Photo Credits: Reuters/Toby Melville
Analysing the influence of small parties on the current political climate
Labour’s 2024 election victory was marked by a vast majority in stunning disproportion to its vote share. In electoral terms, the role of small parties has been insignificant. However, their vocal role in framing the narrative of this election cannot be overstated.
Labour was described as representing “Westminster” and its world of “consensus” by the Scottish National Party (SNP). The SNP brought important points to the debates. They unequivocally condemned the hostile environment created for migrants in Britain and criticised Brexit. However, their voice has been damaged by a near-total collapse in Scotland, losing dreadfully under the winner-takes-all rules of the UK’s electoral system. After 17 years of SNP rule, the eventual victory of Scottish Labour could not be held back.
Unlike the SNP, Labour did not strike a significantly different tone to the Conservatives on the key issues mentioned above. Brexit, with all its consequences, has been accepted by the main parties. On migration, Labour have rejected the Rwanda scheme definitively, and they are not scapegoating migrants for issues with public services. However, they have gone into little detail on migrants’ rights, beyond generalised references to exploitative work practices. Labour instead chose a cautious, uncomplicated electoral stance. They challenged the Conservatives on their record using simplified rhetoric about controlling immigration (both parties faced public scepticism about their immigration promises).
The Liberal Democrats presented themselves as a progressive force. Arguing for a community-centred approach to policing, with a focus on youth services, they used their access to debates and public platforms to excoriate the outgoing Tories. Their number of seats, and share of the vote, surged, in a roughly proportional manner. They have regained some credibility almost a decade after the end of the Coalition government. Surveys of voting intention (taken before the election) imply that their vote share was not inflated by tactical voting.
Plaid Cymru gained two extra Welsh seats, bringing their total to four, while the Liberal Democrats gained one, and Labour dominated with 84% of the seats in Wales. The Conservatives were routed completely. This was a return to business as usual in Wales, a mostly Labour-voting nation where 14 constituencies were dyed Tory blue in the Brexit-driven 2019 election (Wales voted to Leave in 2016).
Led by Rhun ap Iorwerth, a pro-European Welsh nationalist, Plaid Cymru pushed back against the anti-immigration rhetoric of Farage’s Reform UK and the post-Brexit Conservatives. The seat-less (in Wales) Reform party gained a significant proportion of the Welsh vote, however, which shows demand for their brand of politics in this nation. Contained (for now) by the un-proportional electoral system and Labour’s success, Reform UK pose a serious threat to the anti-xenophobic, pro-asylum politics of figures such as Rhun ap Iorwerth.
Regarding Reform UK, their hardline policies on law and order and immigration appeal to a fear-addled chunk of the British public. This part of the electorate is highly susceptible to the idea of external threats. They nervously crave a hammer-thumping response to their fears. Reform’s 14% vote share, (resulting in only 5 seats under First Past the Post) catapulted Farage into Parliament, amplifying his voice. The fact that Reform’s ranking in the polls jumped as soon as Farage announced his candidacy attests to his central role in the organisation. Many Reform candidates had little public visibility in the constituencies they were standing in. Supported by a few high-profile senior figures, Farage took the spotlight as the populist right’s leading vocal trumpeter.
Richard Tice, a senior Reform UK figure, used a pre-election debate to promote an immigration policy criticised by the other parties as unworkable. He suggested making a unilateral decision to return migrants crossing the English Channel to French beaches. The Labour representative described it as a “fantasy” and stressed the relevance of international law and cross-border cooperation. In future elections, Reform UK is unlikely to gain credibility amongst the broader public (beyond a disgruntled 14%) with these impractical and anti-international proposals. They are pandering to prejudice and promoting de-contextualised ideas of sovereignty in a globalised world. Unworkable policy proposals such as the Rwanda Scheme characterised recent years under the Conservatives. That was part of the reason the party was ejected from power decisively in the general election.
The Green Party, which struck a very different tone to Reform UK in pre-election debates, also improved their electoral performance. Gaining 4 seats and 7% of the vote, (their small surge in votes was limited by voters’ tactical considerations), their message spoke to progressives in various constituencies. Arguing for taxing the wealthiest, and striking an internationalist tone on overseas aid, they stood on a platform that was boldly opposed to the current consensus.
While Labour and the Conservatives bickered over net migration figures, taking the emphasis away from migration’s positive benefits (and fighting on the same ground as Reform UK), that space of consensus was challenged by parties to their left. Left-of-centre voters with cosmopolitan attitudes find limited representation in the current government. Labour embraced small-c conservative values to remedy anxieties about demographic change that varied from measured concern to outright prejudice. This helped them to win power in key marginal seats varying from middle-English spaces to declining post-industrial towns.
These marginal seats, often excluded from the wealth and influence of the capital, are influencing Westminster policy through a strange form of ideological devolution. The first-past-the-post system has ripped regional concerns about public services and decline out of the map and put them in the hands of a growth-dependent Labour government not sufficiently articulate on spending and taxation. Labour is awake to the need to improve the workforce’s skills and has stated a preference for British citizens over migrant workers to balance the labour market. In opposition, they convinced the Conservatives to abandon policies which made it cheaper to hire from abroad. Labour has decried both the way this impacts British citizens and how it can facilitate the exploitation of workers from overseas. They are addressing anti-immigrant prejudice and its root cause, economic insecurity, at the same time.
However, by failing (unlike the small parties) to challenge the rhetoric of Reform and the Conservatives, Labour’s policies only serve to reduce prejudice from one angle. While public opinion on Farage’s claim that migration is making Britons poorer may change as the quality of life improves, the slogans may simply change in response, and there is no guarantee that Reform’s support will be undercut. Just as he survived (and indeed improved his fortunes) after achieving Brexit (in response to a post-Brexit increase in immigration), Farage will always be there to allocate the blame to migrants, especially now that he has a seat in Parliament.
A country will always have problems, and people will always seek scapegoats. Focusing on the cause of these fears, and not actively criticising the rhetoric that stokes them, will not eliminate them for good. Even if public services and the cost of living are improved, unchallenged xenophobic fears (stoked by right-wing populist rhetoric) will be able to grow and swirl unattached until they bind themselves to new self-justifications. It is the failure to challenge the cultural normalisation of anti-immigrant sentiment, for fear of its electoral consequences, that deeply damaged the egalitarian credibility of Labour in its 2024 march to power.
Keir Starmer is going through his first weeks as prime minister, with a broad but shallow mandate. In an election where a significant number of people voted for small parties, First-Past-The-Post’s machine-engineered stability exposes the government to questions about legitimacy. Future electoral reform is a possibility, as are decades of unrepresented ideological diversity. Growing small-party influence will shape the UK’s political landscape in the years to come.
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