Revision Update: UK Politics: Internal Party Democracy

The opportunity for members to have an input into party proceedings might be considered to best identified by considering three main areas:1. The election of leaders2. The role of conference and policy making3. The selection of candidates for elections

The greater the degree of power over the above the ordinary members have, the greater will be the level of internal party democracy.

1.) With regard to the first criteria, there has not been a leadership election for any of the major parties. There has though been considerable speculation about a leadership challenge.

a. For the Conservative party, Cameron has faced considerable hostility from his own backbenchers. They have not been supportive of the policy compromises that he has made in order for the coalition to work and the fact that their prospects for promotion have been limited, has meant that they have been prepared to be more rebellious than might be expected from a party that have been out of office for over 10 years. With Liam Fox and David Davis out of the cabinet, they are not bound by the convention of collective responsibility, and are thus available should a leadership challenge be launched.

Under the new rules introduced in 1998, a vote of no confidence in the leader supported by 15% of the MPs can trigger a leadership election. There has been no sign of any such move and the proximity of the next election would suggest that Cameron is safe. His continued leadership could well hinge on the outcome of the next election.

2.) Party conferences have long been in decline. The Conservative party conference has never been a policy making body. Votes have never been taken. Instead, the event is stage managed, designed to allow the leader and others to present their policies in the best possible light, a piece of “window dressing” with the leader guaranteed a standing ovation from the party faithful.

The Labour party conference too has long been emasculated. The damaging infighting of the 1980s did the party no good in terms of its electoral credibility and both Kinnock and Blair sought to ensure conference came closer to the Conservative model and those of national party conventions held in the US.

Both parties established national policy forums which gave the outward appearance of granting members an input into policy making but actually allowed the leadership to control key policy decisions. Finkelstein described the leader’s speech as “his biggest speech of the year”[1]and rubbished the idea that this was an opportunity for real policy debate.

Part of the problem relates to the dramatic fall in party membership. In the 1950s Conservative party membership was 3m. Today that figure is 177,000. Labour too have less than 200,000 and the lib Dems fewer than 50,000. This has led to the situation where at conference there are on occasion “more lobbyists and representatives of the media than there are party members.”[2]

These changes led Finkelstein to argue “The whole thing seems rather pointless. Why not abolish them? Or hold them less often?”[3]