Shouting Like Tribes, Governing Like Coalitions

Polarisation was supposed to simplify politics. Pick a side. Nail your colours to the mast. Stop pretending everyone can be satisfied.

Instead, in Britain, it has produced something far stranger. The louder politics becomes, the broader the winning parties have to be.

Under FPTP, you cannot govern with a faction. You need 35 to 45 percent of the country. That means stitching together voters who do not agree about very much beyond a few headline issues. The compromise happens inside the party before polling day.

That is why both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party feel permanently unstable. They are not ideological movements. They are pre - election coalitions pretending to be unified tribes.

The Conservatives after Brexit had free - market libertarians, Red Wall statists, cultural traditionalists and City pragmatists under one roof. That alliance was built around a single mission. Once that mission was complete, the internal contradictions were exposed. The leadership churn was not accidental. It was structural tension meeting poor judgement.

Labour now performs a similar balancing act from a different angle. Trade unionists, urban liberals, fiscal moderates, climate activists, socially cautious ex - Tories. The arithmetic of the electoral system forces coexistence. The culture of polarisation punishes compromise. Leaders must sound absolute and govern conditionally.

Compare that with proportional systems such as in Germany. Parties like the CDU or the SPD can be more distinct. They aim for their share. The bargaining happens after the votes are counted, in a formal coalition agreement.

The compromise is visible and contractual. In Britain it is internal and personal.

But here is the crucial point. Coalition systems do not remove compromise. They relocate it. Polarisation does not remove coalition - building. It makes it emotionally harder.

Institutional design decides where the argument takes place. Leadership decides whether it looks like governance or civil war.

We complain that modern leaders seem weak. Often they are simply operating in a system that demands breadth while rewarding ideological theatre. They must hold together uneasy alliances while activists demand purity.

Polarisation promised clarity. The voting system still demands coalition. The friction between the two is where authority now goes to die.