Tony Blair was notorious for imposing ideological coherence from the top on the Labour party with pagers in exactly the way you are talking about: MPs were expected to keep exactly to the media line agreed by Blair and Campbell, and hide all dissent to avoid "PARTY SPLIT" headlines.
Note how the conservative party managed to campaign against itself for the Brexit referendum and has now seemingly zipped that right up again. Although the three Brexit ministers keep issuing daft announcements that have to be countermanded by the PM (this is called "cabinet collective irresponsibility").
It's worth comparing UK parliamentary elections with the regional parliament elections, which are all run on different systems with very different results.
US parties have traditionally been extremely strong. What has happened is that the US rightwing media "bubble" has taken over doctrine and thrown away the doublespeak. Trump is winning because he can say all the unpleasant things that other Republicans feel they have to dogwhistle or hint at.
True in the US, not true in the UK -- May and Corbyn had been MPs and members of their parties for years before becoming leader.
> "party discipline", another throughly undemocratic concept, all but unheard of in UK/US parties
Again, not true in the UK
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/111815...
Is that really true? Wikipedia's article on the subject says:
"Party discipline tends to be extremely strong in Westminster systems such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India...."
In the American Congress, votes are now almost entirely along party lines, which seems like more or less the same thing:
http://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2015/04/24/poli...
Not sure about it. Words are cheap.
If you want to get the benefit of the support and branding of a political party it seems reasonable that you should have to follow their rules. The discipline only extends so far as removing that support. That seems fair to me. Does it not to you?
Can you explain why you think it's not? I think party discipline is simply autoritarianism applied within a political party. If anything, it advertises to me that said party doesn't really believe in democratic principles.
I disagree, it's more democratic because I know the party platform is what I'm voting for. I don't have to know the individual positions of everyone.
And collective responsibility is not undemocratic in its self.
But the difference is that the parties in the US and the UK aren't very powerful in their own regard. Trump wasn't even a member of the republican party until very recently, and he won the nomination -- and Sanders forced Clinton very far to the left before dropping out.
On the other hand, the leaders of european parties are mostly selected through opaque backroom deals and yet are very powerful (through "party discipline", another throughly undemocratic concept, all but unheard of in UK/US parties). Policy is made by these leaders (or their appointed nominees) meeting each other and negotiating a compromise, and then (except in very rare cases) every MP of the parties in this negotiation defends in the media it as a solid and credible response to the issues faced by the country (despite, often to great hilarity, the compromise being orthogonal to several very firm positions and red lines drawn by that very same politician just days before) and then votes for it.
The mechanism for this power is that few individual MP carry their own seat, they're assigned proportionally, according to the national share of votes won by the party. Party leadership wields significant influence over who runs where (especially who runs in "safe" seats), and thus who gets in. MPs who cause too much trouble will find themselves campaigning in a difficult district, or next to a more popular/well-known candidate.