Tim Bale's Blog

Long seen as something of a beacon of political stability, the United Kingdom has, since 2016, become something of a basket case. In just ten years, the country has cycled through six prime ministers and may soon ditch its seventh, prompting agonized debate about whether the UK has become ‘ungovernable.’

The Labour Party won a massive parliamentary majority at the 2024 general election but on a mere 34 percent of the vote and largely due to the unpopularity of the outgoing Conservative government. Less than two years later it stands at under 20 percent in the opinion polls, while its leader, UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has some of the lowest approval ratings ever recorded for a British prime minister.

A fortnight ago, Labour saw thousands of its candidates brutally rejected by the voters at local elections in England, with the main beneficiaries being not the ‘official’ opposition, the Conservatives, who also lost large numbers of seats, but the populist radical right party, Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, and the left-wing ‘eco-populist’ Green Party, led by Zack Polanski.

Just as worryingly, Labour lost its century-old grip on Wales, where, in the contest for the principality’s parliament, it was pushed into third place behind the left-wing nationalists of Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. It also performed poorly (albeit not quite as poorly) in elections to the Scottish Parliament.

Beyond the two-party mould

Taken together, those results represent the latest acceleration of a trend that political scientists have been observing since the mid-1970s but which has sharpened since the Brexit referendum of June 2016 – namely the collapse of the UK’s traditional two-party system and the consequent emergence of multiparty politics. And all this in spite of the country continuing, at least for general elections, to operate under a first-past-the-post system routinely regarded as the guarantor of a stable duopoly.

The seemingly chronic inability of both the Conservatives and Labour to deliver economic growth, decent public services, and strong borders has seen voter dissatisfaction grow and party loyalty shrink in equal measure, helping to fuel interest in more radical alternatives that, in true populist fashion, claim to represent the people against the establishment and promise simple solutions to complex problems.

Partly as a result, members of parliament representing the two ‘legacy parties’ have become far less inclined than they once were to give the country’s prime ministers the benefit of the doubt, agitating for their replacement sooner rather than later in the desperate hope that whoever takes over can save their seats at Westminster.

When the grassroots pick the prime minister

If the selection of party leader and prime minister were left solely up to those MPs, then perhaps those picked for the top job might have the skills required to do it. Unfortunately, however, both Labour and the Conservatives decided some time ago to gift the final decision to the grassroots members of their parties – a well-meaning but demographically and ideologically unrepresentative minority whose choices in recent years, even when they haven’t been disastrous (Boris Johnson and Liz Truss), have proved less than impressive (Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer).

For the moment, Starmer remains prime minister – but probably not for much longer. There is a consensus – no longer unspoken – among his Labour colleagues that he lacks the communication skills, the sense of direction, and the man-management skills needed to persuade voters to give Labour a second term and to do whatever needs to be done to both fix and inspire the country.

Starmer, in spite of his government suffering a handful of resignations in the light of Labour’s drubbing at the polls a fortnight ago, remains in place largely because, right now anyway, his colleagues are unsure whether anyone among them who could do a better job could get themselves selected by the party’s grassroots – or whether anyone those ordinary party members might select could possibly make a good prime minister.

Waiting for Burnham

Instead, rather than moving against Starmer immediately, they are waiting on Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, making it back into parliament via a by-election to be held next month in the nearby smaller town of Makerfield, the assumption being that he would then trigger a leadership contest and become prime minister.

Whether Burnham will be able to do that, however, remains to be seen since, in the local elections, Makerfield swung heavily to Reform UK. Ironically, that result may allow Burnham to turn the tables on Farage and fight as the anti-establishment underdog. Moreover, given widespread disappointment with Brexit’s consequences, Reform’s leader might be wrong to assume, as he so clearly does, that hatred of ‘Brussels’ is still a trump card.

One thing, though, is certain: if Burnham can’t beat whoever Farage picks to fight the byelection for Reform, he would be no use to Labour anyway. Quite where that scenario would leave Starmer, his party and the country, however, is anyone’s guess.

Originally published at https://www.aa.com.tr/en/opinion/opinion-britains-ungovernable-decade/3944679

Barely 2 per cent of Britons belong to a political party. Yet this tiny, unrepresentative minority helps decide who gets selected to stand for Parliament, who gets to lead our parties and, ultimately, who gets to govern the country. With Britain’s politics fragmenting and in flux, members matter more than is often assumed – one of many reasons why we should learn as much as possible about who they are, what they believe, what they do and (more important than ever given the so-called presidentialisation of British politics) what they want from the leaders they follow.

True, party membership may have fallen from the giddy heights it reached in the 1950s. But it remains crucial to the health of our representative democracy, as well as to its composition. And, as we have seen with the surge of new members – first into the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and, more recently, into Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Zack Polanski’s Greens – people still want to join, and parties still want them to.

That should come as no surprise. Growing membership conveys legitimacy and momentum. Members contribute significantly to election campaigns and to party finances. They are the people who pick party leaders. They constitute the pool from which parties choose their candidates. They help anchor parties to the principles and people they came into politics to promote and protect. And they may even have a say on whether a party goes into government, at least in the event that an election fails to produce a majority for any one party – a distinct possibility given the fragmentation of Britain’s party system.

Beginning just after the 2015 General Election, and with funding from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, the ESRC and, latterly, Research England, we – the Party Members Project, run out of Queen Mary University of London and the University of Sussex – have, with the help of YouGov, been continuing to survey the members of the country’s political parties.

The surveys we conducted in 2015, 2017 and 2019, gave us a unique insight into the country’s party members, many of which were summed up in our book Footsoldiers: Political Party Membership in the 21st Century. We have now published findings from fieldwork conducted just after the 2024 General Election in Britain’s Party Members, which this time covers five parties (from right to left: Reform UK, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Greens), as well as a representative sample of the adult population.

Who members are

Given that so few people belong to a political party these days, anyone who has made the decision to join one is, almost by definition, unusual. That does not necessarily mean they are strange, but it does mean they are not very representative of the country as a whole.

For instance, more men than women belong to Britain’s political parties (Figure 1), and that is especially true of those who belong to right-wing rather than left-wing parties. Only the Greens can claim to be truly gender-balanced and, with Labour a partial exception, parties to their right skew significantly male.

As for age (Figure 2), there are not many Gen Z-ers – or even that many millennials – in the membership of the five parties we focused on. In none of them does the proportion of 18-24-year-olds rise above 4 per cent, compared to 10 per cent in the adult population as a whole.

As well as being overwhelmingly white British (we found that fewer – and, in the case of the Conservatives and Reform, far fewer – than 10 per cent are from an ethnic minority background), members are also overwhelmingly middle rather than working class (Figure 3). Indeed, the only party that matches the class profile (strictly speaking, the ‘social grade’ profile) of the country as a whole is Reform UK – something that will doubtless please one of Farage’s recent recruits from the Conservatives, Robert Jenrick, who has declared that “the divide in British politics has become Reform’s workers party versus the Tory posh party”.

When it comes to education, what really stands out is how few Reform members, relatively speaking, are graduates (Figure 4). That said, since this is now one of the most obvious differentiators between those who vote Green, Labour and Liberal Democrat, on the one hand, and those who vote for Reform (and, to a lesser extent, the Conservatives), on the other, it should probably come as no surprise that the same pattern appears among party members.

Those members, then, are – across a whole range of demographic characteristics – profoundly unrepresentative. Yet we allow them significant influence, both actual and potential, over the make-up of some of our most important political institutions. Just because that influence largely flies below the radar does not mean we should ignore it.

What members do

One thing we should get straight, however – especially given journalists’ tendency to use the terms interchangeably – is that being a party member does not necessarily mean being an activist. Even at election time, when they could be most useful, an awful lot of members do nothing – absolutely nothing – for their party (Figure 5). The Conservatives, it would seem, have most to worry about on this score, although if we use those who said they devoted more than 40 hours to helping out in 2024 as a proxy for hard-core activists, then the Tories did not fare quite as badly as we might suppose.

Still, the fact that most British party members are not the leaflet-delivering, door-knocking, meeting-attending obsessives of legend does at least provide a modicum of reassurance. However different they are demographically from the bulk of the country’s population, we do not need to worry quite as much as we might about the outsize influence they have on our democracy.

What members think

So much for who they are and what they do (or do not do) for their parties at election time. What about their political views? The answer is both predictable and revealing. Like the electorate as a whole, party members reflect a system that appears fragmented but in reality is increasingly structured around two blocs: on the right, voters choose between the Conservatives and Reform; on the more ‘progressive’ side, they divide between the Greens, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Among party members, this pattern is especially clear on a hot-button issue such as immigration (Figure 6).

There are also obvious differences when it comes to a more traditional issue such as tax and spend (Figure 7). True, a bigger proportion of Conservative members than might be expected were inclined to think things were ‘about right’ – probably because we ran the survey just after their party had left government. Even so, tax-cutting remained their most popular preference. It is also worth noting that, for all the accusations (often from Conservative politicians trying to persuade their erstwhile voters not to follow Farage) that Reform is somehow left-leaning on economics, many of its members are clearly no less Thatcherite than he himself is.

Broadly speaking, most parties’ members are reasonably like their voters – only more so. In some ways, that may be how it should be. Even so, for anyone concerned about the ongoing polarisation of British politics, it could be troubling. And if we look at their views on leadership and explore what has come to be known as ‘negative partisanship’, that concern may be justified.

When it comes to leadership, the two-bloc pattern re-emerges. Members (and voters) in the right bloc are significantly more likely than their ‘progressive’ counterparts to agree that the country needs a strong leader prepared to break the rules (Figure 8).

This two-bloc pattern is only partially reflected, however, in party members’ views on which parties they most dislike (Figure 9). Members of the Greens, Labour and the Liberal Democrats single out Reform for particular ire, while appearing less exercised about the Conservatives. That said, if we were running the survey now – a year and a half into the Starmer government – we suspect that Green and Liberal Democrat members might feel rather more negative towards Labour than they did straight after the election, when they were perhaps more willing to give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt.

On the other side, Labour was already by some distance the principal villain for Conservative and Reform members. It is noticeable, however, that members of the country’s two right-wing parties seem relatively well disposed towards each other – something that might make a pre- or post-election pact (or even, dare one say it, a full-blown merger) easier to negotiate in two or three years’ time.

Joining a political party, then, is not for most Britons. But we should not see those who do as some kind of alien species, utterly unlike the rest of us. For the most part, they are simply people with a stronger interest in – and faith in – politics than the average citizen, and with somewhat more pronounced (though not necessarily extreme) views.

That does not mean we should ignore how demographically unrepresentative party members are, how clearly they are separating into two increasingly polarised blocs, and how some appear relatively relaxed about rule-breaking leaders – especially given that they are the ones who select our party leaders and candidates.

Given that role, and given the effort at least some of them put into campaigning, they remain a vital part of Britain’s political landscape. If, as currently looks entirely possible, we are heading towards a hung Parliament in 2028 or 2029, their importance may become even more visible. While not every party is obliged to ask its members formally to approve participation in a coalition or a confidence-and-supply arrangement, even those that do not will need to take their memberships with them. Watch this space.

Originally published at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20419058261435804