US vs. UK Political Spectrums

Over the past few days in class, we have discussed the political spectrum and the growing divide between the left and right political parties within America. This got me wondering what the political spectrum is like in other developed countries: is it similarly divided or is there some way that they prevent such harsh partisanship? I looked into this and found an article (Source 1) comparing the political parties in the US and the UK. While in the US the Republicans are the right and the Democrats are the left, in the UK, the Conservatives are the right and Labour is the left. Despite this seemingly direct relation, the “center” parties in America are “markedly to the Right of the ‘centre’ in British or most European politics”. This means that a lot of ideologies within the Republican party in America, like the Tea Party movement, would not be supported even by the Conservatives in the UK. This also means that the ideas of many American independent candidates would be considered solidly within the British Labour Party. Further, Britain has a designated center party – the Liberal Democrat Party – that considers itself as an option in between the Conservative and Labour Parties. According to the article, “the two main political parties – Conservative and Labour – win a smaller and declining share of the total vote, with a growing share being taken by the likes of the Liberal Democrat Party and the UK Independence Party”. This is a very interesting and prominent difference between Britain and the US, as the US only has the Independents between the Democrat and Republican parties, a group who struggles to hold their own against the two main ideologies and that has gotten fewer and fewer votes over the past few years. This could be the reason for increased divide between the political parties in America. While a large contributor is increased tension between the two parties, the cause of this tension could be the lack of a prominent, designated middle party. Since many people have conflicting and overlapping views but feel pressure to identify with one side or the other, the lack of a solid center party in America could be contributing to the problem of increased ideological division. But considering the deepening party divide, would a more firmly established independent or middle party really help the issue? Maybe not; even though partisanship in the UK is lower than in the US, the political divide is still largely present (Source 2). According to David Blankenhorn (Source 3), this party polarization in America can be attributed to a multitude of factors ranging from the end of the Cold War to increased identity-group politics to increased diversity. Given the sheer number of potential reasons for an increasing divide, is there a way we can start to return to the middle and lessen the polarization between our two political parties?