All this is pure myth. In fact the main parties all consist of rather similar shallow semi-educated fixers who agree in practice about most things and most especially those things that can be encapsulated in cliche. Each party has a Leader whose perfectly lawful powers of patronage are such that old fashioned corruption is hardly ever necessary. The Leaders dangle the lure of Office and the Led learn to recognise which side their bread is buttered and conform accordingly. Now and again a Led One makes a show of independence and, provided that this is not for real, it earns the show person some moral credit which can be spent at some future opportunity.
Parties blind meaningful political theory and sterilise progressive political action.
What is most needed in our political scene is the flourishing of single-issue pressure groups. For example, secularists and religious believers can work together in, say, human rights pressure groups such as Amnesty International. Such working together forces people to think rather than to conform. Taking the other areas for reform set out in the first paragraph, let us consider the monarchy first. The problem arises as soon as we are stuck with a monarch who is either nasty or silly or both - and the House of Windsor has not a few inmates who seem to fit easily into one or other of those categories.