William Feerick emailed me some interesting thoughts on an old EconLog post, reprinted below with his permission.
article you wrote some time ago on your EconLog blog, where you
mentioned Tim Besley’s counter-examples to your ‘you get the Government
you deserve’ argument in the UK. It was a while ago, but I thought you might be interested in an explanation I have developed on the topic.
are appointed to positions within political parties. Unlike the United
States, primaries are totally ‘closed’. In the Conservative Party the
leader is elected by MPs alone, and in the Labour Party the leader is
elected by a mixture of MPs, trade union members and rank-and-file party
members. As leaders have a strong say in MP candidates for the next
election, this leads to quite strong homogeneity amongst the political
elite.
background, probably due to a mixture of ability bias and previous
relationships – 69% of the current Cabinet attended either Oxford or
Cambridge University; 5 out of the 22 previous Prime Ministers and 10%
of the current Cabinet attended Eton, a school of just 1300 pupils. I
believe this creates a political consensus on certain issues that is not
shared by the public. Of course, politicians gravitate towards public
opinion on the important issues like in any democracy, but crucially not
on other, less important issues. Instead, they rely on the party
consensus, which is more strongly influenced by the less populist debate
and ideas within universities such as Oxford and Cambridge.
public opinion polls, but barely a handful of MPs support it. In your
article, you mentioned that perhaps the British public feared becoming
an EU pariah, but given the strong Euroscepticism that most polls
indicate, I don’t think this is on the mark. I suggest that as capital
punishment is hardly an important issue on the minds of the British
electorate, whereas to take a non-consensus position within the party
would threaten their future advancement, politicians stick with the
party consensus. This consensus is mainly driven by the influence of
more intellectual debate within the nation’s top universities. This
could be extended to the EU, where public policy does not seem to
reflect the widespread distaste with the union.
somewhat restrained by the primary structure of the major political
parties. However, on important issues, the external political value of
populism outweighs the need to stay within the political consensus – for
example, Margaret Thatcher’s major change to the position of the
Conservative Party.
READER COMMENTS
Salem
Nov 27 2012 at 7:08pm
Although I agree with the overall point your correspondent makes, there are some unfortunate factual mistakes.
1. The leader of the Conservative Party is not elected by MPs alone. Instead, the two candidates getting the most votes among the MPs go forward to a postal ballot of all members of the party.
2. The leaders do not necessarily have a strong say in MP selection. In fact, in the Conservative Party in particular, the leader’s say is famously weak.
It’s also worth pointing out that although the primaries are formally “closed,” membership of either party is available to anyone who wants it, for a fairly nominal fee. People aren’t prevented from choosing party leaders by the system, it’s our old friend political apathy.
Will
Nov 28 2012 at 3:15am
The first point you make was only true of the last couple of Conservative leadership elections. The second point is true, but the leader does at least have some influence (Cameron’s A-list, for example). Your last point about apathy is very true – the Labour candidate in the Rotherham by-election was chosen by only 13 voters.
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