Cain: A not-so-simple request from at least one ignorant colonial.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I am confused by your political parties, as we don't actually get any news from outside of America.

Who are the major and/or funny (BNP funny, not OMRLP funny) parties, and what are their portrayed vs actual policies/positions?

I ask this, because Duverger's Law seems to be in effect, and I'm totally lost at what seems to be an ever-increasing and bewildering set of parties.

[Cain]

Duverger's is definitely in effect.  Our third parties over here do tend to be more powerful than in America (our third largest party actually has MPs, as do some weird ones from Northern Ireland), but it is essentially a two party system, between Labour and the Conservatives.

The Conservatives see themselves as the traditional party of rulership and power.  I swear, when they get back in power, it is going to be like the Restoration as far as they are concerned.  That is also the main thing to recall about the Tories that, beyond power and lining their own pocket, they are not very ideological traditionally.  Especially when contrasted with someone like Blair.  Even Thatcher was something of an aberration.  That said, there are ideological camps within the party.  David Cameron, the current leader is a sort of "liberal conservative" in the mould of most European Christian Democratic parties, which more or less fits the lack of ideology thing.  Then there are the Thatcherites, who are kept away from the press in case they scare small children, and then there are the Neoconservatives, increasingly in thrall to American politics (this faction is also referred to by Labour activists as the "Continuity Iain Duncan-Smith" wing, after one of the more far-right leaders in recent Tory history).  Major Tory policies include massively cutting back on social spending, abolishing the Human Rights Act, support for religious schools, introducing directly elected police comissioners, the workfare benefits policy and general hostility to Muslims.  One interesting facet of the Tory approach to Europe has been their recent alliances with certain far-right parties, including Polish anti-Semites and a Lithuanian party who revere their country's SS regiment.

Labour are, of course, our darling government of the moment.  Under Blair, they were evil but popular, and under Brown they are hated but incompetent.  New Labour, as they are frequently called, came to power essentially by denying their social democratic roots and wooing Big Business, as well as acting more authoritarian than the Tories on issues of "law and order".  Like Clinton, they used "triangulation" and similar policies, essentially shifting from the centre-left to the centre-right.  Blair, as hinted at above, was in fact considered in many ways the first British Neocon, with his dualistic (and some would say childish) view of Right and Wrong, Good and Evil and the redemptive power of military force.  Labour is obsessed with security, and is constantly coming up with new schemes to lock people away on the flimsiest of pretences, and is equally fascinated by the surveillance society.  Control is their drug of choice.  Also, somewhat unfortunately, Labour made an alliance with a number of tabloid papers to undermine the Tories, which put Labour in debt.  This debt is frequently repaid to the papers whenever the government is having a bad day, as they will whip up some fake frenzy or political issue (giving the Home Office advance warning) and then the government can move in and act decisively, and in the process passing whatever insane law the tabloids want passed this time.  The Sun in particular had good links with the Blair government, though it has now switched to supporting Cameron.  Labour's obsession with security has also led them down the Muslim-baiting path many times, in essence legitimizing the BNP and Tory attempts at persecution.  Their main policies are to be much like the Tories, only a little bit nicer with benefits.

The Liberal Democrats, the third largest party in Britain, are the misfit party of British politics.  Its the place you go when the main two parties don't appeal, but you're not willing to get really radical.  Actually, that is kind of unfair.  There are lots of factions within the Lib Dems and some are more radical than others.  I also know some of their local activists, and they are generally 'small-l' libertarian on social issues, and centre-left on economic ones.  That said, the Lib Dems span the range on many issues, which is one reason voters find them frustrating.  The two main factions are the social liberals (left-leaning) and the classical liberals (right-leaning).  More consistent libertarians often end up on the right wing of the party, especially once they find out what libertarianism means to the Tories or UKIP (ie corporate pillaging).  The Lib Dems have been right on things like the Iraq War and economic crisis, but as they have terrible PR issues, no-one listened to them.  Their policy towards government is to generally balance against the status quo and provide an alternative for disenchanted voters, so in the Blair years they leaned left to pick up disaffected Labour members, while now they are leaning to the right, presumably to offset the coming Tory election victory.  However this has led to many grassroot members expressing discontent with the current leader, who has backed the surge in Afghanistan and had an inconsistent approach to taxation, as well as promise the Lib Dems will back the largest party in Parliament if a Hung Parliament results from this election, essentially making a vote for them worthless.

The next biggest national party after those three is probably UKIP, the grandiosely named United Kingdom Independence Party.  UKIP are mostly considered a one-trick pony when it comes to politics, in that they define much of their program as opposition to the European Union, on the grounds that it is underming British sovereignty.  Therefore they believe Britain should leave the EU as soon as possible.  However, they also define themselves as being on the right on several other issues.  Many UKIP members had..."issues" with immigration, which in some cases had more to do with skin colour than, say, the hideous detention centres we put some people in.  Racism was made unacceptable within the party by the previous leader, Nick Farange, however, he has now been succeeded by Lord Pearson, who is considered to be much further to his right, to the point of inviting the Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders into the country to talk about his film, Fitna.  UKIP also, as hinted above, have a "libertarian" approach to economics, though this is more the sort of libertarianism that would be at home in the American Libertarian Party than anything else.  UKIP aren't much of a force on the national political stage, but they choose to contest on European elections, where they are very popular.  They started out by underming the Tories from the right, but now seem intent to also take a chunk out of the BNP.

The Greens are probably next.  They are your typical Green party, vaugely left wing on most issues, but mostly concerned with preserving and protecting the environment from further degredation.  They do fairly well at local elections, but otherwise don't really have a presence on the national stage.

Then comes the BNP....ah, the BNP.  Nazis in clean-cut suits.  No matter how much they deny their past, there is no getting away from the fact this is party which believes a Jewish conspiracy controls the UK, and that non-European races are "subhuman".  Their strategy is incrementalism though, or, more accurately, cultism.  They pretend to be these brave patriots and the usual nonsense for the grassroots members (who may be fascists, or merely deluded), but the inner core of the party is unavowedly Neo-Nazi.  Riding high on race-riots in 2000, the twin tower attacks in 2001 and continuing tensions between the British Muslim community and the government since, they have made significant gains in terms of portraying themselves as a legitimate political party and getting more support.  Previously only a threat in certain local elections, the BNP recently won seats for the European Parliament, by securing roughly a million votes.  The way things are going, the BNP will soon have Parliament seats, and if they dont it will only be because another party adopted some of their policies to peel off their voters.

Then there is Respect – The Unity Coalition.  Respect apparently stands for Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community, and Trade Unionism, which tells you a lot.  What is even more telling was while the party was founded by the journalist George Monbiot and a Stop the War (in Iraq) Chairman, it was quickly overtaken by George Galloway, who used it as his own personal "fuck you" to the Labour Party over their continual scapegoating of him and his activities.  As the name suggests, they're fairly left-wing, far more so than Labour, but are also willing to shack up with some very conservative (some would say fundamentalist) Muslim organisations as well.  The Party has since collapsed into trendy leftist factionalism, thanks to the Socialist Workers Party.  They had one MP, as I recall, who was, er, George Galloway.

The Socialist Workers Party is the largest far-left organization in the country, and a constant bug-bear of pro-war liberals.  Essentially Trotskyite in outlook, the SWP puts out prodigious amounts of material, which is then ignored by the vast majority of the country.  The SWP also latches, like a giant vampiric octopus, onto any and every campaign which might concievably be against the USA or international capitalism, no matter how vague the connection.  They then use that to exercise undue influence over whatever poor groups they have "allied" with.  They endorsed the Iraqi insurgency as a "resistance movement" and also endorsed George Galloway's approval of Hezbollah, so there is something to the pro-war liberal claim that they are too accomodating of certain fundamentalist Muslim groups.  They do, however, often provide shock troops for Unite Against Fascism though, so they're not all bad.

The Libertarian Party are exactly what you would expect.  Having been already outdone by UKIP, the Lib Dems and Tories, they are a sorry sight, and currently have a single elected member, a very lonely councillor in Stoke-on-Trent.

The Pirate Party are a fairly new party, inspired by various European Pirate Parties that have sprung up in the last four years or so.  Mainly, they are concerned with copyright reform and privacy rights, but so far they have had practically no impact, due to only forming in the last year or so.

Finally there is the very amusing Veritas, a splinter from UKIP, formed because Robert Kilroy-Silk's ego could not handle not being leader of UKIP (he is no longer the leader of Veritas, either).  Even more nutty than UKIP, Veritas hate immigration, hate the EU and want to introduce a flat tax.  They currently have no members elected at any level, and probably never will.

There are also, it should be noted, various parties that only stand in places like Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.  The ones that immediately come to mind are the Scottish Nationalist Party, who are inoffensively leftish, and want independence for Scotland from the UK.  Plaid Cymru are essentially the same, but for Wales.  Northern Irish politics is a mess of sectarianism, personal vanity and violence, but then it always has been. 

I'm sure I missed some parties in this list, like the hilarious Objectivist Party of Northern Ireland (under ten members, one free-hosted website), the Jury Party (an actual party for Independent candidates, which is pretty cool) and lots of would-be BNP splinter factions, like the England First Party, who mostly mooch around and complain what a traitor to the cause Nick Griffin is.  But that is most of them.

[Payne]

the Jury Party (an actual party for Independent candidates, which is pretty cool)

Not heard of these guys before, that does sound pretty cool.

[Payne]

Also, I don't know if this has been posted before, but I found something on their site which led me to this!!!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Also, I don't know if this has been posted before, but I found something on their site which led me to this!!!

Dude, that is FUCKING AWESOME

We need that in the US too! Except that 30 days is far too short a time to grow a truly magnificent moustache.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Thank you, Cain.  I don't feel so damned ignorant, now.

[President Television]

And I thought Canadian politics was fucked.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And I thought Canadian politics was fucked.

Here we have reached the end result of Duverger's Law.  We have the republicrat party.

TGRR,
Throwing bricks at the Overton Window.

[Cain]

I decided not to mention foreign policy because, as you know, we outsource our foreign policy directives to the White House.  No matter what party is in power or what it says, it is pointless to speculate without taking into account who the US President is.

It's getting pretty close to the end stage here, too.  Not totally, but not far off.  It took the Tories to get into bed with Nazi supporters to convince me they were worse than Labour, and for a number of years before that there was virtually no difference at all, and Blair was voted in because the status quo is self-perpetuating.