Beyond that the parties themselves have been fantastically quiescent. The Conservatives have had problems in their grass roots but have held together. The Labour Party has been incredibly quiet. The female element in the PLP has been notoriously tame. It begins to look like a party of notables which is what the American political system is.
Activists get together at election time and occasionally to make party selections.
What is major is that the Labour Party, which I confidently expect to win the next election, does need to consider the question of the nature of its grass roots and the liberation the declining power of trade unions provides. It s also a liberation of voters, of working class people from an automatic identification with Labour. The triangular relationship of the past with the Labour Party led by middle class professionals, the trade union leadership and working class voters, with instinctive loyalty because Labour was identified as a working class party, is disappearing. If the link to the organised Labour movement declines to a point where it is just a matter of lip service and if the policies of New Labour are overwhelmingly about either supporting the very poor on the one hand or more notably not offending the interests of middle class voters on the other, and if this industrial urban proletariat element is neglected in policy terms, the worm will eventually turn. There is no ultimate reason why these people should continue to support Labour.