A Momentous Change in British Political History

"The study of British political history tends to be broken up into chunks, divided by the most important turning points. Students learn about the postwar consensus 1945 to 1979, the Thatcherite consensus of post 1979, sometimes also pre and post 1997. I suspect that as soon as next academic term, students will be studying pre and post 2010 politics. Because this week, British politics has undergone one of the more momentous changes in history. I don't think we've even begun to appreciate the scale of what has happened.

First there's the obvious, the first coalition government since the war, and a coalition between two parties which were not just in opposition, but the two primary poles of British politics for most of its history, down to 1945. But I think it's the subtler changes which are likely to be more momentous.

It was little remarked on that in a bid to woo the Liberal Democrats, both the Labour and Conservative parties offered electoral reform. Labour promised to pass a bill on the Alternative Vote system, the Conservative party promised a referendum on it. The extraction of these promises from the two biggest parties in politics means that there's a very good chance that this year's election will be the last one ever under the first past the post system...."

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