Coalition: Lengthening The Spoon
I’ve noticed a rather worrying trend at the moment for Liberal Democrats to treat the Tories as our friends, since we went into coalition with them. People praising Cameron’s performance at Prime Minister’s Questions and so on. Some are even talking about how at the next election we should campaign on the basis of a continuation of the coalition.
I think this is *hugely* dangerous, both to the party and to the country.
For the party, if the coalition lasts more than a single Parliament, then effectively we become just a branch of the Conservative Party – we become the National Liberals. If we go into an election campaigning for a continuation of the coalition, we’re campaigning for a Conservative government, and we might as well be the Conservative Party.
For the country, it is *imperative* that we distance ourselves from the Conservatives as much as is possible while still working with them constructively.
I think going into coalition was the right thing to do given the circumstances. I think the coalition deal we got was, on the face of it, an extraordinarily good one. I think this government will be better by far than the Labour government that preceded it, if only because they set the bar so disastrously low – if this government just manages to *not* destroy the economy for a generation, *not* mortgage the birthright of everyone under forty in order to placate self-obsessed baby boomers, *not* roll back a ton of rights we’ve had since Magna Carta and *not* kill a million brown people because a Texan psychopath told them to, then we’re still ahead on points.
But the fact is, while this government is going to do many good things (for example dropping ID cards , though see NO2ID’s response to the proposed bill) of which we can be proud, there will also be things which are outright evil. I didn’t expect, for example, that the commitment to not detain child asylum seekers would mean they might be deported to Afghanistan instead…
We may have to go along with these things to some extent – we’ve been given a choice of either a government doing some evil things and some good things, or of one doing some evil things and some other even more evil things, and it’s pretty obvious which of those you choose if you’re in the business of actual practical politics rather than moralising, but that doesn’t mean that what we have done isn’t a deal with the devil, and one for which we will rightly be punished at the ballot box. (With luck we will also be rewarded, rightly, for the good we’ve done).
It is *especially* important that we retain a distance from the Tories because in general those who will be hurt worst if the Tories behave like Tories always do are *not* the typical Lib Dem member/supporter – we are, all exceptions duly noted, a mostly white middle-class party. It would be very, *VERY* easy for me to just look at the good side – things like AV, which will benefit me – while ignoring the bad. As a white, heterosexual, cissexual, English-speaking male in a good job with no visible disabilities it is extraordinarily unlikely that the Tories will do anything that will cause me any significant direct harm in the first term (I can’t say the same for my disabled unemployed bisexual immigrant wife though…). That’s probably true of most Lib Dems, and there’s a very real danger that we’ll start to think “well of course obviously the asylum seeker thing is bad, *obviously*, but no ID cards!”
We need to be able to VERY firmly make the case that we will vote in Parliament, short term, for bad things because that’s what the coalition agreement says, but that we will continue to fight against those things and try to overturn them as soon as possible. We have to do this politely, and our parliamentarians at least must never use the phrase “Evil bastard Tory scum” (although I will feel free to continue to do so) because we have to work with them. But we *MUST NOT* allow ourselves to become assimilated by the Tories.
Right now, both major parties have pretty much the same ideology – anti-poor, anti-foreigners, anti-freedom . We have managed to get the Tories to work with us to help implement the ‘not enslaved by conformity’ part of our constitution, but we mustn’t forget the parts about ignorance and poverty in the euphoria of this – because we’re the only party with any national presence who are even *considering* those things.
This is why, while not having a side in the deputy leadership race (I don’t know enough about the role to know who would be best), I *do* support Simon Hughes’ proposals for MPs, which seem to me a sensible way of retaining our distance from the Tories while still working constructively with them.
This government has the potential to be one of the great reforming governments of all time, especially with Nick Clegg in charge of constitutional reform. But it also has the potential to do a great deal of damage to the most vulnerable in society. We need, as Liberal Democrats, to work with every fibre of our being to ensure it’s the former rather than the latter.
If What The Guardian Says Is True…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/11/general-election-2010-live-blog
Then it looks like the new coalition government will essentially be adopting the Lib Dem manifesto in almost its entirety.
I don’t like the Tory welfare ‘reforms’ one bit, and will campaign against them. Likewise I think immigration caps a disgrace, and my main priority over the coming months is to change Lib Dem policy on immigration to be more actually liberal. But even when it comes to immigration, we have an end to child detention.
Look at that list, the ‘manifesto’ they set out, and tell me that’s not ‘progressive’…
I don’t know how it’s happened, but if that’s true, the Tories have essentially given in on *EVERYTHING*… it’s just… I don’t understand…
And A Reminder Of What It’s All For:
Sound the call for freedom boys, and sound it far and wide,
March along to victory, for God is on our side,
While the voice of nature thunders o’er the rising tide:
“God gave the land to the people.”
The land, the land,
‘Twas God who made the land,
The land, the land,
The ground on which we stand,
Why should we be beggars
With a ballot in our hand?
God gave the land to the people.
Hark! The sound is spreading from the east and from the west!
Why should we work hard and let the landlords take the best?
Make them pay their taxes on the land just like the rest!
The land was meant for the people.
The land, the land,
‘Twas God who made the land,
The land, the land,
The ground on which we stand,
Why should we be beggars
With a ballot in our hand?
God gave the land to the people.
Clear the way for liberty, the land must all be free,
None of us shall falter from the fight tho’ stern shall be.
‘Til the flag we love so well shall fly from sea to sea,
O’er the land that is free for the people.
The land, the land,
‘Twas God who made the land,
The land, the land,
The ground on which we stand,
Why should we be beggars
With a ballot in our hand?
God gave the land to the people.
The army now is marching on, the battle to begin,
The standard now is raised on high to face the battle din,
We’ll never cease from fighting ’til the victory we win,
And the land is free for the people.
So What Happened? View From The Ground
I can’t speak for what happened nationally, but I think my experiences on election day might be useful in determining what happened.
Fundamentally, I think the Clegg surge *did* happen, but was drowned out by the larger turnout, and a squeeze message. And it was a surge we wouldn’t expect.
Normally, a truism in politics is that the young don’t vote, and if students vote it’s for Labour because of NUS organisation. People are still saying that now. It’s nonsense, with respect to this election, at least. Normally in the UK one would never, EVER queue to vote – and when I voted in my non-student-area polling station, I was in and out in seconds as always. It was slightly busier than normal, but not *exceptionally* so.
But a few hours later, I was tallying at a polling station in a more studenty area, and it was a totally different story. There were queues that at one point reached *a hundred and twenty people*. For those with no previous experience of British elections, a councillor I spoke to later said he’d once seen a queue of three people, at the 1987 election, and he’d remembered it 23 years later because a queue to vote was that unusual. And it was almost all students. And they were *EXCITED* to be voting – coming in gangs, some dressed in costumes (one as a gorilla). And they were voting for US!
After my four-hour stint at that polling station I came away thinking we’d won the election…
In the count, of course, was a different matter.
Looking at constituency-wide results, you can see that in both Manchester Withington and Manchester Gorton, both the Labour and Lib Dem candidates actually increased their votes by almost exactly the same amounts – both had an increase of 3000 in Gorton, and 4000 in Withington. But what you don’t see – and what we could see in the count – was how this split by polling district.
The areas with no students – the ‘normal people’ areas – were overwhelmingly Labour. The split there was roughly 60 Labour 30 Lib Dem 10 Tory (with negligible numbers of people voting Christian, RESPECT, Pirate, Green or Socialist). The split in the *student* areas, on the other hand, was 60 Lib Dem, 20 Labour, 20 Tory – which lines up roughly with my guesstimate from what the students were saying that they were voting 80/20 Lib Dem/Tory.
It’s obvious what happened in the ‘normal people’ wards – these are traditional Labour areas anyway, and the turnout was up through fear of a Tory government – the ONLY stuff that Labour were doing was a ‘vote Lib Dem, get Tories, remember Thatcher? Ooh, scary!’ kind of thing (plus getting Eddie Izzard to go round Withington – presumably a popular-in-the-90s standup is meant to have got people feeling 1997 nostalgia, or something?). So they’re scared of a Tory government and come out and vote Labour. Simple.
The annoying thing is that Dave Page, our council candidate in Fallowfield, said students kept coming up to him all day and telling him they supported us, but voted Tory to get Labour out. They’d picked up on the national messages, and not realised that in this area the contest was between Lib Dem and Labour.
So we have a situation where people were voting Labour to keep the Tories out, and Tory to get rid of Labour, when the Tories weren’t even in the race to start with… and people wonder why some of us want STV…
One thing that NEEDS priority – from everybody cross-party, and whatever happens with voting reform – is a MASSIVE programme of education for young people about how the elections actually work. I heard – literally a dozen times – “You know, I never realised you don’t vote for David Cameron or Nick Clegg, but for your local one” (all of them, incidentally, said it that way, not mentioning Brown at all…)
And while this was not ‘the internet election’, the internet may just have saved the Lib Dems half a dozen seats. More precisely, Facebook may have. Talking with the students in the queues, I wanted to know just *why* so many students were coming out and voting (I was very scrupulous about not trying to talk to them about how they were voting or anything, just *WHY* they were voting). The more politically-engaged ones (relatively) said “Because of the debates. All my friends like Nick Clegg”. The rest said “Oh, I don’t really care about the result, I’m voting Lib Dem because my friends are. I just want to tick the box on Facebook that says I’ve voted”.
So ignorance and lies cost us votes, while apathy and Facebook gained us more. Hooray for democracy! I may go and kill myself now…
A Quick Explanation For Americans And Other Confused Persons
Batman posts have to hold off a few days I’m afraid…
The one-line summary for Americans is that we’re reliving Bush vs Gore, and Ralph Nader has been asked to choose.
In the election this week, no party got an overall majority – this is roughly the same as not being filibuster-proof in the US system.
There are three major parties in the UK – the Conservatives, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats. They came first, second and third, respectively, in the election, but none did well enough to form a government. The Conservatives and Labour hate each other even though there’s not really very much difference between them, so definitely won’t work together.
The Conservatives could form a government with Liberal Democrat support, and have a majority. The Labour party could form a government if it got the support of the Liberal Democrats *and* the Nationalist parties (there are parties that want Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to become separate countries. They all hate the Tories and have effectively agreed to this even without being asked) *and* the single Green MP.
The Liberal Democrats are probably closer politically to Labour than the Conservatives, but not by very much (we’re more different from either of them than they are from each other). Most Lib Dem members and voters *HATE* the Conservatives, but just dislike Labour, but some feel the other way round.
However, the Conservatives did far better than Labour in the election, and it may well be politically impossible to support Labour, because it’s clear that nobody likes the Labour government,and people *LOATHE* Gordon Brown.
However, most of *OUR* supporters probably prefer Labour to the Conservatives, and would feel betrayed by supporting the Conservatives (including myself unless we got an *astonishingly* good deal).
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, though, is rumoured to be closer to the Conservatives.
One of the most important things we’ll be arguing for is a fairer voting system. The Conservatives *won’t* let us have this. Labour *might* – but they’re after a different system instead, which we don’t like. The Nationalists etc would side with us on this.
Nick Clegg can’t make a deal without the agreement of both the Federal Executive of the party *AND* the MPs – if he doesn’t get that agreement then he has to call a party conference to decide.
We’re not, however, a very large party compared to the other two, so don’t have a lot of room to manoeuvre.
Interesting times lie ahead. Whatever happens, a lot of people are going to be angry. Probably including me.
And a message to Lib Dem supporters
Lib Dem Voice got slashdotted by Graham Linehan earlier today, so many won’t have seen this:
On Saturday afternoon the party’s Federal Executive is meeting to discuss how the party should handle the Parliamentary situation. There’s no pre-set, universally supported answer to this so the FE’s discussion is going to be meaningful and important. It’s only one part of the party’s consultative process, which also includes – for example – a meeting of the Parliamentary Party. But it does mean that now is an excellent time to let the FE know your views.
Because many members of the Federal Executive are scattered around the country – sleeping, travelling back from election counts, making their way to London and so on – the FE members may be hard to get hold of and many will not necessarily be checking their emails frequently.
Therefore, in order to ensure that people have a chance to send in a view that will be read before the meeting, we’ve agreed with the Party President Ros Scott a special email address – balancedparliament@libdemvoice.org – balancedparliament.hat.libdemvoice.org.spam.com (this is spam bot hidden email address, replace .hat. with @ and remove .spam.com for the real one) – which can be used to email in your views. A member of staff will collate all the messages and make sure that they are drawn to the attention of Ros and also reported to the members of the FE in time for their discussion.
A few tips when emailing this address:
Don’t use it for an email to which you need a personal, direct reply as, given the short timescales, that isn’t going to be possible for every message sent to the address
Given the pressures of time, short and concise messages are likely to be more effective than 12 pages essays
As with letter writing or lobbying more generally, saying in full who you are and where you’re from is likely to add to the impact of the message
Please send your message as soon as possible
That’s from a post by Mark Pack at LDV.
The message appears mostly aimed at party members, but it doesn’t say *ONLY* them. LET THE PARTY KNOW YOUR VIEWS. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
A Quick Note To Labour Twitterers
Proper post about the election later, but for now I’d just like to say:
I hate the Tories as much as anyone, but Labour supporters keep saying things like “In UK, Tories won 36% of vote.LibDem-Labour combo: 52%” or “labour+libdem got 15,205,906 votes, making 311 seats. conservatives only 10,561,428 votes =301 seats.”
THERE IS NO LIBDEM-LABOUR COMBO! THERE IS NO LABOUR+LIBDEM. WE ARE TWO SEPARATE PARTIES!
Yours is the party of war criminals, destruction of civil liberties, and inflating economic bubbles that favour the middle-classed and middle-aged against the young and poor.
WE ARE NOT YOUR FUCKING BACKUP PLAN. WE ARE A SEPARATE PARTY, AND WE DISAGREE WITH YOU FAR MORE THAN WE AGREE.
I may disagree with the Tories even more than Labour, but DO NOT count my vote – or the vote of anyone I know who supported the Lib Dems – as a vote in support of a party and an agenda I despise.
Quick final message before the election
Got in only 1/2 an hour ago and have to be up in 4 hours to go out campaigning again, so an incredibly brief one today. When you go to the ballot box, just remember:
Tories Section 28. Poll tax. Criminal Justice Bill. Provoking further conflict in Northern Ireland. Sinking ships that were retreating. Destroying Britain’s manufacturing industry. Destroying the mining industry out of spite. Cash for questions.
LabourStarting illegal wars, killing a million or more. Restriction of the right to protest. 28-day detention without trial. Indefinite detention without trial for personality disorders. Two beds closed in mental health wards every day between 1997 and 2007. Collusion in torture. Flipping second homes. Dropping the 10p income tax rate. The Digital Economy Act.
Liberal Democrats None of the above.
You know what to do
Tactical Voting – An (Unsuccessful) Attempt At A Non-Partisan Guide
I’ve not been in any state to blog recently (as those of you who saw the rather embarrassing linkblog the other day will know) because a roller-coaster is nothing to an election campaign. The human body simply isn’t built to withstand the constant adrenaline shocks to the system – “Oh god, we’re 1% down on a poll whose margin of error is 2%!” “Wow, two friends of mine i always thought of as not especially political just decided to join the party!” “Oh Christ, Gordon Brown just gave the speech of his life!” “Hooray! Neil Innes has decided to vote for us!” “FUCK! Cameron might try to take power with a minority government, going against constitutional precedent!” “YES! We’re 2% up in a poll whose margin of error is 2%!” and so on. Examining everything for signs and portents, despite the inherent impossibility of predicting what is the most chaotic election in British political history.
(In some ways it’s been easier being a Lib Dem in previous elections, where we’ve definitely been coming third – you know your efforts matter, because you’re building support and playing the long game – and had the party not spent decades doing the groundwork, building local parties up, getting council seats, we wouldn’t be in a position to affect the result now – but you also know you’re coming third before you start. This way is infinitely more nerve-wracking.)
Then there’s the physical exertion. My day job is as a software engineer, and my principal hobby is blogging. This means my life pretty much entirely consists of sitting in one place, moving only my hands, with occasional breaks for sleep. I was delivering in Yorkshire yesterday. Did you know that Yorkshire is entirely made of hills? And not only are the roads all hills, sometimes they have special bits where every single house gets its own small extra hill. And don’t get me started on letterboxes.
So for at least the last few days I’ve been in some kind of hallucinatory daze, and certainly incapable of talking sensibly about anything, but there’s one post I want to get out of the way, and that’s the tactical vote one.
Now, I believe that all major political parties have a rule that no party member can advocate a vote for another party in a seat in which they’re standing, so you’re *never* going to see complete honesty on this from a partisan blogger. Every party member knows of at least one incompetent buffoon of a parliamentary candidate who’s standing against a principled opponent, but they have to endorse that candidate or not talk about it. So can we take as read that my advice is that you should always, in all circumstances, vote Liberal Democrat? OK. Now on to what you should actually do if you’re considering tactical voting at all. I’m going to try to phrase this as honestly as I can given that I’m a party member. And I’m assuming here you’re voting for your preferred type of government – you might have a great candidate for your non-preferred party, or you might want to vote for a nationalist party who won’t form a UK government.
Weirdly, my honest attempt at impartial advice does come out as ‘in almost all cases, vote Liberal Democrat’ – but you might want to see my reasoning, and see if you agree…
If you’re Tory Well, actually, I suspect my blog has very few Tory readers. However, if you are one, David Cameron has *INCREDIBLY* stupidly ruled out any form of coalition with the Lib Dems in a hung parliament, so this won’t be of much use to you…
If you actively want a balanced (‘hung’) parliament for whatever reason, then Hang ‘Em is a campaign to get just that. It lists candidates who ‘have a chance of winning’, are either third-party or independent (but not BNP) , or are major party MPs with a long history of rebellion. In practice, more often than not, this will mean voting Lib Dem – and in fact that would be a good rough heuristic – but you might have other options which might appeal.
If you’re Labour then you do want to vote tactically. Labour have so destroyed their own base that their only hope for government is a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Frankly, even that’s a slim hope – most of us are furious at Labour’s record, and I think a coalition with *either* major party in their present forms unlikely – but it’s *possible*, while an outright Labour win just isn’t. Lee Griffin and the Daily Mirror (pdf) both have guides on how to vote tactically for a ‘progressive’/'anti-Tory’ majority – by which they mean a Labour-led coalition with the Lib Dems.
If you’re a smaller party supporter then the chances are very small that your preferred candidate will get in, pretty much by definition. My argument has always been that in this case you should vote Lib Dem in the hope of getting a fairer system, and I do think that’s the only way of getting any smaller parties into Parliament in significant numbers in the near future, but feel free to disagree.
If you’re a Liberal Democrat DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES vote tactically. Not this time. Vote Lib Dem even if you’re in a Lab/Con marginal and you know it’s keeping in the bastard Tories/torturing authoritarian arsehole Labour. The reason is simple – we need to come either first or second in the popular vote if we want to be able to *lead* a coalition – or to convincingly set terms by which some sort of deal can be cut. Our biggest, most important policy – the *SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT GOVERNMENT COULD EVER DO* – is to fix our voting system. We can only argue convincingly that we have a real democratic mandate to that if we can point to all the people who voted for us in seats where we *didn’t* get in. This is the first time *EVER* that the Liberal Democrats have had a real chance at getting power, in order to give the power back to the people – but we need to show that enough of those people support us, and not just in tactical voting areas.
If you’re still undecided Vote Lib Dem because I said so. You like me, don’t you? I like Batman. You like Batman. We have something in common! Vote Lib Dem. Or if that’s not good enough for you, and you think I may not be the most impartial of sources, try Votematch – a completely impartial system that asks you what your views are and then tells you which party has views closest to yours.
All this talk of tactical voting upsets me though – *no-one* should *EVER* have to even think about voting tactically – you should be able to vote for the party you want. As Millennium says:
Mr Balloon warns against “voting tactically”, but ONLY the Liberal Democrats want to change the system so that you NEVER have to vote tactically again.
Mr Balloon says that the current voting system lets you throw out the government. Well tell that to a voter in Richmond (Conservatory majority: 17,807 – where 40% of the voters have NO SAY AT ALL
The Conservatories idea of “change” is to redraw the boundaries in their own favour, to cut the number of MPs who might hold their government to account. (Reducing the number of MPs without making the system more representative just makes more and bigger safer seats.)
Will the Liberal Democrats do better under a FAIRER voting system? Well YES, but that doesn’t make it WRONG.
Greens and Libertarians and Christian Democrats and Monster Raving Loonies and Animal Rights Campaigners and Pirates and Cornish Separatists and Socialists and yes even the fruitloops from UKIP will ALL do better under a fairer system.
And above all YOU will do better out of a fairer system, because whoever you vote for, you’ll have a better chance of having your voice heard in Parliament. You will do better from a system that doesn’t EXCLUDE voices, that doesn’t FORCE all the politicians to SOUND THE SAME just to appeal to the swing voters in the key marginals.
I really didn’t want this to be a partisan post when I started, but when I try to think about things as clearly, rationally and fair-mindedly as possible, I always end up clearly, calmly and rationally advising a vote for the Liberal Democrats. I don’t know if that says more about the Lib Dems or about me…
A Beginners’ Guide To The Election Part 2 – What The Parties Stand For
A bit later than I thought, here’s the second part of this. Before I start, some people were interested in exactly what happens in a balanced parliament situation – here’s a report from the Hansard Society (pdf) that sets it all out.
I’m going to try here to set out what all the major parties in the UK General Election believe, as simply as I can. I’m going to try to avoid words like ‘socialism’ or ‘capitalism’ because I want this to be useful to as many people as possible – I genuinely know quite a few people who don’t know even what the most basic ideas of what the parties stand for even at this late stage. It should also, though, help my foreign friends understand things a bit better. If you’re a member or supporter of one of the parties listed and you think I’m being unfair or inaccurate (within the very simplistic way I’m doing this) please leave a comment.
The Conservative Party are the simplest party to explain. They believe that, more or less, the way things are is the best way they could be. They think that the people with power at the moment (not just politicians, but religious leaders, business leaders, banks and so on – ‘important’ people) are the people who should keep power. This also means that even though it’s not actually their policy, a lot of them think that middle-aged white straight men deserve more power than anyone who isn’t a middle-aged white straight male, though some individual Conservatives, including their current leader, don’t think that. The Conservatives are also called the Tories, and over Britain’s history they have been in government most of the time. Their leader is David Cameron.
The Labour Party are the hardest to explain. They used to believe that working people deserved to get a better share of the money than they do, and that government should make sure of that, but that otherwise it would be better to give people more freedom. Labour governments brought in the National Health Service, created the Open University, ended capital punishment (hanging) and legalised homosexuality and abortion. (Many of these were Liberal ideas originally, but Labour brought them in). However, after the Conservatives were in power for eighteen years, the leaders of the party decided that people didn’t want a government like that any more, and Labour became more-or-less identical to the Conservatives. There are some slight differences – they brought in the minimum wage and civil partnerships for gay people – but otherwise they have behaved almost exactly like the Conservatives (increasing the gap between rich and poor, supporting the Americans in illegal wars). Many Labour *members* though still hope the party will go back to the way it used to be. Labour have been in government for the last 13 years, and their leader is Gordon Brown.
The Liberal Democrats are both Britain’s oldest and newest party, being formed in 1988 from a merger between two other parties, the Liberals (Britain’s oldest party) and the Social Democrats (a new party formed by some ex-Labour members). We believe in freedom – that the government should not interfere in you doing what you want with your life. We realise, though, that you can’t be free without enough food to eat or somewhere to live or medicine if you’re sick, so we think the government should do what it can to make sure everybody has those things, even if it means interfering a bit with rich people’s freedom (by taking some of their money away) to make sure poor people have them. We also think it’s worth making sure we have a better environment for everyone, because the freedoms not to choke on fumes or to have your home not be flooded by dangerous weather are also important. We also want a fairer voting system, to give everyone the freedom to have a say in how they’re governed.
We also want to make sure that *everyone* has more freedom, so we support gay people, and transsexual people, and disabled people, and other people who have a hard time at the moment, and we want to make sure they have the same rights as everyone else and can also do what *they* want to with their lives.
The Liberal Democrats have never been in government, although the Liberals were a long, LONG time ago, and Nick Clegg is our leader.
The Green Party want to protect the environment, and to share money out more so poor people have more and rich people have less. They share a lot of the same ideals as the Liberal Democrats, but we think some of the ways they want to do things won’t work properly, while they think we’re too similar to the Conservatives and Labour and not radical enough. The Greens don’t have any Members of Parliament at the moment, but are hoping to get some. Caroline Lucas is their leader.
The Scottish Nationalist Party and Plaid Cymru are nationalists – they believe that Scotland (for the SNP) and Wales (for Plaid Cymru) should become separate countries. As you would imagine, they don’t have many MPs (Scotland and Wales don’t have many people in compared to England), but they both have a lot of members of their respective assemblies (the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly). Alex Salmond leads the SNP, and Ieuan Wyn Jones leads Plaid Cymru.
There are *lots* of smaller parties in Northern Ireland, where the major mainland parties don’t stand. Roughly speaking the Unionist parties (those that want Northern Ireland to stay part of the UK, mostly Protestants) will support the Conservatives in Parliament, while the Republican parties (those that want Northern Ireland to join with the Republic of Ireland, mostly Catholics) will support Labour, but some Republican parties (like Sinn Fein) won’t take their seats in Parliament because you have to swear allegiance to the Queen. The Alliance Party, which tries to work with both communities and bring them together, are formally linked to the Liberal Democrats.
Racist UKIP The official name of this party is the United Kingdom Independence Party, but I refuse to refer to them as anything other than Racist UKIP, because I was threatened with legal action for saying they are racists. Racist UKIP’s policy is mostly centred around not liking foreigners, so they don’t want to be part of the European Union and they want to stop any foreign people coming over here and get rid of some of the ones who already are. Other than that, they’re mostly the same as the Conservatives. Their leader is Lord Pearson Of Rannoch , and they don’t have any MPs in the Commons but do have members in the House of Lords.
The Bastard Nazi Party, officially the British National Party, are a party that formed mainly to hate black people, though in recent years they have branched out and now hate Muslims too. Their leader is DickIbegyourpardonNick Griffin, and they are bastard Nazis. They don’t have any MPs at the moment, and if you vote for them you are scum.
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