I would also politely disagree with your notion that two dominating parties is a recent and short-lived phenomenon. 2010 and 2017 were notable recent exceptions to a decades-long norm of majority governments; those two elections were the first since 1974 to return a hung parliament, and that election was the first since pre-war years to return a hung parliament, I believe. Until the 2010s, hung parliaments were not at all common, and the result was typically a more clear cut Conservative-Labour face off, with the combined vote share of the two parties typically being at least 70%, often approaching or over 80%. 2017’s vote share for the two main parties was 82%, 2019’s was 76%, and you look back to the latter half of the 20th century, the combined vote share for the two main parties was routinely comfortably over 70%.
Going back to this, and it is relevant to what has been discussed since, I think the theme running through most of the debate is common misconceptions that we all make, including me, about how our democracy works.
In its rawest form, we all just vote for an MP to represent our interests in parliament. It's fair and completely proportional as we don't technically vote for an executive power directly, we rely on our elected representatives to decide national governance for us. The individual candidate with the most votes wins, and we give them the power to go and do their thing. Winner takes all at constituency level. That's our role in national democracy done.
Completely different to America, where representatives and congressmen, who represent constituencies at a federal level, are elected individually, and separately from that of the national executive power. There's no justification for presidential elections not being purely PR based.
That MP actually has complete control of what they do. They can technically become Prime Minister if they have the confidence of enough MP's regardless of which 'party' they belong to. They always have a free vote on all legislation, whips are just party enforcers, the MP still chooses. They can pick and choose a party they want to belong to, or sit as an independent.
Any MP (as well as lords) can hold a government position. If you live in Clacton and are really proud of the MP you voted for, there's no written rule saying he couldn't be appointed Chancellor tomorrow by Starmer. He could hold surgeries, become close with the needs of his constituents, decide that he's actually got it all wrong, have a change of heart of change direction to represent their needs and leave his party, sit as an independent, or join another.
Just because this system encourages MP's to ally themselves into vehicle groups as it makes complete sense to do so, they don't have to. Political parties are exactly this in their rawest form. Just individual MP's forming unions to become collectively more powerful. Strength in numbers. And those unions they form can change over time, there's nothing to say one has to be called a set name or support certain ideologies. They are what they need to be. Times change, people change, membership changes, issues change.
The SNP at its core used to be a right wing nationalist party. Still nationalist but a left wing one now. This has been electorally effective, amassing a group of MP's wielding enormous power in comparison to national vote share, and surpressing the chances of a Labour government at UK level.
The Liberal Democrats are wildly different to the Whig derived Liberal party of David Lloyd George. Nick Cleggs party that formed a coalition with the Tories, seemed quite different to Steel and MacLennan's Social and Liberal Democratic Party of 1988 following the merger of Liberals and a the Labour party breakaway group derived SDP.
Atlee's deeply routed socialist party, founded a mere 45 years by trade unions as a workers party before he became prime minister, was called Labour. Blair's Third way social democratic party was also called 'New' Labour, quite different, and probably further to the right than the conservatives of the 1960's.
The post war consensus accepting Tories of the 50's and 60's were a far cry from the Conservative traditionalists of Churchill's party. Thatchers Conservatives have little in common with both, adopting Neo-Liberal capitalism as the new core, quite a remarkable change that endures to this day and also changed opposing parties.
Despite their namesakes and glossy "our history" sections of their websites that proudly display figures of the past, most political parties have little to do with any of them. And they don't do so in an evolutionary kind of way either, more like shape shifting to stay relevant as politics and the electorate changes. The most overriding ideology will always be existence as a political force.
Whatever it's called, whatever it believes in, whoever joins it, whoever it forms alliances with, whoever merges with it, whatever it's rules and constitution says, main political parties are just MP's and members organising behind a vehicle in which to achieve influence and power.
Labour has suffered for decades from pressure from other parties, and did what it took last year, alongside other parties, to achieve its real aim as a political force.
The Conservatives seem to be at the start of a similar journey as of now, and who knows what will happen? Do a Blair and pick the parts of enemy clothing you think will win with the electorate but also be tolerated with the membership? Chase Reform? Merge with Reform? Destroy Reform? Form electoral alliances? Go left? Go right? Go Liberal? Go authoritarian? Do a Thatcher and go for something new? Do a Corbyn and try and rewind the clock? Change name? Change colours? Spilt the enemy?
Whatever happens, hung parliaments or not, this system will always favour a collective of MP's that are able to form a government together. This doesn't have to be the in the form of formal political parties, they don't even have to exist, it just makes sense for them to do so. A parliament would be hung if enough individual MP's couldn't agree to form a government together.
So nothing has really changed when you think of it like that. In reality, a collection of individually elected MP's have chosen to work with eachother under an umbrella organisation branded 'Labour' (some also Co-operative party) to form a government together. All other individual MP's have chosen not to, so are all in opposition as a result, no matter which party they belong to. Political parties don't win elections in reality, only individual MP's do in their individual seats.
So it's all more to do with the way MP's organise themselves than anything else. It's not a recent phenomenon at all. Over many decades there's been a significant amount of splits, mergers, new parties, new movements, independent MP's, defections, hung parliaments, coalitions, deals, cross party committees, coining of the phrase "broad church" etc, and, most importantly, the most successful parties themselves have fundamentally changed numerous times if you look beyond the 'Labour' or 'Conservative' branding. I'd say the outlier years were actually the 1940's to 1970's for both major vehicles being able to shape shift and organise as well as they did. And until opposition MP's can learn how to do this now, they won't achieve power.
