List of political parties in the United Kingdom facts for kids

In the United Kingdom, political parties are groups of people who share similar ideas about how the country should be run. These parties need to be officially registered with the Electoral Commission to take part in elections in the United Kingdom. This means only their registered names can be used on voting papers. If someone doesn't belong to a registered party, they can call themselves "independent" or not use any label at all. As of April 29, 2024, there were 391 registered political parties in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Long ago, before the mid-1800s, UK politics was mostly controlled by two groups: the Whigs and the Tories. They weren't like today's political parties. They were more like loose groups of people with shared interests. The Whigs often included powerful families who supported the Protestant royal family. Later, they also got support from new factory owners and rich business people. The Tories were usually linked to landowners and the Church of England.

By the middle of the 19th century, the Tories had become the Conservative Party. The Whigs changed into the Liberal Party. The ideas of "right" and "left" in politics first came from France. There, people who supported the king sat on the right side of the assembly, and those who wanted a republic sat on the left. In the late 1800s, the Liberal Party started to lean more towards the left. Some members, called Liberal Unionists, left the Liberals because of disagreements over Irish Home Rule (Ireland governing itself). They then became closer to the Conservatives.

The Liberals and Conservatives were the main political forces until the 1920s. Then, the Liberal Party lost popularity and many members left. A new party, the Labour Party, took its place as the main opposition to the Conservatives. The Labour Party brought together workers, trade unions, and different socialist groups.

Since then, the Conservative and Labour parties have been the two biggest in British politics. They have taken turns forming the government. However, the UK isn't strictly a two-party system. Other parties also have a lot of support. The Liberal Democrats were the third largest party for a while. But after the 2015 election, the Scottish National Party gained more seats. The UK Independence Party (UKIP) also got more votes.

The House of Commons is where elected Members of Parliament (MPs) meet to make laws.

The House of Lords is the second chamber of the UK Parliament. Its members are not elected.

The UK's "first-past-the-post" voting system can make it hard for smaller parties to win many seats across the whole country. But it can help parties that have a lot of supporters in specific areas, like in Scotland or Wales. For example, in the 2015 election, many people were upset because UKIP and the Green Party of England and Wales got millions of votes but only won one seat each in the House of Commons. After that election, several parties asked for changes to the voting system.

Since 1997, different voting systems that use "proportional representation" have been used for elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd (Welsh Parliament), the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the London Assembly. These systems allow smaller parties to win more seats.

Political parties used to be private groups with no official recognition from the government. But the Registration of Political Parties Act 1998 changed this by creating an official register for parties.

The number of people joining political parties in the UK has been going down since the 1950s. It fell by over 65% between 1983 and 2005.

Parties with Members in the House of Commons

Parties with Members in Other UK Parliaments

Some political parties in the UK don't have members in the House of Commons. However, they do have elected representatives in the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. These parties include:

What Each Party Stands For

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:Partidos políticos de Reino Unido para niños

• Timeline of political parties in the United Kingdom
• List of political parties in the United Kingdom by representation
• List of political parties in the United Kingdom opposed to austerity
• List of British fascist parties
• Political make-up of local councils in the United Kingdom
• List of political parties by country
• Politics of the United Kingdom
• Political party affiliation in the United Kingdom
• Elections in the United Kingdom
• List of political parties in Northern Ireland
• List of political parties in Scotland
• List of political parties in Wales
• List of political parties in the Isle of Man (a British Crown dependency)
• List of political parties in Gibraltar (a British overseas territory)
• Index of UK party meta attributes