Everyone likes a party. This may explain why Britain’s then-prime minister, Boris Johnson, was happy to condone and attend parties at No 10 Downing Street a couple of years ago when the country was under strict COVID-19 rules. Unfortunately for him, most of the public didn’t see it the same way and roundly condemned his rule-breaking.

The British public was quite right to condemn these parties at the heart of government at a time they were banned. Indeed, some would argue that the ban now needs to be reimposed more comprehensively to include all political parties as well, including the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. These two parties have dominated British politics for the past century, often to the detriment of good government and democracy.

Technically, UK politics is a multiparty system, including, among others, the Liberal Democrat, Green, Scottish and Welsh nationalist, and even the Official Monster Raving Loony parties. However, this range belies the political reality of a two-party system, with either the Conservatives or Labour dominating government through the “first-past-the-post” or “winner-take-all” electoral system. Over the past 100 years, this has meant that the only realistic choice presented to voters at general elections has been between a Conservative government and a Labour one. If you don’t think much of either of these parties, then you are effectively disenfranchised, your vote for a candidate from another party being little more than a protest vote.

For many people, this lack of incentive to vote is compounded by the fact that most of the time, Conservative and Labour politicians have tried to appeal to the middle ground of politics in order to maximize their votes. The Conservative Party doesn’t want to lose votes by being too far to the right in their manifesto promises, and Labour doesn’t want to lose votes by being too socialist in theirs. So in the majority of elections, the choice offered is usually between a left-leaning right-wing party or a right-leaning left-wing party. It’s a bit like a restaurant with only two items on the menu: “chicken and rice” or “rice and chicken”. The irony here is that Britain sees itself as a beacon of democracy and likes to contrast itself with those countries that have a one-party system. This isn’t entirely honest, as on the big issues the policy differences between Britain’s two major parties are not that great. 

If you look at the current set of Conservative and Labour policies, you will see a remarkable alignment. Both parties want better public services, both support the National Health Service, both want more spent on defense, both support nuclear weapons, both want to keep Brexit, both want to raise educational standards, both want to support private enterprise, and of course both want to keep taxes from increasing for the average voter. So when politicians in Britain condemn “one-party states” around the world, they should perhaps reflect that in policy terms at least, the differences between those states and Britain’s two-party state are not as great as they might like to imagine.

There is another even greater similarity between one-party states and Britain’s two-party system. This is with regard to government powers once the general election is over. For five years after each election, the Conservative or Labour government is able to enjoy the sort of “authoritarian rule” that they love to condemn in one-party states. Because of the “first-past-the-post” electoral system, governments generally have a large majority in Parliament, even if most of the electorate voted against them. This means that opposition parties are rarely able to muster enough votes in the House of Commons to halt or amend whatever legislation the government is backing.

This situation, sometimes referred to as an “elected autocracy”, is compounded by the fact that the government is also able to control how its own members of Parliament (MPs) vote through the appropriately named whipping system. This means that any dissenting voices in the government ranks will be “whipped” into submission and forced to toe the party line. The whipping isn’t literal of course, though I’m sure some in government would like it to be. However, it does create a bullying culture whereby the governing party’s MPs are obliged to obey the government enforcers (whips) and what is termed a three-line whip attached to important government legislation. Voting on this legislation is not secret, and if any MPs dare to defy the whips, they can be expelled from the parliamentary party and de-selected at the next election. So the vast majority of MPs merely acquiesce in fulfilling their role as voting fodder, voting exactly as the party leader orders, rather than according to their principles or conscience.

There is one other characteristic of the two-party system that detracts even further from the democratic ideal. This is the nature of party funding, which relies heavily on donors to finance the big party machines. When wealthy businesspeople or powerful trade unions make substantial donations to a political party, they generally do so in the expectation that in government, the grateful party will pursue policies that are favorable to them. Sometimes, there is a natural affinity between the interests of, say, a wealthy businessperson and the Conservative Party, or between a trade union and the Labour Party, but of course the potential for corruption is self-evident. The policies of grateful governments can all too easily slide into favoring the interests of large financial donors, as opposed to the broader interests of the country.

So next time you hear a British politician condemning one-party states for being “undemocratic”, “authoritarian” or “corrupt”, just consider the role of the party in British politics: the effective disenfranchisement of voters who don’t support either of the two main parties; the narrow policy differences between these two main parties; the large government majorities given to parties that most people voted against; the whip system bullying MPs to toe the party line; the party funding so open to abuse. These characteristics of British politics are tolerated in the UK but attacked as features of “tyrannical autocracies” when seen elsewhere in the world. It was Plato who said that all democracies end in tyranny. He should perhaps have added that not everyone likes a party.

The author is a British historian and former principal of Sha Tin College, Hong Kong.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.