ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how far social change has been responsible for political change in Britain since 1945. In particular it takes issue with one particular thesis. This is that an increasing fragmentation of the social structure has been responsible for a decline in Britain’s two-party system with deleterious consequences for the country’s system of government. The chapter argues that in fact social change has not been a primary cause of political change in Britain since 1945. Indeed, the importance of political as opposed to social influences is no more clearly underlined than in the ability of certain key features of the country’s constitutional arrangements to constrain the impact of those changes that have occurred.
