Party like it's 1999

As Prince observed, "parties weren't meant to last", so why are we saddled with political parties no longer fit for purpose?

I was musing on this question having read that yet another Labour councillor has resigned the party whip on Oxford City Council following Sir Keir Starmer's injudicious remarks on LBC Radio about Israel's right to cut off supplies of electricity, water, fuel and food to Gaza. Cllr Barbara Coyne is the ninth Labour councillor to resign in Oxford, the twenty-second nationally so far, and her resignation means that Labour has lost its majority on the council.  Cllr Coyne has, however, informed her ex-group Leader that she will not join another party and will continue to vote with Labour in council in support of its manifesto commitments.

I empathise with Cllr Coyne having myself, when a Labour councillor in a London borough, resigned the whip to sit as an Independent while continuing to vote with the group on the manifesto on which I had been elected, as seemed only right. It does, though, rather beg the question of the continued usefulness of political parties, or at least of the existing ones, especially at local level.

Even at the national level the old party system is fraying at the edges after a particularly fraught few years in Westminster sparked by Brexit and the pandemic. There were moments when it seemed all the Sturm und Drang over Brexit and Partygate would split the Conservative Party, and may yet if (please make it when) it loses the impending general election. For its part, Labour looked set to split over Jeremy Corbyn's leadership and, despite all his efforts to reunite his party, Starmer now finds himself at the centre of a storm over his direction on Palestine. Corbyn fell due to claims of antisemitism and Starmer is now embroiled in controversy over his support for Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip, which is alienating Muslim party members and voters. 

It's not as if the current party set-up is set in stone. The Conservative Party was founded in 1834 arising out of the former Tory Party. The Whigs, who had vied with the Tories since the mid-17th century, morphed into the Liberal Party in the mid-19th. The Labour Party was founded in 1900 but suffered a schism in 1981 when a small group, dubbed the Gang of Four, split off to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP). This merged with the Liberal Party in 1988 to form the current Liberal Democratic Party (Lib Dems). Devolution since 1997 has led to the growth of national parties in the constituent parts of the UK, such as the SNP, DUP and Plaid Cymru.

New parties may emerge, possibly imminently, but is there a viable alternative? I have written about this before and the major problem with Independent representation is knowing what individual representatives actually stand for; left, right or centre. Parties offer a shorthand for the electorate but, as we have seen, parties themselves are not homogeneous entities and tend to have their own left-, right- and centrist wings. These are supposed to be kept in line by the whipping system but, as we have also seen, party discipline is breaking down, most spectacularly in the division lobby during the fracking vote in Liz Truss' mercifully brief premiership, which was little short of a fracas.

The unelected House of Lords includes non-aligned peers, the Crossbenchers, so maybe the lower chamber could be reorganised accordingly - it's long overdue with or without Independents, God knows. The problem is getting elected as an Independent politician in the first place, as I know well from my own experience. Without the financial and team support of a party the chances of being elected are virtually nil and without elected Independents being returned to parliament and councils there's no incentive to try to include them, or accommodate them, in the political process.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) has been calling for citizens' assemblies where a group of citizens selected at random thrash out policies in a deliberative process with the results being submitted to elected representatives for debate and potential legislation. Perhaps we should cut out the middle men and women and move straight to a system of randomly selecting our legislators, rather like jury service. We'd probably be no worse served and possibly better. (I'm only half joking.)

There was a long tradition of ratepayer councillors in England and Wales and in the 1970s around 20% of local councillors were Independents but that number steadily declined until quite recently. Now around 15% of councillors are Independents (more if they keep on resigning at this rate) and they are supported by the Local Government Association (LGA) Independent Group, as I was when I stood for re-election as an Independent.

For now, though, it looks like it's party on.

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