Walter Bagehot: “The Prime Minister obviously being the nominee of a party majority is likely to share its feeling, and is sure to be…”

If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.

No doubt this momentary gain is bought at a ruinous after-cost.

That a House of Commons may work well it must perform, as we saw, five functions well: it must elect a Ministry well, legislate well, teach the nation well, express the nation's will well, bring matters to the nation's attention well.

And therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its bone, and breath of its breath.