Talk Elections

Can some one please tell me the parties that the UK has, what do they believe in.....

Well, I could try to explain the differences between Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Conservatives, but I think a Brit would be better at it.

:D

Labour: Democratic Socialist/Social Democratic. Socially moderate. Tied to the Unions (hence the name). Large Christian Socialist wing. Supported by blue collar/low income voters, Non-Conformists, Progressive Yuppie types (not in local council elections though) and certain ethnic minorities (esp. Sikhs).
Closest party in the UK to the Democrats in the US.

Conservatives: Conservative. Split between "Wets" (moderates) and Right wingers. Supported by high income voters, High Church Anglicans and better off farmers.
Closest party in the UK to the GOP.

Liberal Democrats: Mixed. The "Big L Liberal" wing is very strong in rural areas and tends to be socially moderate and pro-gun/fox hunting etc. The "Liberal Suburbanite" wing is socially liberal and right wing on economics.
There is also a small Social Democrat wing (a hangover from the SDP) although it's large at local level.

Other Parties;

UKIP: [Far] Right-wing, anti EU, Isolationist etc. Came third in the European Elections. Mostly a protest party.

SNP: Scottish Seperatist/Nationalist. Ranges from far-right to far-left depending on what part of Scotland they are in.

Plaid Cymru: Welsh Seperatist/Nationalist. Tends to be left of centre (although Welsh politics is *very* left wing), supported by Welsh Speakers and certain middle class voters. Used as a protest vote sometimes.

Greens: Guess.

BNP: Neo-Nazi thugs

Respect-The Unity Coalition/SWP/SA/Etc Ad Nausem: various far-left groups. Little public support.

Thanks AL, BTW who is John Prescott?

The Deputy P.M

He in the Labour right?

Yes

wow...you were actually semi-polite when dealing with the BNP fools...

Neo-Nazi Thugs is the nicest thing you could say about them.

Don't forget anti-immigration. I looked at their website, one of their 5 key freedoms is "Freedom From Overcrowding".

They don't support immigration in any form.


Respect = The Stop the War Coalition who realised after the war they could either go away or take a new line, they took the new line option, "Stop the lies".

UKIP belong to the modern breed of racist. They will never openly admit to being racist, and patronisingly claim that some of their supporters are black or Asian (in the way some people go "I'm not racist, I've got black friends!"). They will cleverly disguise their bigoted views behind a veil of respectability and pseudo-intellectual arguments.

However, at the end of the day they're just a bunch of racist f***wits.

I think I'd swing between Labour and Lib Dem (Liberal Suburbanite wing, of course :)).

Al, do you think that the Left will ever organise itself into one entity and actually be able to gain seats in the "protest vote" elections, they seem to have done alright in Scotland with Tommy Sheridan and the SSP, they might be able to seriously challenge for Glasgow Pollok in 2007.

I never could understand why the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives weren't one party.  Seems a ridiculous splitting of the right-leaning vote.   No wonder Labour's in office.

The LibDems are a very strange animal traditionally (since the 1950’s) they where socially liberal but economically inclined towards the right.

In the 1980’s when the Labour Party swung radically to the left (thanks to Kinnock and Blair that has been reversed) a group of heavy weights from the right of the party and their followers spilt from the main party and formed the SDP (Social Democratic Party), despite a share of the vote nearly on a par with Labour they failed to gain many seats, only 24 compared with Labour’s just over 200. Over the 1980’s the SDP declined as those on the left of the group drifted toward the LibDems while those of a more moderate almost conservative disposition lead by the charismatic David Owen refused to grow closer to the LibDems. In the end most of the SDP merged with the Liberal Party (as it was then) and formed the Liberal Democratic Party. Owen held out but his party eventually collapsed.

Under the leadership of a former paratrooper named Paddy Ashdown the Liberal Democrats positioned themselves as “compassionate moderates” between the Conservatives who where seen as uncaring and the Labour Party which was still suspected of not having put its radical turn to the left of a few years before behind it, and in the 1992 general election they did well. In 1994 when Blair became leader of the Labour Party he moved the Labour party to a position very similar to that Ashdown has occupied as compassionate, principled, moderates while the Conservative Party suffered a seemingly never ending series of scandals and great divisions over the issue of Europe both of which destroyed public faith in the government and exacerbated the image of the Conservative Party as arrogant and out of touch.

After 1997 when Labour was elected with one of the biggest landslides in history, the Liberals doubled their seats in parliament, the LibDems and the Labour government worked together on a number of issues, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that had Labour had a much smaller majority Blair wanted to form a full-blown coalition.

In 2001 Ashdown step down as leader and the party elected the rather lightweight Charles Kennedy, a Scottish MP and a former Labour Party Member and then SDP MP before joining the LibDems. Kennedy distanced himself from Ashdown’s policy of close cooperation but not radically however he began to attempt to attract socially liberal conservatives, as the Conservative Party had lurch far to the right under the inept and directionless leadership of Iain Duncan-Smith. The War on Iraq was the issues which changed every thing, Blair had long antagonised those further to the left and added to this on Iraq and a number of controversial domestic programs he was under pressure from the moderate left leaning middle classes, Kennedy attempted to ride the wave of the Iraq war the leader of the largest party to oppose the war (both Labour and the Conservatives backing it) he attacked the Government from the left this helped his standing as Iraq failed to “pan out”. In the aftermath of Iraq Blair pushed on with his domestic agenda that angered many on the left and Kennedy attacked Blair on these programs in public services as being too conservative and pro-free-market as Iraq has got worse and Blair has come under more pressure Kennedy has moved further to the left attempting to undermine Labour’s base which is not fully supportive of Blair’s moderate polices.

In the long term I think Kennedy’s abandonment of the centre ground occupied by Ashdown and attempt to outflank Blair to the Left, championing higher taxation and unreformed public services and an expansion of the welfare state as well as a leftwing foreign policy, which includes withdrawal from Iraq. In the Long term with public services improving with Iraq most probably improving and troop numbers being reduced Kennedy will lose some support. However the real damage will come when Brown probably succeeds Blair some time in the next three years or so, Blair will be gone, the leader of the Labour party will pursue similar polices but will talk unabashedly about “red meat” labour issues and will seem like a very “labour politician” a very traditional moderate labour leader like the late John Smith (leader of the party 1992-1994), it does not matter that policy will change little it will draw a line under the Blair tenure, the leftwing base will largely fall back into place behind a Brown lead government and the LibDems will find themselves caught between their traditional centrist base gravitating toward the Conservatives (who will have recovered a great deal three years or so from now) and the Labour Party reasserting dominance over its base and the left leaning middle class.  


  So I think it highly unlikely that the LibDems would ever merge with the Conservatives, people vote for the LibDems as centrist or (more so these days) leftwingers not as a party which leans to the right, if anything the LibDems should look to merging with the Labour Party but with Kennedy's leadership that looks unlikely, in the end I think Kennedy has attempted to flank Labour and it will fail and that in so doing he will see the LibDems torn apart by pressure from the need to hold on to their centrist core support and the Leftwing support he has tried to attract... such are the perils of pandering , he could do the LibDems incredible damage.      

Pandering is accurate... Kennedy went against his own beliefs when he let the suburbanites do all the LibDem economic policies (now there economic policy is the right of every liberal leader since Grimond) and he weakend his position further when he let the Simon Hughes wing (ie: progressive yuppy types) do all the social and foreign policy stuff.
Which helped them do well in local elections (though Hughes was humiliated in the London poll) but won't help them *at all* in a general election.
But Kennedy remains much more popular than his party, mainly because up till now he's been seen as an anti-politician.
But his arrogant remarks last friday could be the beginning of the end.

Their website doesn't say they are a bunch of racist f***wits, it in fact says that "The UK Indepence Party is not a racist party"

Of course it would, like I said they would never admit to their own prejudices. But looking at their policies and general worldview I'm getting quite a different impression.

I know, my point is, if you have to say that then you clearly are, I believe the BNP's website says the same thing.

Oh right, sorry I got the wrong end of the stick there.

I didn't throw a stick, that was a snake!

Nooo! Look at it, it's clearly a.... AAAH! SNAKE!! RUN!!!

(Runs away.)

:), Hey Michael, go check out the Second Boss Abortion Act and my amendments, also, check out my quiz in the "History" section :).