British Elections 2010: Will Britain’s Third Party Make a Difference?

Gerald A. Dorfman, Hoover Institution, Stanford University



One of the major differences between the British and American political systems is the presence of a third major political party in Britain. The Liberal Democratic (nicknamed “Lib Dems”) Party inherited the role of Britain’s third party in 1988 when it emerged from the merger of Britain’s historic Liberal Party and the then 8-year old Social Democratic Party. At the last British General Election in 2005 the Liberal Democrats won 62 seats of the 646 in the House of Commons, and more importantly 22% of the total vote cast. Thus somewhat more than one of every five voters supported the Liberal Democrats rather than the two major parties, the ruling Labour Party or the Conservative Party. Moreover, the Lib Dems as they are called have been an importance force in local elections holding a large number of the local government council seats and controlling a number of municipal governments. So the Lib Dems are a real third party compared to the occasional and fleeting mostly protest third parties in the American electoral experience.

That said, Lib Dems have never won or even come close to winning enough seats in the House of Commons to create a majority and form a government or even close enough to cobble together a Coalition government with the participation of one of the other parties. Historically the last time the old Liberal Party (then still one of the two main parties) formed a government was about a hundred years ago, and shortly thereafter David Lloyd George served as the last Liberal Prime Minister heading a Coalition Government during World War One.

The key question about the Liberal Democrats at this point, with Britain approaching another General Election to be held whenever the Prime Minister decides but no later than June 2010, I what impact the Liberal Democrats will have ?

Current public opinion polls show the opposition Conservative Party in the clear lead over the other main and currently ruling party of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the Labour Party by about 43% to 31%--and Lib Dems at about 20%. If these numbers carried over to the election, Lib Dems would likely come out with just about the same percentage of the vote as before, and therefore would be still distant from holding office. But the situation is more uncertain then these figures show. Indeed the Lib Dems, while unlikely to win the election , just might be a make-weight factor in the election outcome as well as in the makeup of the next government. This makes speculation at this point, still months before the election, so interesting and fun.

The starting point for thinking about what factor the Lib Dems may be in the next election is to look at the way seats are distributed in a British election. Britain has a first past the post system similar to the election for the House of Representatives. Candidates with the most votes are the winners. This works against third parties because they can accumulate a relatively large national vote but come in second or third in elections for individual seats most everywhere and thus have little to show for their effort. That is exactly what has tended to happen to the Lib Dems and before them during the 20th century to the Liberal Party as a third party. Even now, though the Lib Dems have enjoy their highest number of seats for nearly 80 years, their 22% of the vote , distributed by a proportional arrangement would have netted them about 170 seats in the House of Commons. But, on the other side of the coin, the current system does yield a stable government with a disproportionate large number of seats. So, for example, the current ruling Labour Party won 35% of the seats in the 2005 election but won 330 seats or well more than 50% of the total of 646 seats in the House of Commons.

A second feature of the British election system is that the other bias built in to the next election’s outcome at this time is that the Labour Party enjoys a more favorable distribution of their supporting electorate around the country than is the case for either the Conservatives or the Lib Dems. In fact, very importantly that the Conservatives need to win about 43% of the vote to secure a majority of the seats, but Labour needs only about 37% ! WOW ! What a big disparity! But it is also an important opening for the Lib Dems even while continuing to be at a disadvantage in getting a “fair” share of its seats compared to its total vote.

In short, it is easy to imagine that the next British election which currently looks like a win, even an easy win, for the Conservatives could produce instead a situation in which the Conservatives are the leading vote getters but end up with a minority of seats. That is where the Lib Dems come in. Even if they win a reduced number of seats they could emerge as the make-weight, holding the leverage, leading to a significant bargaining position with the other parties.

All of this speculation about a “hung” Parliament ( meaning no clear winner to form a government on its own without a Coalition) is reminding of the 2000 presidential election in the United States which was decided by the Supreme Court. It was either Gore or Bush, no third party candidate or third party to be the make-weight in the outcome. It was the court, not elements of the political system that decided or negotiated the outcome which means the political leadership that followed was not democratically elected but decided by jurists who were not elected. The presence of the Liberal Democratic third party in Britain thus creates a real contrast in the potential way that a disputed election would be decided.

In such a scenario, which has occurred in Britain before, the two main parties would again undoubtedly bid for Lib Dem support in order to decide the election outcome. This would likely involve a great deal of political bargaining, that is perhaps inviting some leaders of the Liberal Democrats to sit in the Cabinet and manage government ministries with the largest party taking the leading post of Prime Minister and a majority of Cabinet seats. Short of that (if the leading party turns out to have done better in the election) there might be a set of policy agreements about what the new government would do in exchange for Lib Dem support, or some agreement with the Lib Dems to allow for changes in the election system that would produce a more proportional outcome in the future which would benefit a third party. In sum, the shape of an arrangement to settle the election would depend on the configuration of election support between the political parties and crucially how many seats each party held.

This discussion might seem at first glance to be mere fanciful speculation. But it is rooted in British election history which has occasionally produced a “hung” Parliament. It is also rooted in the history of election campaigns and their dynamics. Overall, most election campaigns in Britain produce a tightening of support for all parties as the election day approaches-- even in landslide election contests, and the Lib Dems in particular have a record of improving their percentages as the election nears. So that reality coupled with the Conservative’s need to win a much higher share of the votes than Labour in order to form a majority government makes the upcoming election quite intriguing even though the Conservatives continue to hold a significant public opinion lead.