Political parties have formed the cornerstone of our representative system since long before the era of universal suffrage. Yet there are signs that the age of the mass party is coming to an end; that our political parties are dying on their feet. In the early 1950s, the Labour Party had a million individual members, the Conservatives, 2,800,000. Since then, membership has declined precipitously. By 1975, when Margaret Thatcher became [...]