Politics and religion in The United Kingdom.

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So which colour do you prefer Tequila?

The Conservative Party (colloquially known as the Tories) are the mainstream Right party in the UK- long history, policies tend toward the interests of business, promote family values, minimal state action in society (eg provision of welfare etc), have had their greedy eyes on the NHS for a long while and will likely attempt to step up privatisation - the US equivalent would be sort of be a right wing segment of the US Democratic party plus a good rump of the centre/centre right of the Republican Party, though we don't really have anything equivalent to the Christian and evangelical currents within US politics.

The Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) mainstream party which attempts to straddle the divide between centre right and centre left - haven't been in power in decades, of the top of my head I don't think they've won a General Election ever since the creation of the Labour Party. Upto then many working class voters (after universal male suffrage) would vote for the Lib Dems as the only party remotely representing their interests (as many working class Americans do today, i understand), they were in fact equal to the Conservative party and would be their primary contenders in elections (much like the Dem v Rep contests in the US) upto the time the Labour Party was founded at which point they lost much of their support and have since been largely inconsequential.

The Labour party - founded at the beginning of the 20th century by the trade unions in order to represent the working class, has since gone on to be the only party to seriously contend with the conservatives since the 1920's. Founded as a 'social democratic party' similar to that found in Russia (pre- Bolshevik/Menshevik split), Germany and elsewhere - there have been a number of different currents of thought in the Labour party (Fabians, Marxists particularly the Trotskyist Militant Tendency [expelled in the years after the miners strike], various reformist groupings and left leaning Liberals) though it has been primarily reformist it has been nominally socialist since its inception up to the Blairite years when Clause 4 of the Labour party constitution was rewritten - originally (adopted in 1918) this was:

"To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."

and has since, under Blair, been revised to say this:

"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect."

after which point New Labour, as it was renamed, has enacted a series of Thatcherite policies of large scale privatisation and policies suiting the interests of business - some laws including a national minimum wage and small increases in benefit payments have been put through by NewLab though these have been largely offset by other policies. There is some public debate as to what exactly the difference is between the NewLab and Conservative parties, as both are now in US political parlance pro-business/free market, social conservative parties (though there may be some differences in attitude to immigration). Most of the changes seen under NewLab have been made by Blairites and the Labour party has seen a large drop in rank and file support, few members attend party branch meetings and much of this loss electorally has been made up by middle class voters who may normally have voted for the Tories.

there are a number of smaller groups of no particular cosequence - British National party (racist/fascist, far-right), Socialist party (Marxist), Communist Party of Great Britain (Stalinist), Socialist Workers Party, RESPECT, UKIP (right, anti-european union), Veritas amongst others)



Urban centres have a strong tendency to vote Labour (sunderland, newcastle, inner-london, manchester, liverpool) while rural and middle class suburban areas (outer london, home counties - the ones that end in -shire) vote Conservative with Lib Dems picking up the odd seat here and there and as a protest vote if the 'traditional' party has been pursuing unpopular policies.

Last edited by TitusLucretiusCarus on 23 Jan 2010, 1:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, if i take example on Canada, where we have more than two federal parties, i doubt there would be a reference to such colors, but meh, different people, different ways. =/

Certainly true of most of those I've met.

I say 'most' because there have been the odd few who haven't pushed it at me. Like, we had a couple in our Morris dancing side who were 'born again' Christians who actually came to our handfasting (some others of their ilk would have run a mile)...there are a fair few pagans in British Morris dance circles, so we weren't the only ones they'd encountered. Then again, they did persuade our squire (side leader) onto an Alpha course (which is billed as 'learn about the meaning of life', but is actually a pretty focused introduction to that brand of Christianity with an eye to making converts). He was an atheist, and he had a grand time arguing with them until the residential weekend...then, he said, someone started speaking in tongues and it all got a bit creepy.

They are very ineffectual as a party, to be honest with you. Again, the Lib Dems are two parties in one - the social liberal/social democratic part dominates but there is a minor classical liberal wing.

...leading onto the United Kingdom Independence Party, which is a small-but-growing Eurosceptic conservative unionist party. UKIP generally does very well at the European elections (due to the large eurosceptic voice within Britain) but does not yet have parliamentary seats. Their former leader, Nigel Farage, brought a libertarian focus to the party sharing much in common with the great Dan Hannan. The new leader, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, seems to have gone a bit off the boil with his rantings about banning burqas and so on. I am not particularly happy about it.

Scotland's major political party is the Scottish National Party, which is a centre-left Scottish nationalist party dedicated to Scottish independence. They currently have the most seats in the Scottish Parliament and have a charismatic leader by the name of Alex Salmond. The biggest solely-Welsh political party is Plaid Cymru, which is a political party with the aim of greater autonomy within the UK - it is seen almost as the 'sister party' of the SNP. Turning to Northern Ireland, the biggest political party there is the hardline traditionalist Democratic Unionist Party on the Unionist side of the fence. Their Nationalist opposites, the left-wing Sinn Féin, don't take their seats in the Westminster parliament but have seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly as well as in Westminster and Europe. They have a sister party in the Republic of Ireland but SF is generally a Northern Irish nationalist affair.