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THE relationship between the leaders of political parties and their members is like a modern marriage. Undying love, even mutual regard, can never be taken for granted. Initial passion turns easily to distrust and disillusion, sometimes with disastrous consequences.
Like spouses, leaders and members need each other. The leadership needs the members' money-more today than ever before now that Labour dares not depend too much on the trade unions nor the Tories on corporate cash for fear of seeming their poodles. Leaders need members to supplement-and even sometimes to by-pass-the mass media in communicating their message to voters. Above all, they need their unstinting toil at election time. In a recent book ("Labour's Grass Roots", our, L13.95), Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley, two political scientists, reckon that if every local party had recruited 100 additional members during the 1987 election, Labour's share of the vote would have risen by 5.9%, preventing the Tory landslide.
But members need leaders too. Successful leaders convert the aspirations of members into concrete political programmes. They tame their enthusiasms and convert them into winning policies. As noted in "Social Trends", the statistical compendium published this week, only four in lOO adults belong to a political party in Britain. Messrs Seyd and Whiteley show that active members have more extreme opinions than do voters. A party modelled on their views would be doomed.
Through most...