I’m British. I drink tea and say sorry a lot. And I’ve lived here my whole life; I have never known anything but the bleak, rain-splattered streets of my hometown. I imagine that looking at Britain as an occupant of literally any other country, we would seem bizarre in an array of ways. Beans on toast, carpets in bathrooms, the lack of plug sockets in our bathrooms, but most of all, our politics.
Long ago, when times were simple and the only thing vaguely progressive was the egalitarianism movement, our politics was maybe simpler. But it’s 2017, and it’s become apparent that perhaps the people don’t want consistency. This is where UKIP comes in.
It’s a shame that UKIP is the first party I’ll be talking to you about (warning: I am human. I have strong political views that do not, in any way, correlate with the beliefs held by UKIP, so this will be biased). The party was founded in 1993 and essentially its sole purpose was to haul Britain out of the E.U. Well, in 2016 they actually managed to accomplish this. With nothing else left on the agenda apart from spreading their unorthodox views, UKIP’s controversial leader resigned. Their small but passionate following has stayed loyal, however, and they have a grand total of one seat in the House of Commons.
There are parties that have more seats that I won’t include on this list such as Sinn Fein and Plain Cymru. I simply don’t know enough about these parties to include them.
Moving on to a party the polar opposite to UKIP: Greens. The green party are heavily centered around environmental issues. They too hold one seat in the House of Commons and have been around since the mid 80s. The greens are a constant in the House; they don’t win many seats, but they’re always around. They even took part in some debates during the 2015 elections, but only after some controversy about their relevance.
Now it gets interesting. If you know your politics, you might be aware of a certain Scottish independence referendum held back in 2014. It was during and after this referendum (which was tight but concluded Scotland should stay part of the UK) that the Scottish National Party, or SNP, gained its hefty following. The number of seats they currently hold in the House of Commons is a staggering 54, and they’re the third most popular party. Considering they can only be elected in Scotland, this is a pretty impressive feat.
Until recently, the three remaining parties, yet to be discussed, used to be top dog in Britain. No one else would ever come close and they would hog the majority of seats in parliament. So when the Liberal Democrats, or ‘Lib Dems’ won just 9 seats in 2015, it left everyone a little shellshocked. Certainly to me, this marked the beginning of a radical change in politics. To simplify this greatly, I’ll use one word: democracy. It’s a complex beast even at the best of times, and when people are angry, well, that complicates things even more.
In 2010, the Lib Dems joined forces with another party to create a combined number of seats that would mean that one political ‘group’ now had the majority of power in parliament. This is a called a coalition. A lot of Lib Dem supporters were not happy about this, which became very evident after the 2015 election. Though the Liberal Democrats are an important party historically, they lack this status in present times.
Penultimately, we have the Tories, or the Conservatives. This is the party that currently holds power in the UK. Initially built on capitalist ideologies (boo), in recent years they’ve taken a slightly softer, more neo-liberal approach, though their politics is still very much identifiably right wing. It was born from the original Tory party in 1834 as has basically thrived ever since. Their current leader, the unelected prime minister of the UK, Theresa May, is doing her very best to keep it that way. How successfully she is doing that is ambiguous.
Finally. We’ve come to Labour. The creme de la creme (though the party is currently falling apart, but we’ll pop that to one side for the moment), and my preferred party. The Labour party has rivalled the Tories since the 1920s, and was founded during the rise of socialism and left-wing politics. These guys are responsible for the NHS (national health service)! Their former leader, Ed Miliband, was ridiculed and then memed for eating a bacon sandwich. Their current leader likes to sit on the floor of trains and read people’s emails out to the prime minister.
Currently, Labour are sort of falling apart. Jeremy Corbyn (the train guy, and current leader) has traditional socialist ideas and is moderately left wing. Go back a few years and their leader was Tony Blair. He was center left. Now, there are some who like Jeremy, and some who prefer the way the party was headed when Blair lead it. They don’t like Corbyn and they show it. Much like Trump and the Republicans, except the biggest scandal Corbyn’s ever faced was that one time when he didn’t sing the national anthem and all the royalists tried (and failed) to drag him.
So, there we have it. British politics made simple(ish). I hope this has helped clear up any confusions you may have had about our intricate political system!
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