Malcolm Petrie

It looks like​ Britain’s long-standing electoral duopoly is coming to an end. Even though Labour won a huge majority in the 2024 general election, the combined vote share of the two main parties dropped below 60 per cent, the lowest on record. The two-party system we have been used to emerged in the first quarter of the 20th century, a consequence primarily of the growing electoral...

The​ first Labour government assumed office in January 1924 after a general election a month earlier resulted in a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives the largest party. In the previous decade British politics had changed in ways that might have been expected to assist the Labour Party, most obviously with the decline of the Liberal Party, the dominant progressive political force until...

Unacknowledged both by Leavers and Remainers, EU membership has served to disguise the messy contradictions of Britain’s multinational state. The uninhibited restoration of parliamentary sovereignty – in this context, the brute expression of English dominance – is no solution. In recent decades, the EU has helped to ease tensions at national borders as well as serving as a safety net for devolution. Some kind of substitute – or, more likely, an array of alternatives – will be required, if Brexit is not to bring about the disintegration of our anomalous early modern hodgepodge.