In Britain, the small Green Party has won its first by-election.
A by-election is held between general elections when a seat becomes available among the 650 in the House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament. The upper house is the House of Lords.
At the end of February, Green candidate Hannah Spencer, a plumber and member of the local government council, won a major upset victory in the by-election for the constituency of Gorton and Denton in Greater Manchester.
Manchester was once a major manufacturing center in the heartland of England. This constituency was created in 2024 following a comprehensive review and redrawing of boundaries for House of Commons seats. Manchester, economically challenged, facing industrial decline, in the past was a Labour Party stronghold.
No longer. Times have changed dramatically.
W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, the great Victorian British musical impresarios, declared in their 1882 light opera “Iolanthe” that Great Britain was admirably two-party politically:
“Every boy and every gal that’s born into the world alive is either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative.” The Conservative Party and the Liberal Party were dominant in the nation in the Victorian age, through most of the 19th century, and into the 20th century.
Even then, however, the overall political environment was changing, eventually dramatically.
While the government of Great Britain was stable overall, there was, occasionally, sustained violent pressure to grant Ireland independence. Most of Ireland gained independence in 1921, after a sustained struggle. Protestant Northern Ireland remained with Britain to comprise the United Kingdom.
Also, early in that century, the Labour Party replaced the Liberal Party.
Now, the environment of two-party stability is changing even more. Both major parties are declining. An early indicator has been the long-term revival of the Liberal Party and now successor Liberal Democrats, along with the Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties, which began in the 1960s.
Turbulence and unpredictability are now the order of the day, demonstrated in Gorton and Denton.
In the 2010 general election, neither major party won a clear majority in the House of Commons, a first in British politics since World War II. The result was a coalition government from 2010 to 2015 involving the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, the first coalition since the special all-party government during the challenge of that war.
British politics today is steadily fracturing into multiple parties, no longer two or even three. Brexit, the agonizing effort to break free of the controversial European Union, splintered the governing Conservative Party and then divided the Labour Party as well.
Important to keep in mind is that the British have maintained institutions and the rule of law, even as the alternative parties and patterns are emerging. In our time, the British have maintained stability through institutional as well as policy reforms, generally peacefully. Regional assemblies for Scotland and Wales are one result.
Professor Sir John Curtice of Strathclyde University in Scotland argues Ms. Spencer’s victory shows the collapse of traditional support for the Labour Party among working-class and ethnic populations. Sir John is an increasingly visible and influential expert on politics and opinion trends, who is also raising the prominence of Strathclyde University internationally as well as nationally.
Yet while Britain’s politics are shifting, the long-term success of its representative government and competitive party democracy is enduring and undeniable.
Britain’s fundamental stability contrasts with some trends in Europe – and the U.S.
Arthur I. Cyr is author of “After the Cold War – American Foreign Policy, Europe and Asia” (NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan). Contact acyr@carthage.edu.
