Britain's Weird, Small Political Parties Explained - TLDR News

hello and welcome to another tldr uk video a week or so ago i watched this video by j.j mccullar talking about canada's fringe parties and i thought it was super interesting it's actually linked down below if you want to check it out i took a look and it turns out they hadn't done one for britain so i thought we could explore a similar idea because as much as britain might feel like a two-party system with labor and the conservatives dominating the commons and ballot boxes they're not the only players the tories and labour certainly do rule the game as the only parties with a genuine shot at winning a majority though with the next tier of parties realistically being unable to win a majority however they could still steal votes from the big two or former coalition as the lib dems proved then you've got a bunch of parties that while significant in their areas notably wales and northern ireland they're not really a presence on the national level finally we have the ones we'll discuss today the true fringe parties who while putting forward candidates regularly have total vote tallies in the thousands or low tens of thousands so let's explore who they are what they stand for and why these parties even bother continuing to exist we are incredibly close to half a million subscribers on this channel so if you want more content from us and want to lend us hand please hit the button so then who are these smaller fringe parties well for our list we're taking a look at the parties who picked up fewer than 50 000 votes in 2019 but more than 5 000 which gives us six parties the yorkshire party ukip the liberal party and to the monster raving looney party and the christian people's alliance these parties are clearly very small and stand with no real chance of winning a seat let alone an election so why are they even taking part well let's explain what they stand for the largest of this group are the yorkshire party who won 29 201 votes in 2019 securing them 0.1 percent of the total vote and zero seats the party was founded in 2014 and aims to give yorkshire devolved powers through a yorkshire assembly roughly similar to the devolved powers of wales scotland and northern ireland specifically they advocate for education the environment transport and housing to be devolved this is their biggest policy which let's be real makes sense although they're the largest of the french parties they're aware that they're not going to gain national office so they know that it's probably best to campaign on one specific issue instead of writing a full manifesto nonetheless they do have some other policies which they themselves categorize as socially democratic and economically centrist on t brands they've also made clear their support obviously for yorkshire tea while they have had some success in second order elections such as winning some council seats the party has never succeeded in winning a seat in the house of commons we should point out that they only feel candidates in yorkshire so the fact that they were the sixth largest party in terms of vote in england is quite a feat however even in the places they do run their vote count still isn't that high and they failed to get their deposit back in any general election race they've run next let's take a look at ukip formerly the bastion of brexit and a major challenger for the conservatives stealing many from the right of the tory fold they've well and truly fallen off in the last few years gaining only 22 817 votes in 2019 and securing zero seats this is largely because their former leader nigel farage jumped ship and started a new party one who did far better in the election but what does ukip stand for today well unsurprisingly ukip still stands against the european union and what they call rapid mass uncontrolled immigration they claim also to stand for the following principles patriotism national democracy political democracy economic democracy liberalism and traditionalism some of these principles do seem to come into conflict though and while they claim to be a traditionalist party their first policy commitment on their website is reforming the house of lords and they go on to say that they support voting reform and neither of those policies seem particularly traditional to me unlike the yorkshire party though they have had some electoral success historically in 2014 they became the first party in more than a century other than labour and the conservatives to win a national poll this was the 2014 european elections which the party won meaning that an anti-eu party represented the uk in the eu clearly this was the sign of things to come in addition to this win around the same time they also succeeded in gaining mps in the house of commons although it wasn't through a general election rather through defections mark reckless and douglas caswell defected from the conservative party to ukip making them the party's first mps to be fair to ukip following their defections they did stand in by-elections and won so unlike their fringe counterparts ukip have successfully had candidates elected to the commons albeit not in a real general election let's discuss the liberal party next who won 10 876 votes in 2019 and no seats we should probably make clear from the outset that this isn't the liberal democrat party well it's actually complicated back in 1981 the labour party was headed by michael foote many in the party were frustrated with his more left-wing tendencies so they split off to form the social democratic party soon after they formed an alliance with the liberal party merging to become the social and liberal democrats and then they dropped the social part to become the party we know today the issue was that the original liberal party had a lot of history in the uk being one of only two major parties prior to the early 1900s with many historic british prime ministers coming from the liberal party as such some members of the liberal party opposed the merger and created a new liberal party intended as a continuation of the traditional liberal party prior to the merger unfortunately for the liberal party though they failed to even be as successful as the liberal democrats that's likely because all of the major politicians in the party remained in the merged liberal democrat party and as such they became the more legitimate party of the two unsurprisingly the liberal party's ideology is libertarian and they're in favor of civil liberties even despite the pandemic and covet 19. enzo are a northern irish party who picked up 9814 votes in 2019. the party was founded in 2019. following peter toybin a former member of sinn fein resigning from the party due to his anti-abortion views as you can imagine then the party is seen as pretty conservative this ideological conservatism can be seen additionally through their advocacy for parental choice in sex education interestingly though some of their attitudes are also left-wing such as their views on economics migration and climate change for example they've backed policies to end zero hour contracts and to increase spending on public housing the next party might be infamous but with 0.02 percent of the votes and 9739 ballots in 2019 the monster raving looney party on exactly a significant force electorally unlike the previous parties the monster raving looney party don't present themselves as a serious force in politics the party was founded by screaming lord such in the 1980s and aims to both joke around and offer candidates that protest voters can support some of their policies currently include anyone applying for seven-figure salary positions with the world health organization or as government health advisors would have to answer 15 correct questions on who wants to be a millionaire and to unite the population we'll surround the uk with a large cardboard box so that it can be both in and or out of the eu this will be known as schrodinger's brexit interestingly too their slogan which was designed to set themselves apart from other parties is vote insanity the only real criticism we have is that it doesn't necessarily stand themselves a part of all of the other parties running at the general election the final fringe party we're going to take a look at is the christian people's alliance who secured 6486 votes in 2019. the party grew in 1999 out of frustration with the uk seemingly becoming more secular specifically the party grew out of a cross-party advocacy group the decision to become a fully fledged party was made due to devolution which introduced proportional representation to parts of the uk making smaller parties feel as if they could achieve more power despite being a christian party though their policies aren't explicitly about religion one of their policies in the early 2000s was to ease motorway congestion and some of this action was actually accepted by the government obviously though as a christian party they have also backed religious policies a good example of this is their opposition to same-sex marriage so if these are britain's fringe parties ones who can't realistically win in their current state then why do they even exist well obviously there isn't one answer but according to a major paper in parliamentary affairs they claim that minor parties aim to influence the behavior of established parties and to expand the ideological boundaries of political culture in addition to this they also offer more choice to the electorate for some parties these points are demonstrated perfectly ukip for example clearly did influence the behavior of the established parties they grew out of the desire to leave the eu and were successful in forcing the conservative government's hand in calling a referendum if you want to know more about this you'll be happy to know that we made a full video explaining ukip's power and how they grew to prominence the monster raving looney party on the other hand knows fully well that they won't be able to influence any of the major parties and nor do they try to they exist simply to offer voters choice they represent those who aren't just apathetic but disenfranchised by the system itself to actually turn up and vote for a joke party demonstrates that you aren't exactly on board with the major options some parties seem like a bit of a mixture of these factors though the liberal party is a good example of this because while they are standing as a legitimate party and attempting to get their ideas into the mainstream they also offer an alternative to the liberal democrats this was certainly more of the case in the late 1980s when the sdp liberal merger was formalized and the liberal party offered an alternative to liberal voters who opposed the merger but it's much less of a factor today with very few lib dem supporters even considering this option so while these parties might not have power in the same way as the conservative or labour party they do still provide a democratic function influence and offering voters an alternative speaking of elections britain is going to vote on may 6th on a variety of topics which we've made videos about if you want to check out any of these things from the scottish election to the police and crime commissioner election then be sure to check out the videos linked in the description be sure to subscribe the channel and hit the bell icon to be notified every time we release a new video special thanks to our patreon backers who make videos like this one possible and if you want to see your name at the end of videos then you too can back us on patreon link to that in the description

Channel: TLDR News

Views: 339,705

Keywords:

Id: qKb1trPHja4

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021