Originally Posted by
jackal2
I kind of agree and disagree with you too. It's a conundrum!
As you say, our electoral system does make it difficult for any party other than the Conservatives or Labour to be in Government, or at the very least be the dominant part of a governing coalition. So yes, the two parties are always under pressure to court the middle ground swing voters who might tip the balance towards them, but it becomes bad for democracy when that goes too far and begins to undermine the core values of the parties concerned, as it definitely did for Labour under Blair and the Conservatives under Cameron. For me, both of those leaders were snake oil salesmen whose primary thought was always for their own career, rather than their country.
Margaret Thatcher, love her or loathe her, won three General Elections on a strong right-wing platform, and yet we can be fairly certain that a sizeable portion of those who voted her into office would NOT have held such strongly right-leaning views. I don't know whether it was her persona as a strong leader, or particular individual policies which had a crossover appeal, but for Thatcher to win the majorities she did, she must have attracted a predominant portion of the floating vote, disproving the argument that parties have to water down their core beliefs or message to win. In fact, her intransigence may have been a vote winner in itself, because many people interpreted that as strength.
It's other would be power brokers, such as unelected bureaucrats, who actively want to water down the party ideologies, so they get to a point where public decisions to change the Government don't actually change anything.
(In the comedy Yes Minister, which was great because it was not only funny but very true, Civil Servants likes of Sir Humphrey Applebly fear nothing more than strongly ideological "interventionist politicians who have ideas about running the country themselves". He's much happier with egotistical career politicians who could be house-trained and fobbed off with short-term publicity stunts and pettifogging issues, "leaving the job of Government in the hands of the experts", who of course would then serve and help themselves, often literally.)
It's certainly arguable that under a different electoral system, political parties would feel less pressured to water down their ideology to chase extra votes, but we also know from other countries that systems like PR tend to require complicated coalitions of these parties to form a government, and that this situation once again creates opportunities for non-elected elements to exploit the confusion or lack of direction for their own ends. So on balance, I prefer the First Past the Post system with its greater chance of returning strong single-party Governments, but it does need the leading parties within it to remain true to their values, in the democratic interests of the public.
Give me a Thatcher or a Corbyn any day over a Cameron or a Blair!