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POLITICAL PARTIESThe idea of political parties first took form in Britain and the Conservative Party claims to be the oldest political party in the world. Political parties began to form during the English civil wars of the 1640s and 1650s. First, there were Royalists and Parliamentarians; then Tories and Whigs. Whereas the Whigs wanted to curtail the power of the monarch, the Tories - today the Conservatives - were seen as the patriotic party. Today there are three major political parties in the British parliamentary system:
In recent years, Britain has seen the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) led by Nigel Farage, which was formed in 1993 but has achieved some spectacular performances in May 2014. In the English local elections, UKIP won 17% of the votes cast (although this was down from 23% in the local elections of 2013). In the European Parliament elections, it took the largest share of the vote of any UK party: an astonishing 27.5%. Currently it has no seats in the House of Commons but hopes to obtain MPs in the General Election of May 2015. It remains to be seen whether this is a protest movement that will implode or whether continued success will impact the nature of British politics. In addition to these four main parties, there are some much smaller UK parties (notably the Green Party) and some parties which operate specifically in Scotland (the Scottish National Party), Wales (Plaid Cymru) or Northern Ireland (such as Sinn Fein for the nationalists and the Democratic Unionist Party for the loyalists). Each political party chooses its leader in a different way, but all involve all the Members of Parliament of the party and all the individual members of that party. By convention, the leader of the political party with the largest number of members in the House of Commons becomes the Prime Minster (formally at the invitation of the Queen). Political parties are an all-important feature of the British political system because:
Having said this, the influence of the three main political parties is not as dominant as it was in the 1940s and 1950s because:
In the past, class was a major determinant of voting intention in British politics, with most working class electors voting Labour and most middle class electors voting Conservative. These days, class is much less important because:
In the British political system, there is a broad consensus between the major parties on:
The main differences between the political parties concern:
Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1871
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