elective dictatorship

   The late Conservative peer Lord Hailsham coined the phrase ‘elective dictatorship’ to express his anxiety about the growth in executive power. Speaking in 1976 in the Dimbleby Lecture, he claimed that a constitutional imbalance had been created, executive power having grown at the expense of parliamentary power. He argued that with a flexible constitution, a majority Government in control of a sovereign Parliament could bring about fundamental constitutional changes almost at will; it need fear no defeat. Government was portrayed as all-powerful, the checks and balances having been eroded. The only thing said to hold a government in check was its need to retain enough popularity to win the next election.

   Hailsham was writing at a time when a Labour administration – elected in October 1974 on the basis of the minority support of only 29 per cent of the whole electorate – was about to lose its majority. Similar concerns have been voiced since the 2005 election, with the election of a Government whose support among the voters was as low as 35.2 per cent (the worst figure for any postwar Government), among the whole electorate only 21.6 per cent.