Political parties in Britain

On this page:  Jump to ►	A short history of party politics	Former stability of the political landscape
	Political parties in Britain today	Regional or nationalist parties

Until around 2010, the  party political landscape in the UK was essentially characterised by its stability. The main parties were established historic institutions, and British voters knew what they stood for. Since 2010, and in particular since Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's fateful decision to call a referendum over Britain's membership of the European Union, Britain's political parties have been in turmoil - both in government and in opposition.

1. Recent developments - British governments since Boris Johnson

2. Political parties - what do they stand for?

What are the Parties' principal policies ?  And what does each party stand for ? A very quick guide to the five UK parties (excluding regional parties) based on the policies they defended during the most recent general election campaign (2019).

	On Brexit	On immigration	On the economy	On health
The Conservatives	In favour	Reduce immigration	Boost the economy by reducing taxes for all, including the wealthy. Reduce bureaucracy.	Provide an extra £20.5 bn a year for the health service
Labour	Call for new referendum	Keep the immigration that is vital for parts of the British economy	Reduce taxes for 95% of the population, but increase them for the top 5%. Renationalise parts of the economy, notably the railways. Abolish tuition fees for university students	Provide an extra £26 bn a year for the health service
The Lib Dems	Against	Keep Free movement of people within the EU	Boost the economy by stopping Brexit; (almost all economic forecasts show that Brexit will damage the British economy)	Provide an extra £6 bn a year paid for by an increase in income tax
The Green party	Against	Keep Free movement of people within the EU	Boost the economy by stopping Brexit; take increasingly radical measures to combat climate change and improve the environment. Renationalise some public services now in private hands.	Take back some parts of the NHS currently operated by private contractors, and inject public money as needed.
The Brexit party	In favour	Reduce immigration to 50,000 a year	No major policies announced. But reduce foreign aid by 50% and abolish inheritance tax	Unclear

3. A short history of political parties in Britain

England has the oldest parliament in the world.  The English parliament met for the first time at the Palace of Westminster in the year 1265, but it took more than four centuries before the concept of "political parties" gave a new dimension to political life in Britain.
    Before the birth of political parties in the seventeenth century, the English parliament consisted of aristocrats and wealthy men who formed alliances and majorities based on specific factors or loyalties. It was not until after the English Civil War, and parliamentary upheavals during the Republican years of the Commonwealth and Protectorate (1649-1660), that the first English political parties began to take shape. During the years from 1678 to 1681,  and the constitutional crisis known as the Exclusion Crisis, most members of the English parliament  formed into  two "parties", named Whigs and Tories. The descendants of these two original parties are the two parties that formed the coalition government under Prime Minister David Cameron from 2010 to 2015.

     Until the early 20th century, alone or in coalition with other groups, these two political parties in turn formed successive British governments, based on the results of parliamentary elections.
     Initially, the Whigs were the party of the liberal and reforming aristocracy. In contrast to the Tories, the Whig Party attracted people more favorable to constitutional reforms, and in 1832 led the most significant modernization of the British Parliament, the Reform Act, which rebalanced parliamentary constituencies, and greatly expanded the electoral base to the middle classes. In the 1850's, the Whig Party became the most important element of a union of Whigs and Radicals who took the name "Liberal Party". This centrist party continued until 1988, when it merged with the new but smaller Social Democratic Party to form today's Liberal Democrats
.     The word Tory designated early supporters of strong royal power; Tories were monarchists and traditionalists, especially at the time of the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. During the eighteenth century, the Whigs dominated British politics, and the Tory party played a relatively small role in the political life of the United Kingdom.
     This changed in the last three decades of the eighteenth century, when the rise of reformism and radicalism in Europe, which was to lead notably to the French Revolution (1789), gave a new impetus to defenders of the status quo and conservatism. The Tories re-emerged as a major force in British politics in 1770 - but this time as a modern party in favor of maintaining the best traditions of Britain, but at the same time strongly supporting the new opportunities created by the industrial revolution and imperial and commercial expansion. During the 19th century - as today - the Tory party, which became the Conservative Party in 1834, was torn between its traditionalists and its reformers. Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative prime minister from 1874 to 1880, was one of the great reformers of the 19th century.

     After the First World War, a new party came to power in the British Parliament, the Labour Party. The first Labour MPs had been elected in 1900 as representatives of the Independent Labour Party. The Labour Party formed a minority government in 1924, but it did not last. Labour first formed a majority government in 1929. The rise of the Labour Party  came however at the expense of the other non-Conservative party, the Liberals, and Labour replaced the Liberals as the main alternative to the Conservatives.
     From 1929 to 2010, power alternated between the Conservatives and the Labour Party.
     Following the general election of 2010,  no single party emerged with an absolute majority of MPs; so for the first time in living memory, a coalition government was formed, with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats sharing power.
     Since the end of the coalition government in 2015, Britain's political parties have been in upheaval, with the Conservative party taken over by its right wing, and the Labour Party taken over by the hard left, a situation that has caused confusion among voters and a series of unprecedented political events in Britain, culminating with a hard Brexit that was eventually sealed in 2021.

4. Former stability of the political landscape

As this historical overview shows, the British political landscape in general has until very recently been characterized by a remarkable stability. The British electoral system, a system of "relative majority" (known as the " first past the post" system) ¹,  has not changed for more than four centuries, and is favorable to large parties and stable governments. It tends to prevent parties fragmenting into smaller factions or clans, and encourages consensus positions around strong party leaders.
     In a referendum in 2011, British voters reaffirmed their commitment to this historic electoral system, rejecting a new system that would have introduced an element of proportional representation.
    Britain's three major parties are all now more than a century old, and the system makes it very hard for new parties to get a foot on the ladder. The rise of the Labour Party in the early 20th century was the result of major changes in society. Since then, no new party has succeeded in establishing itself in England, and new parties that are created remain marginal in terms of representation, or merge with larger ones. The situation is different in other parts of the United Kingdom, where nationalist parties have broken into the political landscape, even to the point of becoming the principal political party in Scotland.
   However, the result of the European elections held in May 2019 show that an earthquake has hit the formerly stable political landcape.  In the European elections,the traditional "main" parties, the Conservatives and Labour, took just 25% of the vote between them, with the Conservatives taking their lowest share of the vote since the nineteenth century... less than 10%.  Over 66% of the votes were taken by other parties, notably the new Brexit Party (31%) ,  the Liberal Democrats (20%) and the Greens (12%).
   Then, just seven months later, the Conservative party  was back up to a 43.6% share of the vote in the 2019 General Election - sufficient (given the way the British voting system works) to obtain an outright majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons.

5. Political turmoil in Britain today

6. Main British parties (excluding regionalist parties / nationalsts ) 

Right-wing or conservative parties

The Conservative Party (also called the Tories)

The Conservatives are the British party of the right, traditionally including a broad range of middle-of-the-road conservatives and royalists, neo-liberals and social conservatives. Or at least that was the case until 2019.
   Since 2019 the Conservative Party has been taken over by its right wing, made up of a mix of economic neo-liberals (the ERG group), ultra-traditionalists, sovereignists and English nationalists. Many former centre-right Conservatives, including a good number of former MPs, ministers and even former Conservative Prime Minister John Major, have either strongly distanced themselves from today's party, or else gone over to other parties, in particular to the Liberal Democrats.
   Prior to 2019, and for the previous forty years, the party has been deeply divided over issues of sovereignty and the role of Britain in the European Union. A majority of party members were in favour of a revision of the terms of Britain's membership of the European Union, and the holding of a referendum on withdrawal. But other Conservatives, including industrial and business leaders, were and mostly still are strongly pro-European. Recent leaders have been beset by problems trying to reconcile the strongly opposing views of party members on this issue.
   In 2016, the divisions were sharply amplified during the campaign for the Brexit referendum; two thirds of the Party's MPs - essentially the centre-right moderate wing of the party - were in favour of remaining in the EU; one third, the Conservative sovereignist hard-liners and the neo-conservative faction, were in favour of leaving.  However, grass-roots Conservative party activists are on the whole further to the right than their MPs.
  Since the resignation of David Cameron, the Party has moved to the right, as pro-Brexit and sovereignist  MPs have taken up key positions in Mrs. May's cabinet.  Since the election of Boris Johnson as leader, the Conservative Party has become essentially a UK (or, as some say, English) nationalist party.
   
   The Conservative Party is made up of local Associations which play a major role in the selection of candidates and the appointment of the party leader. The importance of this local structure reflects the very old tradition of territorial representation in British politics, a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. However, "Central Office" often imposes candidates on local associations to enable up-and-coming stars to enter parliament, as was the case with Margaret Thatcher.
   In her short speech to the press, on taking up her job as Prime Minister, Theresa May positioned herself very clearly as a "one-nation" moderate Conservative, keen to build a new Britain for ordinary people, not just for the wealthy. It was a speech that could equally well have been made by David Cameron, or most of the recent leaders of the Labour Party.


UKIP - The UK Independence Party
A sovereignist , founded by national populist Nigel Farage, that wanted Britain to withdraw from the European Union. The party has little in the way of policies, apart from Europe-bashing, but is surprisingly popular with voters disgruntled with the perceived failures of the main parties . In the 2015 election, UKIP obtained just one member of Parliament, a sitting MP who had moved over from the conservatives. UKIP had several members in the European Parliament.
   In 2016, UKIP provided the foot-soldiers of the campaign to take Britain out of the European Union; but the non-UKIP part of the Leave campaign  sought to distance itself from UKIP after the referendum, worried at the damage that UKIP's xenophobic campaigning has done to Britain.
    After Farage left the party that he created, and created another new party, the Brexit Party, UKIP lost most of its supporters. It won no seats in the 2019 European elections, nor in the general election of the same year.

Parties of the centre

The Liberal Democrat party - the Liberal Democrats , or Lib Dems

A party of the centre, formed in 1988 by the merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) , the latter being made up of dissidents from the Labour party. The Lib Dems are thus a mixture of social conservatives and social democrats. The party is the most pro-European of the major British parties, and until 2015 shared power with the Conservative Party in the coalition government.
   Many of those who voted Lib-Dem in 2010 were furious when the party chose to go into colaition with the Conservatives, and in the 2015 election, the Lib Dems lost most of their MPs. However, following the election of left-winger Jeremy Corbyn to the head of the Labour party in September 2015, and the subequent internal divisions in the Labour party, support for the Lib-Dems has begun to rise again
   In 2016, expectations were raised further since the Brexit referendum vote.  The Liberal-Democrats consolidated their position as the only credible party at the Centre of British politics, as the Conservative party moved to the right, and the Labour Party moved increasingly to the left. In December 2016, an unknown Lib-Dem candidate achieved a dramatic success by beating the Conservatives.

The Greens - The Green Party

A centre-left party, in many ways rather middle-class, committed to the promotion of environmental issues. One Member of Parliament (since 2010)

The parties of the Left

The Labour Party 

The Labour party covers virtually the whole spectrum of left wing politics in Britain, and includes a smaller party known as the Co-operative party. Until 2010, since the time of Tony Blair, it had been dominated by the social-liberal centre-left (initially known as New Labour):   the collectivist "Old Labour" views were very much in a minority . From 2010 to 2015, under the leadership of Ed Miliband, it remained essentially a centre-left party; but in September 2015, with the election to the leadership of a left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party  moved into a new period in its history. (see below). Under Corbyn, Labour was ineffectual as an opposition, losing three successive General Elections at a time when the UK, on the eve of the Brexit disaster, needed a strong opposition.  In April 2020, Corbyn was replaced by Sir Keir Starmer, a moderate former human-rights lawyer, under whose leadership the party has risen in the opinion polls.
   The party is supported and funded by the British trade unions, but it is not controlled nor significantly influenced by them, and this influence was further reduced in 2015. Very weak following the recession of the 1970s, the party was largely reformed later by Tony Blair, who transformed it into a modern social democratic party.
     The Labour Party is made up of local parties (Constituency Labour Parties), most British trade unions and other associations. These structures send delegates to party conferences, depending on the number of their members. Party Conferences define the general lines of party policy, but conference decisions are not binding on the parliamentary party .
     Until 2014 Labour party leaders were  elected by three electoral colleges, individual members , Labour MPs, and trade unions,  each college representing a third of the final result. In 2010 Ed Miliband, was elected by the weight of union vote, even though both Labour MPs and individual members preferred his brother David Miliband. After his election, and to reassure not only the country but also a large number of his constituents , Ed Miliband sought to emphasize his total independence from the unions. In 2014, he announced plans to reduce the role of the unions even further in the election of the party leader.  A new electoral process was introduced, whereby the leader is elected by paid up members of the party and anyone else who signs up and pays to vote in the electoral process.
  Following the party's defeat in the 2015 General Election, Miliband stepped down as leader of the Labour Party. Miliband's plan backfired, and In September, Party members and other electors chose as the new leader of the Labour Party a radical left-winger, Jeremy Corbyn – the most left-wing leader the party has ever had. Corbyn's election sparked a serious rift in the party, and within hours of his election, eight members of the shadow cabinet had resigned.
   For Corbyn's supporters, his election marked a return by the Labour party to its core socialist values; for his opponents, it had simply made the Labour Party unelectable for at least ten years.... if not longer. Opinion polls persistently showed that while Labour party militants may favour a strong left-wing agenda, British voters as a whole do not.
   Under the Corbyn administration, the Labour Party failed to win any elections, and indeed in the 2019 election lost a large number of traditional Labour strongholds, allowing Boris Johnson to sweep to power with a majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons for the Conservative Party

Respect

The party of a populist left-wing Labour party dissident, George Galloway, who was its sole MP until 2015.

The Communist Party of Great Britain

Very marginal, the party has only ever had two elected MPs. It was never a mass party, not even when at its peak in the 1940's.

Main regional and nationalist parties

England does not have any serious regional parties, however, regional or nationalist parties are now very important in the political landscape of other countries that make up the United Kingdom.

SNP - Scottish Nationalist Party

Currently the most important political party in Scotland, and the party in power in the Scottish Parliament . A left-of-centre nationalist party, that organized a referendum on Scottish independence in autumn 2014. In the referendum, Scots voted to remain part of the United Kingdom.
  In 2016, following the result of the Brexit referendum vote in which Scotland overwhelmingly voted to remain in the European Union, party leader Nicola Sturgeon is currently hoping to call a second independence referendum, and take an independent Scotland back into the European Union.

Plaid Cymru - Welsh nationalist party

Major Welsh party, which did control the Welsh Assembly, but is now on a par with the Labour Party, which is also very well established in this part of the United Kingdom. In 2017 Plaid Cymru (pronounced Plied Coomry) has three MPs in the UK parliament.

Democratic Unionist Party ²

The DUP, the conservative Protestant majority party in Northern Ireland (Ulster),  is very favorable to the maintenance of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, but not to Britain remaining in the European Union. They are in favour of Brexit, and reject the idea that Northern Ireland could have special status in the UK after Brexit; however they want Britain - or at least Northern Ireland - to retain full access to the European market (in the framework of a "Comprehensive free trade and customs agreement with the European Union") , positions that may be hard to reconcile.
  The DUP was first formed in 1971 as a hard-line Protestant break-away party, dissatisfied with the direction taken by the official Ulster Unionist party, which was closely allied with the Conservatives.

Sinn Fein ²

The majority party among the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, in favour of the withdrawal of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, and the reunification of Ireland.

SDLP

Social Democratic Party and Labour Party of Northern Ireland, a non-sectarian social democratic party made up of both Catholics and Protestants.