Английский язык / The_Party_System_of_Great_Britain

The Party System of Great Britain.

Britain is normally described as having a “two-party system”. This is because, since 1945, one of the two big parties has controlled the government and members of these two parties have occupied more than 90% of all the seats in the House of Commons. These parties are the Conservative and the Labour party.

The Conservative party developed from the group of members of parliament known as the Tories in the early nineteenth century and still often known informally by that name. It stands for hierarchical authority and minimal government interference in the economy, likes to reduce income tax, gives high priority to national defense and internal law and order. The voters of this party are the richer sections of society, plus a large minority of the working classes.

The party gets money mostly from donations from business people. The leader has relatively great degree of freedom to direct policy.

The Labour party was formed at the beginning of the XXth century from an alliance of trade unionists and intellectuals. The first government was in 1923. This party stands for equality, for the weaker people in society and far more government involvement in the economy, more concerned to provide full social services than to keep income tax low. In theory, policies have to be approved by annual conference, in practice, leader has more power than this implies. The voters are working class, plus a small middle-class of money from trade unions. The Labour Party is in power nowadays.

There are numerous other small parties. The most popular of them is the Liberal Democratic party. It was formed in the late 1980s from a union of the Liberals and the Social Democrats. It is regarded as in the centre or slightly left of the centre, has always been strongly in favour of the EU. The party places more emphasis on the environment than other parties, believes in giving greater powers to local government and in reform of the electoral system. The voters are from all classes, but more from the middle class. The party gets money from private donations, but it is much poorer than the conservative and Labour parties.

There is also the Green Party, which is supported by environmentalists. There is small party which was formerly the Communist party, and number of other left-wing parties, and also an extreme rightwing party which is fairly openly racist. It was previously called the National Front but since the 1980s has been called the British National Party (BNP). At the time of writing, none of these parties had won a single seat in Parliament in the second half of the twentieth century.