General Election 2017: A New Two-Party Politics?
| DOI | 10.1177/2041905817726889 |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Author | John Curtice |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
4 POLITICAL INSIGHT • SEPTEMBER 2017
Amongst all the statistics that
any election brings, there is
one above all that would seem
most striking so far as the 2017
election is concerned. No less than 82.4 per
cent of the votes cast across the UK as a
whole were won by either a Conservative or
a Labour candidate. This gure was higher
than it had been at any election since 1970.
It would seem that Britain has reverted to the
two-party dominance that characterised its
politics in the immediate post-war period.
That it should have done so in the wake of a
EU referendum that had severely disrupted
the regular rhythms of British politics, and
which had seemed to present a heaven-sent
opportunity for smaller parties to increase
their support, was even more remarkable.
One key feature of the two-party politics
of the immediate post-war era was the link
between party support and social class.
Middle class voters were more likely to vote
Conservative, while those from a working-
class background were more inclined to
vote Labour which, after all, had originally
been founded to promote working class
representation. True, to win an election a
party had to be able to appeal beyond its
core supporters and capture the ideological
‘centre ground’. But even so, Labour was
close to the (predominantly working class)
trade union movement and was inclined to
back policies that would see government
intervene rather more in the economy, in
order to achieve somewhat greater equality.
The Conservatives, in contrast, had relatively
General Election
2017: A New
Two-Party Politics?
On the surface, the UK General Election looked like a return to two-party politics. However, the headline
figures mask significant changes, most notably the emergence of age as a key determinant of British politics,
as John Curtice reports.
© Press Association
Political Insight Sept2017.indd 4 21/07/2017 11:57
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