The End of “Elective Dictatorships”?

The extraordinary events of the last month have provided yet another example of perhaps the most striking feature of UK politics over the last six years: the eroding power Westminster governments have over the policy agenda.

On 6th September 2022, Liz Truss became Prime Minister on the back of a leadership contest in which she promised to rip-up the “Treasury orthodoxy” and embark on a new economic policy based on low-taxes and deregulation.

On 23rd September, the now former Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced sweeping tax cuts. The planned increase in corporation tax from the previous Johnson government would be scrapped, the 45% top rate of income tax abolished, and the basic rate of income tax cut from 20% to 19%.

Just three weeks later, Truss’s entire economic policy agenda lay in tatters. The reaction of the financial markets to Kwarteng’s “mini-budget” and mounting political pressure from within the Parliamentary Conservative Party, forced the Truss government into an astonishing set of U-turns. Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked on October 14th, making him the second-shortest reigning Chancellor in British history. In a statement on October 17th, the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, announced that “almost all” of the government’s new tax proposals would be reversed.

Days later, Liz Truss’s grip on power slipped completely. On October 20th 2022, with her economic credibility shattered and her political authority demolished, Truss was forced to resign, thereby becoming the shortest-serving PM in history.

Never before has a government had such a lack of control over its own policy agenda. But it is not supposed to be like this over here.

The phrase “elective dictatorship” was first coined by Conservative Peer, Lord Hailsham. It refers to the way the executive (government) is usually able to dominate the legislature (Parliament) when it comes to the setting of policy in the UK. There are several reasons why executive-dominance is common British politics is – most relate to the structure of our constitution:

• A “fusion of powers”: There is very little separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. Members of the government (the PM & his/her ministers) are also members of Parliament.
• Our First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) electoral system usually delivers single-party government. The largest party in the House of Commons often has a sizeable majority.
• Parliamentary sovereignty: In the UK, Parliament is the source of all political authority. Therefore, the party with a majority in Parliament has significant power.
• Feebleness of the House of Lords: Over the Twentieth Century the House of Lords had most of its power stripped away. The Parliament Acts of 1911 & 1949 mean that it can only delay, not block, legislation approved by the House of Commons. The Salisbury Convention holds that the House of Lords should not interfere with any legislation promised in a governing party’s manifesto. This makes it much easier for the governing party to pass legislation than, say, in the United States where bills must pass through both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The UK has a bicameral legislature in name only, and arguably the sovereignty of Parliament is really the sovereignty of the House of Commons.

Although Lord Hailsham first used the term “elective dictatorship” in 1976, the height of executive-dominance in British politics would occur after this time. In their combined 21 years in office, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair saw their governments lose only eight votes in the House of Commons between them. Neither would say that they achieved everything they wanted, but there is no doubt that both dominated the domestic policy agenda for most of their tenures.

The last six years in British politics have been completely different, however. It is a remarkable fact that the four prime ministers we have had since July 2016 have all left office, not because they were defeated in a general election, but because they were forced to resign. In three out of these four cases, resignations were necessary because the government could not dictate policy:

• David Cameron resigned because the result of the 2016 referendum meant that he had lost control over his government’s policy toward the European Union.
• Theresa May resigned in 2019 because her government failed to pass the necessary legislation to deliver Britain’s exit from the EU.
• Now, Liz Truss’s premiership has ended after just 45 days following a botched economic experiment.

It’s clear that enjoying a majority in Parliament is no guarantee of dominating the legislative agenda. David Cameron and Liz Truss both possessed majorities when they quit. The use of referenda can take policy out of the government’s hands; powerful financial markets limit the scope of economic policy, and party unity is probably the most decisive factor when it comes to a government’s ability to “get things done”.