Political Parties - the role played by minor parties in political debate and setting the political agenda
The nationalist parties
‘Single issue’ parties such as the Green Party, UKIP and the Brexit Party are also far from insignificant. The latter two as Eurosceptic parties fared particularly well in European elections, winning those held in 2014 and 2019.
In Wales, Plaid Cymru won four out of 40 Welsh seats and secured just over 10% of the vote.
especially the Scottish National Party (SNP), have strong concentrated regional followings. The SNP is the largest Scottish political party in terms of seats both at Westminster and in the Scottish Parliament.
In 2019, the party won 48 seats and 45% of the total vote in Scotland. Without pressure from the powerful SNP, Cameron would almost certainly not have entertained a referendum for Scottish independence in 2014.
Northern Ireland has its own party system based largely on the nationalist/ unionist divide. The three main British parties are almost entirely absent from Ulster politics..
Only the Conservatives contested any seats (four) directly in 2019 and received a total vote share of just 0.7%. Therefore, Ulster politics is entirely dominated by ‘minor’ parties such as the unionist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the nationalist Sinn Féin and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and the non-sectarian Alliance Party.
The significance of the Ulster parties was cast into the spotlight when the DUP ended up holding the balance of power in Westminster after the 2017 general election and struck a ‘supply and confidence’ deal with the Conservatives
In 2014, Farage’s UKIP won just over 26% of the vote, defeating the three main parties.
His newly formed Brexit Party went on to win the 2019 European Parliament elections by an even bigger margin. It finished a clear first with over 31% of the vote
the Green Party pushed the Conservatives into a humiliating fifth place.
The wider impact of these results is also important. Many would argue that the success of Eurosceptic parties pushed the Conservative Party into a more resolute position on Brexit, so that it would avoid losing votes and potentially seats. However, the Eurosceptic parties have only ever won one Westminster seat, Clacton, when the sitting Tory MP Douglas Carswell defected to UKIP and won a by-election after resigning, and then held the seat at the 2015 election.
In short, the ongoing attraction of the Eurosceptic parties and especially the high public profile of Nigel Farage meant that the Conservatives were never able to ignore the debate over the UK’s future relationship with the EU. The Green Party, too, should not be ignored. While posing less of a direct threat to the main progressive parties, it has ensured that environmental issues remain on the political radar.
The extent to which a multiparty system exists in Britain
NO: In terms of Westminster, after the 2019 election 87% of the seats were held by the two largest parties on a combined vote share of nearly 76%.
YES: Some previous general elections, however, suggested elements of a multiparty system. For example, in 2010 the combined Tory/Labour vote share was only 65%, although their share of seats was somewhat higher at 87%.
YES: No fewer than 10 parties won seats in the last European elections in 2019.
YES: Politics in Northern Ireland often involves contests between several parties, despite some local electoral pacts to avoid splitting the unionist or nationalist vote.
YES: Scotland is a country with three-/four-party politics.
YES: Many local authorities have hung/balanced councils with no party in overall control, and independents have a significant presence on many local councils especially in more rural areas. In the 2019 council elections for example, independents won over 1,100 council seats, not far off the total achieved by the Liberal Democrats. .
YES: Even at Westminster, the unelected Lords is a multiparty chamber with no party having an overall majority and having more cross-bench peers than either Labour or Liberal Democrat ones
NO: At general elections and in the Commons, Britain (or more accurately England) is currently a two-party dominant system.