Westminster Palace in London. Photo: PA
The “three-body problem” is physics is fairly well known. Crudely, in Newtonian
Stripped of inessential factors, the way modern British Government usually works can be seen as being a bit like the three-body problem. Between elections, and in normal times when there is a Parliamentary majority for a single Party, only three institutions really matter: the Executive, Parliament and the political parties.
The way our “parliamentary democracy” emerged was by gradually eroding the powers of the actual Monarch and passing these instead to the Prime Minister (executive). Parliament’s role was to authorise the Government to govern and to scrutinise how they did it—but the balance of power lies with “Her Majesty’s Government.”
The third element of this triangle is the parties, which tie together the other two. The Leader of the Party that “commands the confidence (majority) of the House of Commons” usually becomes the Prime Minister. This effectively neutralises many potential tensions between the House of Commons and the Executive. It’s why it has often been referred to as an “elective dictatorship”—the Government rules OK. Or, as the anarchist slogan used to have it: “Whoever you Vote for, the Government will get in.”
The political parties marshall “their” MPs in the House of Commons behind the Government’s policies. Although there are degrees of interaction between back bench MPs and Ministers, the ruling Party provides the glue that holds Government and Parliament together.
The existence of the main Opposition Party—or “Her Majesty’s loyal opposition”—also forms part of this configuration, keeping disputes and arguments within the usual channels of Parliament.
When it works, this system is relatively stable. Currently, it faces an almost perfect storm of challenges.
The Reduced Pull of a Minority Government
As soon as you have a minority Government—as we currently do—this relatively stable set of relationships starts to wobble. Ruling party MPs may be tempted to use their extra leverage to wins concessions from the Government. Minority parties can use the Governments weakness to likewise push for changes they want. Party loyalties become strained. This situation can also start to tilt the balance of power away from the Executive towards Parliament.
The Diminishing Gravitational Pull of Parties
It is well known that affiliations to political parties have been slowly weakening from their post-WWII peak. Voters have increasingly become volatile in their allegiances, and party memberships have generally dwindled, very recent surges in some Parties—Labour, Liberal Democrats and the SNP—not withstanding.
This has weakened party loyalties at Westminster. Professor Philip Cowley and colleagues have documented the increasing tendency of MPs to rebel against their own Parties.
Just before the current Brexit-triggered crisis started to unfold, the Labour Party had already gone through its own convulsion with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader and relatedly a massive influx of new members. This drove a huge wedge between two of our three bodies: the Labour Party members in the country and the majority of Labour MPs in Parliament.
A rather more slow-burn change also overcame the Tories with similar consequences. The majority of the dwindling and ageing Party membership moved in a strongly Europhobic direction, whilst the majority of Tory MPs in Parliament remained pro-EU.
Enter the Fourth Body: The Brexit Referendum
Into what was already a destabilising three-body system crashed the rogue planet “Referendum” in 2016. Many people have already commented extensively on how a form of direct democracy—like a referendum—does fit not comfortably into the UK’s representative form of parliamentary democracy.
For a start, it has massively exacerbated the divisions within the Political Parties. The Tories lost their Prime Minister and looked like going into absolute meltdown immediately after the Referendum. Whilst Theresa May has successfully held the Party together formally since then, the divisions have deepened and widened ever since. Her decision to call, and then perform disastrously in, a snap General Election in 2017 massively increased her problems.
Labour also went through an immediate crisis, with the vast majority of their MPs voting “no confidence” in Jeremy Corbyn only for him to be re-elected by the hugely increased membership. Barely-disguised guerrilla warfare between the party and its MPs has persisted ever since.
This week we have seen a further development: a partially successful attempt by the House of Commons to drag substantial powers away from the Executive and shape the future of Brexit.
Planet Referendum has crashed into an already unstable three-body system in which relatively predictable orbits were starting to deviate from their usual patterns. All four are spinning off into new trajectories and tugging each other in new directions.
Where, when, and even if, the system will eventually settle into a pattern is radically unpredictable at the moment. Now, where’s that book on chaos theory…
