Social Cleavages and Conservative-Labour Party Exclusivism in the United Kingdom: From Tory-Whig to Brexit

In developed societies, a multi-party system is considered more rational than a two-party system because of the possibility of pursuing diverse interests. Nevertheless, the two-party structure in the United Kingdom has long been such that it is difficult to imagine the emergence and continuation of dominant third parties in British politics. Accordingly, the study's central question is how social cleavages over time have led to the formation of a two-party system in the UK and what role will Brexit play in the persistence or change of this long-standing structure? The research hypothesis, using a descriptive-analytical method and the application of Cleavage Theory in the analysis of the stability factors of the UK’s two-party system, emphasizes that social cleavages along with the British political structure with features such as Duverger's law and first-past-the-post voting cause psychological and mechanical effects in the UK general elections. Accordingly, British voters, aware of the above-mentioned electoral rules, ignore the smaller parties and vote for the most desirable option with a chance of winning. This behavior, called strategic voting, explains the tendency of voters to the most powerful parties and, ultimately, the continuation of the Labor-Conservative exclusivism. Furthermore, with the trend analysis approach, it is hypothesized that Brexit will help the continuity of party duopoly in the kingdom by strengthening the concept of the open-closed political spectrum and highlighting social cleavages among the Britons.