Established political parties
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| 🇬🇧 | 🇬🇧 |
| What is an ideology? | A set of ideas, values and theories that help explain the world and guide political action |
| What is the the traditional political divide in the UK, underpinned by class support? | Socialism/conservatism |
| What is left wing? | Socialists are referred to as left wing and believe in greater levels of equality. |
| What ideas do leftists support? | They support ideas such as state intervention to achieve greater levels of equality. They would support higher taxation and greater public / state spending. |
| Which party in the UK is traditionally left wing? | The Labour Party in the UK has historically had a socialist/left wing character. |
| What is right wing? | The right believes in people as individuals and support low levels of government intervention. |
| What do right wing supporters support? | They think that the state should not interfere with people’s lives and that inequality is healthy and natural as it reflects success. The right would support ideas such as low taxation and less public spending. |
| Which party in the UK is traditionally right wing? | The UK Conservative Party has historically had a right wing character. |
| What is capitalism? | An economic system that most countries in the world use. It allows individual people to own and accumulate as much wealth (money and possessions) as they can. |
| What is interventionism? | This is when a state will intervene in people’s lives, especially in terms of business and money.The main form of government intervention is taxation. |
| How has the left/right divide changed in recent years? | During the 1980s, the Conservative Party became more ideological- Margaret Thatcher had a particular set of ideas and principles she wanted to implement. Some have argued that the party abandoned traditional conservatism in favour of free-market liberalism. In the 1990s, the Labour Party underwent a process of modernisation in response to losing four successive general elections. Under Tony Blair, the party was rebranded as ‘New Labour’. |
| What was the political parties post-war consensus? | In the years following World War Two, the Labour Party enacted a series of reforms, for example the creation of the NHS and a comprehensive system of welfare. The aim was to lessen the inequalities caused by capitalism, without completely replacing it- ‘social democracy’. |
| What is Thatcherism? | The Conservatives came to power under Thatcher’s leadership in 1979, and initiated a series of reforms which became known as ‘Thatcherism’ (also referred to as the ‘New Right’). This was a reaction against what was seen as ‘inefficient’ state intervention and the ‘motivation-sapping’ welfare system. This time was characterised by privatisation (private companies running previously state-owned industry and services, for example utility companies and the railways) |
| Who are the Conservatives? | Founded 181 years ago from the Tory Party, the Conservative Party sits at the centre-right of the political spectrum, with their primary philosophies of British unionism, Euroscepticism, conservatism and free market economics. |
| What are the different factions within the Conservative party? | ‘One Nation’ - 1950's and 1960's, New Right, - 1970s and 1980s |
| What approach did ‘One Nation’ conservatism take? | Supported the introduction of the welfare state and is generally sympathetic to those in poverty or struggling in society. It is a form of conservatism that seeks to avoid creating damaging divisions between the richest and poorest in society. |
| What approach did New Right conservatism take? | Which blended laissez-faire free market economics with tough social policies on crime, law and order, and the promotion of traditional morality. |
| What did the election of David Cameron as leader bring? | An attempt to modernise the Conservative Party, for example through the support for gay marriage legislation. |
| What was the Conservative response to the financial crisis? | The response to the financial crisis was to pursue a policy of austerity, whereby public spending was cut in an attempt to reduce the budget deficit. This ‘balancing of the books’ was not achieved, however, the policy continued for the entirety of the coalition government’s lifetime. |
| What is the labour party? | The Labour Party was the result of a need for a new political force that would represent the class of wage-earners in Britain’s growing industrial climate. |
| How did the Labour party perform in the 1895 general election? | Experiencing limited success at the 1895 general election. |
| When was the first ever Labour PM? | In1924 Ramsay MacDonald was elected the first ever Labour Prime Minister, despite winning less than a third of the seats available in the House of Commons |
| What happened in the 1997 election? | The election of Tony Blair in 1997 saw the party move further to the centre so that it would appeal to ‘middle England’, and as a result the party branded itself ‘New Labour’. |
| What were Old labour policies? | Old Labour’ policies had a distinctly left-wing character, for example support for a comprehensive welfare state, nationalised industries, and state intervention in the economy. |
| What did Tony Blairs leadership see the introduction of? | The ‘third way’, a balance of social democratic and Thatcherite, neo-liberal ideas. Blair’s government supported a free market economy, and reimagined welfare as a ‘hand up’, rather than ‘hand out’, for example by training unemployed people in a new skill. New Labour was also very pro-business. |
| What was Labour's response to the 2008 financial crisis? | To introduce fiscal stimulus, whereby government money was spent in the economy (a very different approach to austerity). Under Ed Miliband’s leadership, the party opposed the levels of coalition spending cuts. |
| Why did the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader open up significant decisions? | Corbyn is much more of a social democratic, perhaps old Labour figure who has in the past supported nationalisation and unilateral nuclear disarmament. This has won him lots of support within the party membership (the ‘Momentum’ campaign), however has put him at odds with much of the Parliamentary Labour Party, many of whom are Blairite. |
| What is the Liberal democrat party? | The Liberal Democrats are a liberal political party in the United Kingdom. The party has 13 Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, 84 members of the House of Lords |
| Where do the Liberal party's origins lie? | Liberal Democrats’ origins can be traced back to1859 when the Liberal Party were formed from the Whigs, Peelites and Radicals. |
| How has the Lib Dem party grown? | In 1999, Charles Kennedy was selected as leader of the Lib Dems, whereupon the party improved on their previous successes, increasing their number of seats to 52, and their share of the vote to 18.3 per cent. This was mainly due to their stance on populist issues, such as their opposition to the war in Iraq, support for civil liberties, and electoral reform. |
| What was their highest vote share? | Their highest share came after the 2005 general election when they took 62 seats in Westminster. In 2007, Nick Clegg became the party’s leader. The party went into a coalition government with the Conservatives in 2010. |
| What are the party's biggest concerns? | The Liberal Democrats are best described as a centre-left party, concerned with individual freedom, social justice, and constitutional reform. |
| What are the different factions of the Lib Dem party? | More orange book liberals, and social liberals |
| What are orange book liberals? | Are more supportive of free-market economic strategy, more centre-right than centre-left. This was marked by a reluctance to commit to increasing income tax, which had been a more traditional Lib Dem policy. |
| What are social liberals? | Have had more of a centre-left character, seen through a commitment to raising tax, and providing a welfare state in which everyone has the opportunity to help themselves. This still had influence when the party was in government. The introduction of free school meals for primary school children was an example of this. |
| One failure of the Labour Party? | Labour chose to campaign for Scotland to remain in the UK in 2014. A consequence of this is that support for Labour in Scotland collapsed in the 2015 election, as Labour voters moved over to support the SNP. Scotland returned only 1 Labour MP in 2015, |
| How has Brexit been a failure for the Labour party? | The effect of the EU referendum has been for Labour to lose much of its traditional working-class support to UKIP. Labour has been criticised for its uncertain position on the question of Brexit |
| What was a failure of May's 2017 election? | May ran what was regarded as a poor campaign, refusing to appear in TV debates, and performing a U-turn on a key policy (the so-called ‘dementia tax’). As a result, the Conservatives actually lost their majority (although their vote share increased by 5%). |
| How did the coalition affect Lib dems? | The Lib Dems suffered greatly from being in a coalition government with the Conservatives. Seen as having ditched many of their key pledges (particularly the commitment to scrap tuition fees) their vote collapsed in 2015 |
| Conservative Manifesto points? | The Conservatives remain committed to low taxation, the Conservatives wish to invest more money into the prison system and widen the role of local Police Commissioners, Conservatives: replace pensions triple lock with a guarantee that increases after 2020 will at least match inflation and average wages. |
| Labour Manifesto points? | Recruit and train more police officers and prison officers. Review the benefit cap, universal credit and reinstate housing benefits for under 21s. Increase employment and support allowance by £30 per week. Commit to spending 2% of GDP on defence. Continue to spend 0.7% on international aid. |
| Lib Dem Manifesto points? | The Lib Dems support an additional 1p in the pound of income tax for all taxpayers. The Lib Dems aim to replace Police Commissioners and do more to recruit more police from ethnic minority backgrounds. Withdraw winter fuel payments for wealthy pensioners. Suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Maintain a minimum nuclear deterrent. |