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Summary A-Level Politics Paper 1 UK Parties revision notes
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A-Level Edexcel Politics Paper 1 UK Parties revision notes with examples
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2. Political parties2.1 Political parties
The functions and features of political parties in the UK’s representative democracy and how the parties are
currently funded and debates on the consequences of the current funding system
Functions:
Political parties perform several functions:
- Representation: they represent the views and beliefs of large sections of society and act in their
interests. Labour, for example are left-wing and the Conservatives are right-wing so they, along with
minor parties, represent a broad range of views
- Participation: parties enable individuals to participate effectively in the political process, and to
influence the decisions that affect their lives. You can pay £2.21 a month to labour or £2.09 a month to
the Conservatives to have a say in policy, vote in internal/leadership elections etc.
- Elections: they offer the electorate choice in elections
- Government: they hold the government office and run the country. They hope to hold a majority in gov
and therefore offer a stable government – i.e., Johnson won 365 seats in 2019 and as a result, holds a
stable majority
- Organisation: they organise and bring together a variety of demands into a coherent political
programme
- Education: parties educated inform the general public
Features:
There are four feature that usually distinguish political parties from other social groups
1. Parties aim to become a government by putting candidates up for election and mobilising support
2. Parties are organised bodies with a formal membership
3. Parties typically adopt a broad-issue focus, addressing major issues of government policy
4. To varying degrees, parties are united by shared political preferences and a shared ideological identity
Left-wing
Left-wing political ideas are those associated with a desire to introduce change into the political system. Left-
wing ideas look to make society more equal and favour the group solution above the individual, and thus
support state intervention and collectivism. They are usually associated with welfare, economic intervention
and wealth redistribution
Right-wing
Right-wing political ideas emphasise a widespread acceptance of the status quo and the need for stability in
society. Right-win ideas seek to give individuals more freedom and favour the individual in preference to the
group, and thus favour the market and individualism. They would therefore support law taxes, limited welfare
and free market economics
Do political parties enhance or threaten democracy?
Enhance democracy Threaten democracy
Political parties encourage people to participate in Political parties engage in adversarial
politics via party activity, election campaigning, (confrontational) politics, which threatens to reduce
voting and standing for office. Parliament and politics to silly rituals and point-
scoring
They provide voters with choices, and help to make Turnout at elections is not particularly high, which
electoral choice clearer and more coherent may indicate that the public’s faith in political parties
is low
They help to educate and inform the electorate about Parties may sometimes oversimplify issues or
key political issues through political debate and by present information in a misleading way, especially
presenting a range of arguments in election campaigns
They uphold the authority of Parliament and The need for increasing amounts of finance for
reinforce respect for political institutions election campaigns creates a situation in which rich
interest groups (‘big business’, media organisations
or trade unions) become excessively influential
They facilitate representation by serving as a channel They fail to reflect the society they ‘represent’.
of communication between government and people Women and ethnic minorities are under-
represented, particularly in senior party roles
They administer elections, encouraging people to
, vote and presenting election issues clearly to the
electorate
Legitimate political parties ensure that there is a
peaceful transition of power after elections
Party funding
- Parties need funding for a range of things: staff; (renting) premises; marketing and PR; tax; external
relations; researchers and policy advisors; polling and constituency branches
- Although MPs are paid a salary from the government (“public purse”) for carrying out the role and
receive expenses to cover the cost of running their constituency offices, the parties themselves do not
receive any funding from the state.
- The parties must raise money for themselves for elections and other party activities – this done through
membership subscriptions and other state funding
- There is a form of funding called ‘Short Money’ which is a special provision from the state to support the
activities of the opposition
Short money exists because there has to be another part to scrutinise/challenge the party in
power. Without this money, it could be seen that the same, wealthiest party won every time
- Parties are funded from a range of sources: subscriptions from members; fundraising events such as
fetes, conferenced, dinners; donations from supporters; loans from individuals or banks; self-financing
of candidates for office; limited grants from Electoral Commission (up to £2m per party) and Short
Money that is granted to opposition parties in the Commons
Criticisms of this system:
- The larger parties have much better access to funds than smaller parties
- The main criticism is that wealthy donors from powerful interests can offer financial support to parties
in return for political influence. The Conservatives have benefitted from big business and powerful
individuals on a number of occasions
- Labour has generally been funded by the trade unions which had originally founded the party and has
had great influence in the last century in shaping its policies.
In 2014-15, 60% of finding came from the unions. Changing the rules in 2017 has meant that
now only 11% of funding comes from unions
- In the ‘New Labour’ years, they party leadership did begin to forge links with powerful individuals and
created new relationships with the business community in order to attract funding. Donations and
fundraising are now a vital part of Labour party functions too
- Smaller parties have no such access to regular sources of income. They also have small memberships, so
little in terms of subscriptions
- Donors are less likely to give funds to a smaller party whose prospects of being in power are remote
- Donors therefore give money for idealistic reasons rather than with a prospect of gaining influence
The Blair Ecclestone Scandal.
This was a case where Bernie Ecclestone, an F1 boss, had donated £1 million to Labour and it was alleged that
there was a connection between this and a delay in implementing a ban on tobacco advertising in F1 racing.
The money was subsequently returned.
Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, 2000
Following the scandal about Labour party funding in 1997, in 2000, new legislation was introduced to try to
change the perception that this was an undemocratic feature of the system:
- Set up a commission to monitor the election spending of each party
- Set a cap of £30,000 spending per constituency
- Donations had to be declared (£500+ declared and £7500+ on the electoral register)
- Donations from anyone no on the UK electoral roll were banned – reducing foreign influence
- This legislation was more for transparency than to limit spending
But the scandals did not end. In 2006, the Labour party were accused of undemocratic behaviour. It became
clear that wealthy donors who had ‘loaned’ the party money had been given peerages. It seemed the party had
exploited a loophole in the 2000 law, which did not require them to declare loans. Blair and his aides were
interviewed by the police, but no changes were brought
The legislation was later extended so that the rules also covered ‘loans’ as well as donations
Political Parties and Elections Act, 2009
This followed the scandal linked to MPs expenses in 2009 and gave the Electoral Commission the power to
investigate, impose fines, restrict donations from non-UK residents and impose tighter regulations in the run
up to elections.
, Other potential reforms
A 2007 report by Sir Hayden Phillips suggested elements of taxpaying funding of parties should be introduced.
No subsequent government has acted on this recommendation
In 2015, Labour and Lib Dems suggested caps on political donations should be introduced. The Conservative
party would stand to lose the most on this. They suggested that corresponding restrictions should be placed on
the Labour party’s donations from trade unions. The government introduced the 2016 Trade Union Act which
obliged trade unions to choose whether to ‘opt-in’ to making payments towards the political levy (the funding
the unions give to the Labour party)
Donations:
- Conservative: vast majority (nearly 5.5 million) of their funds came from donations in 3 rd quarter of
2019
- Brexit party: all of their (nearly 4m) of funds are from donations
- Plaid Cymru: accepted no donations in this quarter
Public funds:
- Labour: this is ‘Short Money’ – they receive this 2.6m to be the opposition
Totals:
- Brexit party: they received lost of money in this quarter, all from donations
- If Conservatives were not in power, they would have so much money as they would also receive ‘short
money’
Short money
Some state funding of parties already exists. Short Money is the funds given to the opposition in order to carry
out their parliamentary work.
It is given on the basis of the number of seats in Pment won at the last election so therefore favours larger
opposition parties. It is intended to enable the opposition to effectively carry out the work of being the
opposition including scrutinising government policy, forming their own policy and running their party offices
etc.
In 2015, Labour received £6.7 million in Short Money and the SNP received £1.2 million. In 2015, after winning
a seat in the Commons, UKIP refused the Short Money
Large donations to parties
Between 2015-2017 the Conservative party received 11.3m from prominent figures in the financial sector and
the £3.6m from property companies
One individual (hedge fund manager) donated 1.137m to the Conservatives
The UNITE trade union gave £657,000 to the Labour party in early 2017 and UNISON gave £376,000
Problems with these donations
- Could be an undemocratic for of influence
- Usually linked to another controversy
- Unison donations to Labour may not be made clear enough to union members (although since 2017, the
rules have changed
- Union leaders may have too much influence over the Labour party
Arguments for state funding Arguments against state funding
Parties play an important role in representative Increased state funding could lead to calls for greater
democracy, so deserve public funding state regulation, possibly reducing parties’
Currently there is a lack of diversity in Pment – it independence
does not represent modern Britain in gender or race The independence of parties is fundamental to our
(only 32% of MPs are female) democracy – if we start introducing state funding it
may be difficult to know when to stop
Public funding would remove the great disparity in It is hard to decide how much support a party should
resources available to different-sized parties have in order to qualify for funding
Labour and Tory have many more members and It would be difficult to decide how to fund a party
therefore income from membership fees than Greens outside of membership size and giving the parties all
or Lib Dems -membership figures, now compared to the same amounts would be difficult too as some
the 70s and 80s parties operate on a bigger scale than others and it
Between 2015-2017 the Conservative party received would seem unfair
11.3m from prominent figures in the financial sector
and the £3.6m from property companies
If the state matched donations by the party members Public funding could isolate parties from the wishes
it might encourage participation by the public and of the voters
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