Westminster has long prided itself as being the original home of democratic government. Now, though, there is great anger with British politicians, and this national icon conjures up images of duck houses and bell towers, following last year’s MPs’ expenses scandal. The revelations in recent weeks of former ministers boasting about how their influence in government could be hired, along with MPs of all sides not declaring interests in foreign nations’ affairs after having been hosted by the governments of those countries, has further sullied this tarnished reputation.
With such a prevailing sense of hostility, there has been speculation that the coming general election will see depressed support for the three main parties at the expense of smaller ones.
At the European elections of June 2009, only 57 percent voted for one of the Conservatives, Labour or the Liberal Democrats, in which the United Kingdom Independence Party polled behind only the Tories, and the British National Party picked up two MEPs. But can these and other minor parties translate this success into seats in the House of Commons?
There are only a few constituencies – outside Northern Ireland, which has its own, separate political parties – with the potential to fall to a party, or independent candidate, other than the main three, or the nationalists in Scotland and Wales. In 2005, only three constituencies did so: George Galloway won Bethnal Green and Bow on a cynical anti-Iraq War ticket; Dr Richard Taylor held onto his seat in Worcestershire in which his single issue had been to avoid the closure of Kidderminster hospital; while Labour lost a safe seat to an independent in South Wales after the party’s imposition of an all-women shortlist excluded a popular local choice from being a candidate.
This time, the Green Party hopes to win its first ever parliamentary seat in Brighton Pavilion, where its leader, Caroline Lucas, led the Tories by 35 percent to 27 percent according to a poll of December last year. Nick Griffin, the BNP’s leader, is standing in Barking, the constituency where the party received its highest share of the vote five years ago. This was only 17 percent, though, and it seems likely to remain in Labour hands, particularly when one considers the likelihood of anti-BNP tactical voting.
Meanwhile, UKIP’s most well-known figure, the former leader Nigel Farage, is standing against the speaker in Buckingham. As is the convention, the three main parties are not challenging the speaker, and Farage hopes to capitalise on what he has labelled a lack of parliamentary representation for those constituents. Yet UKIP has itself suffered from the corruption of its elected representatives, with two of its MEPs – both of whom were expelled by the party – convicted of fraud and jailed in recent years.
Independent ‘celebrity’ candidates have also emerged. Perhaps trying to emulate Martin Bell’s iconic ousting of Tory Neil Hamilton in 1997, the television personality Esther Rantzen is standing in Luton South, against a Labour MP heavily implicated in the expenses scandal. However, the sting has been taken out of her campaign, too, when the MP involved announced that she would step down at the election, as are the majority of Members who were disgraced in the affair.
Therein lies the problem for minor party candidates. For the public, it is one thing to register their disapproval with their MP, or indeed politicians in general; it is quite another to elect a candidate from a non-mainstream party. Smaller parties, and especially independent members, have very little influence in Parliament, and this is something that the electorate would be very reluctant to choose.
Martin Bell in 1997 also had the advantage of Labour and the Liberal Democrats refusing to put up candidates, meaning that he had a clear run as the ‘anti-sleaze candidate’. This time around, with all parties implicated in the scandal, opposition has taken the form of a ‘plague on all your houses’ rather than against any one party in particular, meaning that electoral repercussions have been blunted.
For these reasons, it is likely that, despite the speculation about their improved showing in the general election, whenever it may be, the minor parties will barely – if at all – improve the number of MPs in the Commons. The odds-on favourite for the number of independent seats is less than three, while the three main parties together regularly poll around 88 percent of the vote in opinion polls. This is, admittedly, 5 points lower than at the 2005 election, but the slight increase will have very limited parliamentary impact.
It appears clear that as a whole, the main parties will avoid punishment from the electorate, even if turnout is not predicted to be high. Individual MPs – those who have not already been forced to step aside – may well suffer. But, despite the scandals which seem recently to have become a regular occurrence, the angry public will not want to forgo their political voice in order to make short-term points.
