Big “P” Party vs little “p” party

9th May 2023

I once listened to a Young Conservative’s spirited explanation to two passers-by about how the Conservative Party did not actually exist.

There was, you see, the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations; and then, you see, there is the parliamentary party, which is quite separate; and then, you know, there is Conservative Central Office.

As the Young Conservative then went onto explain how professional party agents did not fit into this neat scheme, I could tell those being canvassed-in-the-street were both impressed and bewildered.

Surely a “Party” is a thing?

Well, actually, the Young Conservative was more-or-less correct.

And “parties” are still quite difficult to define.

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Of course, there are legalistic definitions.

In the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, “party” is to be interpreted as including “any organisation or person” and “registered party” is defined as a party registered under that Act.

This is not illuminating.

Once registered, parties have certain obligations and rights, but that will not help us understand what is meant by “party”.

Halsbury’s Laws of England tells us the effect of that Act:

“In order to field candidates at elections, political parties must be registered.

“A party may not be registered unless it has adopted a scheme which sets out the arrangements for regulating the financial affairs of the party and which has been approved in writing by the Electoral Commission. The scheme must include such information as may be prescribed by regulations made by the Commission and must determine in particular whether the party is to be taken to consist of a single operation with no division of responsibility for the financial affairs and transactions of the party, or a central organisation and one or more separate accounting units. Where a registered party is a party with accounting units, each unit has a treasurer and an officer.”

Again, informative but not illuminating.

Elsewhere in the law, there are hints

For example, one of the (many) contributions by James Goldsmith to the law of defamation was to bring a case which resulted in it being established that a political party cannot sue for libel.

In this way political parties are like public authorities.

But again, this does not tell us what a “party” is.

Outside of law, we can point to the defintion of the eighteenth century Irish philosopher and British politician Edmund Burke:

“a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.”

One may quibble with at least a couple of words in this defintion – but it is helpful because it does not constrain us to just looking at professional politicians, professional staff, and/or volunteers.

It is a body of [people].

And once one adopts this broad and practical defintion, one can begin to see what are perhaps the real parties.

For example, the fluid movements between think tanks and media organisations and news desks and op-ed gigs and special advisors and hired consultants – and elected politicians and peers – show bodies of people united by their joint endeavours to promote what they see as the national interest upon various agreed principles and policies.

A Martian looking down at Westminster, Whitehall and (what used to be called) Fleet Street would assume, by observation alone, that the sum of the interactions and communications between various bodies of people were the real political parties – regardless of formal nomenclature.

And this is not necessarily a thing about the political right – for there is also, often on the political left and in the political centre – fluidity between pressure groups and campaign groups and trade unions and public bodies and campaigning organisations and civil servants.

These small-p Burkean parties can overlap and sometimes correspond to the big-P Parties.

The big-P Parties indeed seem to be coalitions of these teeming small-P Parties, sometimes spilling outside.

And as big-P Parties decline – for changes in media and communications mean the information-dissemination and organisational purposes of the big-P Parties are falling away – these small-p parties will become again more important, as they were in the days of Burke.

It will not be a complete reversion – big-P Parties will still be significant because of enduring brand loyalty (and recognition) and lingering tribal allegiances.

And these small-p parties – although highly influential – are impossible to regulate with ease.

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We will have to get used to the boundaries between media and politics and business becoming more blurred – individuals casually going from news rooms to parliament to commerce, and so on, working in tandem with others similarly moving around.

And if enough of us object to this trend in our political culture?

Well: we can form our own a body of people united, for promoting by our joint endeavours the national interest, upon this particular principle on which we are all agreed.

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