The Liberals in Canada and the Conservatives in the UK are uniquely situated to be considered natural parties of government because both nations basically vest all powers in a single body, their respective House of Commons. You only have to win one election to have power. Both have, in practice, powerless executives and very weak upper chambers. In the US, we have two chambers with similar powers and a powerful executive, all elected separately in staggered terms, so really the very concept of a natural party of government is pretty much foreign to the US. The last time we really could there was one was when the Democrats held the House for decades, and even then it's a stretch at times thanks to the divisions within the Congressional caucus. In a system with many national institutions, independent of one another, with two "big tent" parties, we really just aren't well suited for a national party of government. Our politics are too coalitional and our system too devolved and fractured to allow for such domination absent a massive realignment.
Typically, the UK is considered to have an especially strong executive, because the executive (almost) always consists of a single party that holds a legislative majority, giving in an almost unparalleled room to manoeuvre among western democracies. Compare to the US, or France, where a cohabitation is possible - or most European countries where cross party coalitions are either unstable or succesful based on compromise
The thing is in those parties I've mentioned in Europe dominated their countries for decades in a way that neither party has managed in the US in 70 years.
Like for example in Belgium, the Christian Democrats held the prime minister's office constantly between 1958 and 1999, with the exception of a brief break in the 1970s but even there were still in government.
Or Germany where in the last 70 years the Christian Democrats have been in power for 50.
Then for the opposite side of the spectrum, I think the Social Democrats in Sweden have held power for at least 60 of the last 80 years.
That's the type of domination we're talking about.
For the most part, I'd agree - although with Belgium notably, you have the fact that any government basically requires the input of the entire political spectrum, which tends to benefit CD's as being broadly in the centre of it, rather than because they are especially electorally succesful (especially in recent decades). I'd also shout out Spain and Portugal as not having a natural party of government - in part because democracy was only restored fairly recently, but also because they are relatively unusual in that left wing parties are able to win an outright majority of the vote. And of course, there's Italy, which has been basically all over the place since mani pulite blew their political spectrum apart.
Actually I would argue that the PSOE, in a way, is the natural governing party of Spain. They have been in charge for 23/43 years Spain has been a democracy which I guess in terms of time is not that much though it is still 53% of the time.
However more importantly they are the only party that has managed to eventually win a regional election in all regions of Spain at some point and the only party that gets decent to good results everywhere in the country, from rural Castille to Barcelona and the Basque Country
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