What are Minor Political Parties?
Although you often only hear about the UK’s largest political parties, there are actually hundreds registered with the Electoral Commission!
Some of these parties exist to campaign on a single issue, while others only field candidates in certain areas of the country. They all have their own set of policies (or beliefs), so as always we recommend doing a bit of research into the parties standing in your area.
Below is a list of every single political party registered in Great Britain:
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Open in new tab (Source) please note this document was correct as of 6/2/2021.
So why vote for a minor party?
Some argue that voting for a minor party isn’t useful, as they may be less likely to win than others, however we believe that you should vote for the party whom you feel most aligned to – whatever their size!
Supporting a candidate who might not necessarily win also has a number of financial implications. Firstly, Political Parties are awarded ‘Short Money‘ (funding) depending on the number of overall votes they receive, more votes equals more funding for the party to keep fighting elections with.
Candidates are also required to get a certain number of votes in their constituency to keep their deposit (the money they put down to appear on the ballot paper) if a party loses a lot of deposits it can have a big impact on their funding. Funding is important for parties as without it they can find it difficult to support candidates standing in elections. So by voting for a candidate you’re also helping them to keep fighting elections in future.
Furthermore, the electoral system will never change to benefit third parties if only voters for the main parties turn out to vote, if you want to see a change then you must show that there is demand for other parties to be represented.
Finally, winning elections is all about maximising votes. Therefore, if one of the major parties sees many voters siding with a smaller, single issue, party they might be inclined to adopt policies that attract you back! For example, if none of the major parties advocated free chocolate for all (yum!), but lots of people were voting for the ‘FREE CHOCOLATE PARTY’, then a major party might add a free chocolate policy to their manifesto to win you over.
