Why Vote?

The United Kingdom Independence Party (which also uses the expansion UK Independence Party, commonly known as UKIP, pronounced /?ju?k?p/ roughly yoo-kip) is a conservative, eurosceptic political party. Its principal aim is the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union.

UKIP currently holds thirteen seats in the European Parliament and two in the House of Lords (the latter due to the defection of Conservative peers). It also has around 100 local councilors on principal authorities, town and parish councils. It claimed a membership of 14,630 on 31 December 2008.

In the 2009 European elections, UKIP came second in the UK, beating the governing Labour Party but although the share of the vote increased by 0.4%, to 16.5%, the number of people voting UKIP dropped from 2,650,768 in 2004 to 2,498,226 in 2009, to give it a total of thirteen seats in the European Parliament.

The Liberal Democrats, often shortened to Lib Dems, are a centrist political party in the United Kingdom, formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. The two parties had formed the electoral SDP-Liberal Alliance for seven years before then. The party’s leader is Nick Clegg.

The Lib Dems are the third-largest party in the UK Parliament, behind Labour and the Conservatives. There are 63 Lib Dem Members of Parliament (MPs) – 62 were elected at the 2005 general election, and one in the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election, 2006. The Scottish Liberal Democrats formed a coalition Scottish Executive with Labour in the first two sessions of the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh party were in a coalition with Labour in the National Assembly for Wales from 2001 to 2003.

The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded at the start of the 20th century, it has been seen since 1920 as the principal party of the Left in England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland, where it has only recently begun to organise again. Labour first surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s. Since then, the party has had several spells in government, at first in minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931, then as a junior partner in the wartime coalition from 1940-1945 and ultimately forming majority governments under Clement Attlee in 1945-1951 and under Harold Wilson in 1964-1970. Labour was in government again in 1974-1979, first under Wilson and then James Callaghan, though with a precarious and declining majority.

The Green Party was a Green political party in the United Kingdom. It has been succeeded by three political parties:

* the Green Party of England and Wales
* the Green Party in Northern Ireland
* the Scottish Green Party

The Green Party was originally formed as PEOPLE, or the Ecology Party, in Coventry in 1973, with the first edition of Manifesto for a Sustainable Society as the party’s statement of philosophy and policies. This document was inspired by Blueprint for Survival, published by The Ecologist (then edited by Edward Goldsmith). The party changed its name to become the Green Party in the 1980s.

The Conservative and Unionist Party, more commonly known as the Conservatives, the Conservative Party, or Tory Party is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in its present form during the early 19th century, it has since been the principal party of the political right in Britain, and it is the oldest political party in the world.

The Conservative Party is descended from the Tory Party, founded in 1678, and is still often referred to as the Tory Party and its politicians, members and supporters as Tories. It was also known as the Unionist Party in the early 20th century, following the Conservatives’ alliance with that part of the Liberal Party, known as the Liberal Unionists, who opposed their party’s support for Irish Home Rule.

The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right political party with strong racist and fascist roots. Formed as a splinter group from the racist/fascist National Front by John Tyndall in 1982. Until 2009, when the BNP was challenged in the courts on grounds of racial discrimination, it restricted membership to only people of “Caucasian origin”. The BNP under Nick Griffin wasted 10s of thousands of pounds of their members fees on fighting their illegal whites only membership policy through the courts.