Political parties, parliamentarism and representation in Britain

Abstract

In her essay marking the centenary of Dicey's Law of the Constitution, Professor Carol

Harlow warns lawyers that they are always in danger of ignoring some important questions

which should concern them by simply drawing arbitrary lines between matters political,

economic or sociological and those of primarily legal nature. Such a sealing off of the

world of political scientists, economists and sociologists leads lawyers "to misinterpret

legal rules and to mistake political ideology for legal fact."(Harlow 1985 : 62, 81) This

warning seemed to be taken to heart by some British "public lawyers" when they came to

examine the "fragmented, informal, pragmatic and secretive nature of British government"

and explore the possibility of utilising European-American experience to try to

make the British system more "open, integrated, principled and formal."(Loughlin 1988 :

531 Cf. Murphy 1990 : 151-153, 155-158 Murphy 1986) However, so far as British

lawyers are concerned, the nature, status and role of political parties in constitutional

arrangements remain largely ignored."' This tendency is strengthened by the fact that,

despite political parties being among the most important and powerful institutions in the

British political system, the law has very little to say about their constitutional role or

their internal organization. As a matter of fact, the law of the constitution does not regulate

political parties at all and indeed, as we shall see, barely acknowledge their existence.