Across the western world, membership of political parties is in decline. It is estimated that whereas in the 1950s some 3.5 million Britons belonged to one of the three main parties, the equivalent figure now is only some 0.5 million. Over the last 20 years, there has been a 50 per cent fall in party membership. The percentage of the electorate who belong to the main parties is now one of the lowest in Europe, although nearly all established western democracies are seeing on-going decline in party membership.
Why? It is not the case that belonging to other membership organisations is in decline. In fact, involvement with organised groups is on the rise, as is volunteering. It is only the political parties that seem to have a major problem. And it isn’t that the public is going off politics per se. We are just as interested in politics as ever, as figure 1 shows. Instead, the issue is that there is something about political parties themselves that seems to be the problem. It’s worth asking ourselves a few fundamental questions.
What are political parties for? Fundamentally, it must be as a signifier of differing political beliefs – a way in which political activity can be organised. Of course, we’d all like our own perfect political party – unique to all our particular beliefs. But we compromise around a set of values and a manifesto that few are 100 per cent happy with. The failure of Labour supporters to turn out in 2005 – especially younger working-class women – reflects this strongly. A quarter of the population (27 per cent) do not think any of the three main parties have anything for them: considerably higher than in 2001, when this figure was only 19 per cent (see figure 2).
As society becomes more diverse and mobile, the days when one could predict that a miners’ son would vote Labour and a Surrey stockbroker’s child Conservative are long gone. And this, in turn, is part of the problem political parties face. In their heyday, party membership was clearly more than just about politics with a big P. It was – and still is for the junkies – intensely social, almost tribal.
These days, even in small towns, there is plenty more to do than go down the Labour club or Conservative association for a drink with like-minded people. So what’s the problem with belonging to a political party? In a sense, membership has declined because it has become purely political in a rather traditional sense. All the fun bits have gone; one is left with too much work for too few people and – in some places – with the people who haven’t got anywhere else to go. Combine this with temporal factors to do with the challenges facing the country and the absence of radical ideological differences about their solutions being debated and you see more of the issue.
One of the reasons people don’t vote at the moment is that they do not perceive that much difference between the two main parties, and they are relatively well-off – three-quarters describe themselves as satisfied with their standard of living, and concern about unemployment is a tenth of what it was during the last recession 13 years ago. The economy is the only issue that about 80 per cent of the public describe as a national concern (currently 58 per cent are worried about terrorism).
If and when the Conservatives reinvent themselves as Labour did in the 1990s, and there is a recession, politics will become rather more interesting again. With a majority of voters expecting tax rises under both Labour (80 per cent) or Conservatives (67 per cent) in 2005, perhaps it is no wonder that turnout was again so low in 2005.
The bottom line, as others will doubtless argue in this issue, is around what belonging to a political party means – even at the level of paying your subscription and receiving your party card. Part of the problem is simply politics as it is now perceived. Mori’s work examining the way in which party politics is most often represented in popular culture highlights a dominant code of politics as a craft, a set of tricks and a dark art, to be used in the service of gaining advantage for personal or party gain.
Recurrent themes from the public are of politicians seeking personal gain rather than public good; ambition rather than service; power and status rather than humility and knowledge. Admittedly, all of these are seen as much worse at the national than local level – but all of these impressions need to be actively addressed to boost membership of political parties.
When we look at the colloquial expressions, stories and metaphors that make up the political vernacular, these are some predominant themes: all politics/ians are liars, dissemblers, spinners and dishonest manipulators; we tend to refer to Machiavellian games of some kind; many forms of expression somehow dehumanise the concept. In addition, most people think of politics spatially, and happening at a distance (Westminster). Local political activity and membership is seen as ‘better’ but still dominanted by central machinery.
Think of some common expressions, or those we see in the media all the time: playing politics, politicking, office politics, spinning, a political animal, political ‘big beast’, sharp political antennae/senses, political jungle, zoo, foxy, policy wonk, political junkie, corridors of power, smoke-filled rooms. Political parties need to move away from some of the things they do well: rules, control, formality, seriousness – and become less risk-averse. Figure 3 shows the way in which politics is seen primarily as either dull, or worthy, timeserving and ‘formal’, or about spin and deceit.
Using discourse analysis, we found a central tension running through the way the public thinks about politics – between ‘art’ and ‘science’ and between their individual action and collective action, as shown in figure 3. At present, however, current politics is seen as really involving only two parts of the quadrant – ambition, sophistry and worthy service. Other areas of activity seem to have been colonised by NGOs and protest groups in terms of collective action, and individual self-exploration seems to steer away from overt party political action.
Our analysis suggests that mainstream political parties need to loosen up a little if they want more members – and ‘steal’ ideas and approaches from the mass movements and organisations that are seeing increasing levels of membership. Politics needs to be more ‘fun’ and more social, rather than about simple, ever-dwindling tribal loyalty. It must be less about the hard-nosed business of securing votes and more about debating issues with like-minded people. It has to be about much more than who is in charge in Westminster and reach out to people, with real debates about policy and big choices. Things like the Big Conversation are a sign that parts of the Labour party are enthusiastic to make this change, but one wonders how deep this goes.
The challenge the parties face is in reconnecting with rather less control and more diversity, in a period where the media and professionalisation of political marketing push in the opposite direction. As politics learns from the marketing professionals, it focuses resources and effort on those media and areas of the country and those voters it most needs to ‘win’.
Obviously, it has always been the case that the voters of South Shields will always, always choose the Labour candidate and those of Kensington the Tory. But declining mass participation and day-to-day involvement, plus newer technologies such as Voter Vault and telephone marketing, lead to a potential vicious spiral where resources and activity focus on the 20 per cent or so of constituencies that are most likely to swing. Once a political party decides to focus its national resources ever more on the seats that matter, what does it mean in the rest?
All the analysis of the turnout in elections by Thresher and Rawlings at the University of Plymouth suggests that feeling that our vote will make a difference, and that it is being fought for, have a major impact on whether we turn out to cast it. When there seems little to choose between the main parties, and when the two main parties both struggle over the central ground, it seems to many there is no real contest. It is this sense of contest that drives turnout: a sense of shared mission among their members is what political parties need. Our analysis, shown in figure 4, highlights the perceived dimensions of party political activity that need expanding if membership is to become more attractive.
Overall, there seem to be three challenges. First, change the cultural conventions of political life – have more fun and make being in your party more fun. Embrace the zeitgeist. This is a major challenge to existing ways of doing things. Second, change the meaning of ‘engagement’. Show how people should reappraise the meaning of politics in their lives, and that politics is much more than Westminster politics, committees and the like.
Third, open up new forms of political exploration and expression beyond voting and show that as a party you treat these as seriously as the formal process of gaining power via elections. Show that being a ‘member’ involves debate around a whole range of issues and a wide range of different activities, not just desperately trying to get the knocking on doors and leaflet distribution done.