements together in what ROY Jenkins has called 'loveless marriages'. It has become a commonplace to refer to the British parties as broad-based coalitions. But these coalitions have become so in congruous that their members spend much of their time attacking enemies in their own party rather than their political opponents. Sir Ian Gilmour's recent book was directed against the radical Right in the Conser- vative Party rather than the Opposition; and indeed there is little in it with which a supporter of the Alliance or of the right wing of the Labour Party need disagree. Similarly Mr Benn's efforts are directed at the purification of the Labour Party through the elimination of backsliders and fainthearts as much as they are against the sins of the Conservative Government. The warring elements in the two major parties are held together not by any agreement on basic philosophy but by the needs of elec- toral survival. Conservative wets find themselves fighting happily to secure another majority for Mrs Thatcher! although disagreeing with nearly all of her policies; the Labour Left shelters under the r umbrella of respectability provided by M, Healey and Mr Shore, although determined to deprive them of political influence as soon as they are able to do so.
In 1930, Keynes argued that 'So long as party organisation and personal loyalti ‘, cut across the fundamental differences Jill opinion, the public life of this country continue to suffer from a creeepincg
ie, paralysis.' So also today reform of the toral system is needed to cure this paralysis by allowing the parties to reflect more curately the true state of popular feeling. BVreasr neonnoseBcogodllaegn College, Oxford. Bogdanor is rSden Senior r Tutor of
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