The starting point for a comparison between the British and American systems is to keep in mind that they are very different, even though both are among the world's oldest democracies. The British have a unitary Parliamentary system . The United States is a Presidential system with divided powers of checks and balances between Congress and the President. By contrast, the Executive and Legislative branches in Britain are in effect fused together. The Prime Minister in Britain actually sits in the House of Commons . A Prime Minister wins office by first being chosen to lead a political party which either currently holds or subsequently wins a majority in the House of Commons . Thus, Prime Ministers are not directly elected by British voters. British voters only cast a vote for one national office when they go to the polls: for their local Member of Parliament ( the House of Commons). Notice therefore the contrast between the British procedure and the American system in which the President is specifically chosen by the electorate from all the federally based states. Presidents thus owe their election directly to the voters, while Prime Ministers owe their selection to members of their political party.
Once chosen, Prime Ministers lead their majorities in the House of Commons with "discipline". They can count on the vote of their colleagues on nearly every issue they regard as important in the work of Parliament. By the same token, the leader of the opposition party can count on an equally disciplined group of members in the House of Commons nearly always voting with him or her against the Government of the day.
Thus, political combat on the national level is clear cut and between the parties with little complaining about partisanship. Partisanship is indeed the name of the game as an elected majority party is expected to, with discipline, implement the program they offered to the electorate in order to attract votes in national elections. So the question of being bipartisan, or in the way American politicians are condemned for being "too" partisan, really does not arise in Britain. Votes in the House of Commons on important issues are nearly always predictable in that the government wins nearly every time. In short, the British Government has been elected to do what it thinks best in terms of policy making and policy implementation.
This might suggest that the British system is actually a form of dictatorship rather than the democracy we always attach to Britain. In fact, much of the notion of British democracy is bound up in the free and clean elections that give British voters a real choice in deciding who will govern them. But there is more than that which is democratic: governments of each party carry out a longstanding tradition of consultation with both interest groups and political party oppositions about the details of policy in drafting, legislating and even implementing laws. Further, in the case of opposition political parties, there are clear times set aside in Parliament when the opposition gets the chance to fully state and debate their views on every piece of legislation, and when bills are examined in committee before final passage opposition politicians have the chance, with a serious hearing from the government to criticize and offer amendments to even the most important government bills.
But even though parties can criticize and even get an influential hearing from the government it does not mean that British governments negotiate the terms of policy per se or indeed worry about bipartisan relations with their opposition, including agreements about the details and style of government. Its just "not on", as governments are still expected to proceed to do what they think best in the end. Thus, by comparing the British experience, we learn that there can be important and real democracy without bipartisanship.
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