Westminster Beyond Brexit: Ending the Politics of Division

Tags

Top Highlights

• majoritarian system has failed to deliver majority governments, much less stability.

• ‘concentrates power in the hands of a bare majority’

• Parliamentary sovereignty over the judiciary

• moved towards a consensus model over the last two decades, with devolution and the establishment of legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; the London Assembly; the Human Rights Act, and later, the creation of the Supreme Court, an independent Bank of England and the removal of most of the hereditary peers in the House of Lords (previously ‘a relic of a pre-democratic era’ in Lijphart’s assessment). Such reforms have shifted the UK away from a traditional Westminster-type system, but in spite of this marginal movement, we continue to cling closely to this system as the ideal.

• strength and stability over representativeness and responsiveness, yet in recent years it has clearly failed even on these claims.

• an exercise in executive power and constitutional flexibility

• the Brexit process had been an exercise in the Westminster executive taking back control for itself.

• ram through policy on a slim majority is not an ideal to which we should aspire.

• less democratic

• designed to be oppositional means that policies are often repealed immediately after a change in government.

• underpinned by support built across the political spectrum.

• designed for two-party politics

• majority government whose backbenchers are whipped into line, combined with a weak second chamber limited by a lack of legitimacy, means the executive is rarely required to make any compromises.

• Democratic engagement and participation are sacrificed in favour of attempts to create single-party, majority governments, yet changes in voting patterns have stretched the two-party system in recent years.

• operate erratically and disproportionally

• second highest aggregate level volatility – the movement of votes between the parties

• results have been unpredictable.

• majority government secured by under 37 percent of the vote share.

• this return to two-partyism is temporary.

• significant gains for the Liberal Democrats, Greens and independent candidates.