英国四分五裂的议会-1.docxVIP

British politicsThe great fracturingBritain’s slide into six-party politics presages instability and a crisis of legitimacyFeb 21st 2015 | From the print editionALONG with Sherlock Holmes and the rules of football, one of the great legacies of Victorian Britain is the Westminster parliamentary system. If voters want their voices to count, they have to choose between two large, boring parties. Excitable fringe groupings and a smallish third party, spread thinly across the country, struggle to make their mark. In return for putting up with such rank unfairness, Britons are promised strong, stable governments that can get things done. Plenty of countries have thought that trade-off worth copying.But with three months to go until a general election, the mechanism is broken. In 1951 the Conservative and Labour parties together scooped 97% of the vote; in May, opinion polls suggest, they will each win barely a third. Membership of the Tory party has fallen from 3m in the 1950s to about 150,000. Labour, which used to rule Scotland, could be reduced to a handful of seats there. Support for the Liberal Democrats, tarnished by coalition government, has collapsed. Almost all the running has been made by three insurgents: the Scottish National Party (SNP), which wants Scotland out of Britain; the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which wants Britain out of Europe; and the Green Party, which wants “hyper-capitalism” out of both Britain and Europe. It is the biggest shake-up since the early 20th century, when Labour displaced the Liberals.Political insurgency—from Syriza in Greece to the Tea Party in America—is a feature of many Western democracies. But it will hit Britain especially hard. Unaccustomed and ill-adapted to multi-party politics, Britain is more likely to get weak, unstable governments. That will only fuel the dissatisfaction with career politicians in the main parties. And if the parliamentary system comes to be seen as both unfair and ineffectual, then it is in for a c