If the recent referendum
has shown one thing, it’s that the traditional beliefs about where our
political parties draw their support from are beginning to fray at the edges.
In fact it could even be said that they are unravelling rather quickly. I
believe that somewhere on the horizon is the biggest realignment of British
politics since the First World War. So what does this realignment involve and
why has it happened?
The Conservatives
On the surface the
Conservatives appear to be a rock solid party, the rock around which the
shifting sands of Westminster move. To an extent that is because the word
Conservative means many things to many people and the Tory party contains many
differing groups, from the One Nationers to the Thatcherites and everything in-between.
But the basic concept of allowing people to get on without too much government interference
and not trying to change anything too quickly, appeal to a lot of people. This
softly softly ideology is another reason I think why the Conservatives continue
to hang on.
The UK is by its nature
a conservative country. While we may occasionally adopt a more left wing
outlook, when the going gets tough we inevitably return to the safe arms of
Nanny. This may well explain why in the 71 years since the end of the war, the
Tories have been in government for 41 of them. While on the surface it may seem
as if all Tories are aristocrats and lawyers we must remember that Mrs Thatcher
was a grocer’s daughter and John Major’s working class roots were the centre
point of the 1992 general election campaign. Conservatives can be found
anywhere, and so they have a permanent source of supporters to mine.
Never has this been
made clearer than by the European referendum results. If you look at areas that
voted most heavily for Leave with the exception of Scotland, they were right in
Labour’s heartlands, Wales and the industrial north. The places Labour need to
take in order to win back power. This is on top of the Scottish Conservatives
becoming the official opposition in Scotland earlier in the year. I suspect in
the next few years we will see both the Conservatives and other right wing
parties chip away at Labour support in these areas.
This does not mean
however that I don’t think the Tories are indestructible. While I will go more
into the future of UKIP below, I believe that it is likely that following the
EU referendum we will see a large influx of former UKIPers returning to the
Tories. This influx of hard line Eurosceptics, who will almost certainly fall
into the “Faith, Family and Flag” camp. Nick Boles has already suggested the
creation of a National Liberal party as a conservative counterpoint to Labours
alliance with the Co-Op party and I believe that as the Tories head further to
the right, this party may take off, taking with it the majority of One Nation
Tories.
Labour
Labour
on the other hand is in some serious trouble right now. As mentioned above
while Labour is largely a Europhilic party, the areas that that they rely for
their bedrock support have quite clearly gone the other way. This combined with
the fact that they have been all but eliminated in Scotland by the SNP means
that Labour will possibly struggle in the near future to gain power, unless it
can figure out why they have lost so much support.
So
why have they?
I
believe the problem lies with Tony Blair’s New Labour. Following eighteen years
of Tory government Labour were desperate to get back into power, however they
knew they could not do it solely through their industrial heartlands and so
they moved right in order to appeal to the commuter belt in the Home Counties.
And for thirteen years, with the Tories in disarray it worked, and they didn’t
worry about their old stomping grounds, believing (mistakenly) as it turned out
that they could hold onto them, as they had no-where else to go. However those communities
have begun to feel neglected and used and are now starting to pledge their
loyalty to other parties, leaving Labour with no support upon which to call. So
what’s the solution?
As
strange as it sounds, I think Labour are going to have to take a leaf from the
Lib Dem’s book. Accept that they may not be in government for a while, maybe
for the next ten years, and focus on building up community support and
community leaders. Show people that Labour are capable of running local
government and then go from there. Stop taking activists for granted and
respect the opinions of the members. However loss of support may not be Labour’s
only problem.
Jeremy
Corbyn has a massive mandate from the people. While his views may not be that
of the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party (as this last week has shown)
or even that of a majority of the population, this mandate must be recognised.
Labour must find some way of reconciling its left and right wing, and finally
ending the battle between them that has been going on for decades. If they don’t
then they face a situation worse than that of the 1980s. There is a very real
chance that the Labour party could split, very soon, which would not only guarantee
Tory dominance for decades, but possibly remove left wing opinions from the
national debate.
What
could such a split look like? I suspect the line would be drawn between the old
left wing socialists like Corbyn and the Third Way Social Democrats (the so
called Blairites). So instead of one whole Labour party we would end up with
say a small Socialist rump, and a larger Progressive Party which would probably
hold onto the majority of the Labour party machinery, but would find itself
discredited in the eyes of the electorate and which may struggle to define itself
as a separate entity.
The Other Parties
With
the announcement yesterday that Nigel Farage is stepping down as leader of
UKIP, the parties future is a lot less certain than it once was. Once I would
have said that with the UK about to leave the EU, UKIP would wind itself up, its
lifetime aim having been achieved, but I think that is less likely to happen
now. It will stick around if only to act as a pressure group during Brexit negotiations.
But what form it will take and what ideology it will pursue depend on who is
elected leader.
The
Nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, are likely to go from
strength to strength.
The
wildcard here is the Liberal Democrats. I think the Lib Dems have the capacity
to do quite well in the coming years. They have the advantage of being able to
be all things to all people, with their views on electoral reform, clean energy
and civil liberties, appeal to the middle class graduate set and their
community activism allows them to tap into less well-off areas too. However the
stink from the coalition, and the fact that they are positioning themselves as
pro-European shortly after membership in the EU was rejected may cause
problems. In a few election cycles though, they may be worth watching,
especially if Labour continues to splinter.
One Final Option
One
final option of course is a new political party, not just spun off from one,
but from many. A centrist party made up of liberal Tories, right wing
Labourites and the Liberals. However this is extremely unlikely to happen, and
will probably remain a fantasy of armchair analysts and counterfactual history
fans.
In
conclusion, it is difficult to predict what Westminster will look like in ten
years. It may well look exactly the same. But I am fairly convinced that the
ideology of some mainstream parties will have changed and that some new parties
may well have emerged. We, who are interested in this sort of thing, can only
wait and see what they are like.
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