Skip to main content

News: The Political Landscape of Britain

The Conservative Party
This is the British party of the right, including a broad range of traditional conservatives and royalists, neo-liberals and social conservatives. For the last forty years, the party has been deeply divided over issues of sovereignty and the role of Britain in the European Union.
The majority of party members are in favour of a revision of the terms of Britain's membership of the European Union, and the holding of a referendum on withdrawal. But other Conservatives, including industrial and business leaders, are strongly pro-European. Recent leaders have been beset by problems trying to reconcile the strongly opposing views of party members on this issue.


UKIP - The UK Independence Party
A sovereignist party that wants Britain to withdraw from the European Union. The party has little in the way of policies, apart from Europe-bashing, but is surprisingly popular with voters disgruntled with the perceived failures of the main parties . In the 2015 election, UKIP obtained just one member of Parliament, a sitting MP who had moved over from the conservatives. UKIP has several members in the European Parliament.
   In 2016, UKIP provided the foot-soldiers of the campaign to take Britain out of the European Union; but the non-UKIP part of the Leave campaign has sought to distance itself from UKIP since the referendum, worried at the damage that UKIP's xenophobic campaigning has done to Britain.



BNP - British National Party
An extreme right-wing party, with nationalistic views and includes no members of parliament.



Parties of the centre

The Liberal Democrat party - the Liberal Democrats , or Lib Dems

A party of the centre, formed in 1988 by the merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) , is made up of dissidents from the Labour party. The Lib Dems are thus a mixture of social conservatives and social democrats. The party is the most pro-European of the major British parties, and until 2015 shared power with the Conservative Party in the coalition government.
Many of those who voted Lib-Dem in 2010 were furious when the party chose to go into colaition with the Conservatives, and in the 2015 election, the Lib Dems lost most of their MPs. However, following the election of left-winger Jeremy Corbyn to the head of the Labour party in September 2015, and the subequent internal divisions in the Labour party, support for the Lib-Dems has begun to rise again

The Greens - The Green Party

The Greens - The Green Party

A centre-left party, in many ways rather middle-class, committed to the promotion of environmental issues. One Member of Parliament (since 2010)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Free Folk Fashion Posters 1 and 2

Video Analysis: Burn the Witch- Radiohead

T he British children’s TV series the 'Trumptonshire Trilogy’ inspired the Burn the Witch music video by Radiohead. The video shoes an inspector being given a tour around a small town by the mayor. The town itself seems pretty normal, neat and well under-control, however it soon becomes clear this isn't the case as we are introduced to the local residents. From trying to drown one neighbour, to tying someone else up to a tree, the inspector, and equally the audience, are quickly aware not everything is as perfect as it seems, and that the town's residents are actually violent and dangerous on a day to day basis. We see the end of the video showing the inspector being tricked into a large wooden cage-type figure, which has been similarly seen in the 1973 British horror film 'The Wicker Man'. Once locked inside its 'stomach', it is then set alight by the town's people, from which we assume the inspector is left to die, but are shown otherwise as he is see...

News Story Coverage Of The Paradise Papers

The majority of newspapers on the 6th of November covered the stories of leaked documents revealing the financial information of the rich. It stated how rich people were keeping money outside of the UK, in places such as Switzerland, in order to avoid paying tax. The Guardian is a socialist newspaper and covered the story in a negative way. As a newspaper they showed a balanced view point as although they endorse capitalism, they view the uncovered information as a scandal. The Daily Mail juxtaposes this and views the Queen as a victim. We can see this through the usage of ''dragged'' in their headline. As well as the paradise papers story being covered on the front of their newspaper, they also featured Stranger Things star Millie Bobbie Brown, with a story relating to her worth of £5 million and listing her as a ''school girl'' which does not sexualise her and avoids the male gaze. Essentially, the Guardian only covered stories about the paradise p...