UK Political Parties notes - Edexcel A Level Politics
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Course
UK Politics (9PLO)
Institution
PEARSON (PEARSON)
This document is for people who study Politics with Edexcel and it's a comprehensive guide for everything you need to know condensed: it has examples, arguments, counterpoints, recent information, debates and lots of explanations. For my A Levels this is all I used to revise and I have packs like t...
Role of parties in the political system and party funding
Established parties
Emerging minority parties
Party systems and success
ROLE OF PARTIES IN THE POLITICAL SYSTEM AND PARTY FUNDING
FUNCTIONS AND FEATURES
Representation
- Of people with views attached to a certain set of beliefs
- Right wing → conservative
- Left wing → labour
- Function can also be performed by pressure groups BUT parties bring order to the
political system
Participation
- Parties encourage participation in order to gain power and influence
- Voting, joining a party, supporting through funding
- Parties vary in the influence their members have on policy but all of the main parties
have procedures that involve members in selecting candidates to stand for
local/national elections/choosing party leader
- Labour increased membership by allowing supporters to join for an annual
subscription of £3 (later raised to 25) → helped elect Corbyn as leader in 2015
Recruiting office holders
- For some, party membership can lead to the recruitment as candidates for public
office → participation in the UK’s representative democracy
- Candidates learn political skills as campaigners and organisers
- Parties can also reject or deselect candidates who fail to meet expectations →
cannot stand for that party in any upcoming elections
Formulating policy
- Generate policies that embody the ideas they stand for
- Put forward these proposals in a manifesto before the general election
- 2015 → NHS was a key battleground
Cons- give people access to their gp 7 days a week
Lab- patients would be given appts within 48hrs
- Educative function- communicating and explaining ideas to the public although this is
motivated by public support so they will distort their opponents policies for their own
interests
, Providing govt
- Winning party forms a govt
- Controls the business of parlt → goal to pass manifesto into law
- PM not directly elected but is usually the leader of the largest party
- PM who loses the confidence of their party is vulnerable because they can be
replaced
- In November 1990 Thatcher lost support of lots of cons MPs and failed to win a
leadership contest so she resigned and was replaced by Major who they
thought could unite the party be successful
PARTY FUNDING
Current systems of funding:
- MP’s are paid from general tax- basic annual salary in 2017 was £76,000
- Can claim expenses to cover costs of…
- Running offices
- Living in westminster and their constituency
- Travelling between the two
- Instead parties meet costs via membership subscriptions and fundraising events
within constituencies
- Short money, a special state provision, is used to support the Opposition
Party funding is controversial:
- Financial support can be offered in return for political influence
- Labour has been funded by trade unions which was a big factor in the
founding of the party and its policies (during years of New Labour this was
replaced to an extent by donations by successful individuals as they became
friendlier with businesses)
- Criticised (by libdems) for being bankrolled by those with money
- Accused of offering political honours eg. a place in the lords to the biggest
financial contributors
- COUNTERS DEMOCRACY
- In 1997 Bernie Ecclestone donated 1 million pounds to Labour and Blair
faced extreme criticism because it was alleged that this affected the
delay in banning tobacco advertising in formula one racing
2000: Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act
- To overcome the perception that party funding is undemocratic
- Regulated outright donations by banning donations from individuals not on the UK
electoral roll
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