Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

It's always the "loyal opposition" (singular and not capitalized).
It's used when referring to the party out of power in a democracy.

Wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyal_opposition

"Loyal opposition is the concept that one can be opposed to the
actions of the government or ruling party of the day without being
opposed to the constitution of the political system."

It's difficult to use that word to refer to anything about Taiwan's
politics at the moment. The DPP has already branded -- and rightly
so, IMHO -- Lien Chan and James Soong "treasonous" for going to
Beijing and making deals about PRC-ROC relations when they had no
authority to do so. And what the KMT and PFP have been doing for
the past few years is even worse than what the GOP did from the
beginning of the Whitewater investigation. Both the GOP and the
Pan-Blue parties seem loyal only to their own causes and also seem
perfectly willing to destroy the political system of their
respective countries. While I have no great love for the Pan-Green
parties (both of them seem unsuited to govern anything larger than,
say, Chia-Yi City) or for the Democratic Party in the USA (which is
presently stocked with politically inept or undesirable non-leaders
and hardly less beholden to the special interests that carried the
GOP to twelve years of mean-spirited and vicious victories), they
are now the ones in power.

I do think it's possible to call most of the out-of-power parties
in some democratic countries (e.g., the UK) the "loyal opposition",
but some of those parties would also have to be labled the
"extremist opposition" because of their greater loyalty to specific
ideologies than to the polity they wish to govern and the
constitution on which it is based.

This is about Iraq, I take it. What this calls for is a group of
political parties willing to live and work together with all the
(heh-heh) diverse constituencies in that country rather than plunge
the country even deeper into civil war in order to avenge past
injustices or take orders from outside political powers like Iran
and al Quaida (or however it's correctly spelt). It seeks a bunch
of parties that support the idea of a constitutionally based
secular government rather than a Sunni or Shiia Islamic republic
based on sharia.

There's more to it, of course, but that seems to be the crux of
what "loyal opposition" is about.

Hmm, I can see why that concept might be difficult in China. It really
only works where there are two or more political parties competing for
seats in the legislature.

In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Her
Majesties Loyal Opposition are members of parliament who are NOT members
of the governing political party. At present that means the
Conservatives, Liberal Democrats etc. The phrase means that although
they oppose the government of the day, they are, nonetheless, loyal to
their country and Her Majesty.

In countries with a one-party system or dictatorship the concept is
(literally) unthinkable: to oppose the dictator/government of necessity
means to be disloyal and subversive.

Don't tell me there's two of them,

Jan

This comes from the English Parliament at Westminster,
thus is used in other countries that adopted this parliamentary
system, where the legislature includes both members of the
government (party or coalition) and its opposition.   The point
is that the members who are opposed to the government,
perhaps bitterly so, nevertheless proclaim their loyalty to the
constitutional state.

The metaphor thus may be a poor fit for dissimilar
environments, e.g. the US Congress, French parliament,
or non-parliamentary institutions.

In the parliament of the United Kingdom the party with the second
largest number of members is recognised as "Her Majesty's Loyal
Opposition". It is also called informally the Official Opposition.

There is information about it on the UK Parliament website:
(HTML version of a pdf file)
http://tinyurl.com/wa3cf

There are further comments at:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/glossary/?gl=130

The Party with the largest number of elected members forms the
government, which is called "Her Majesty's Government".