PART ONE – Where we are now and how did we get here?

Since the dawn of universal male and female suffrage in in Britain in the early 20^th century, apart from those periods when Coalition government has been necessary either for political reasons or external reasons such as being at war, Britain has had a two party political system. In fact even going back before all adult men and women got the right to vote, the House of Commons has, been divided between two parties with a few exceptions caused by the Irish Home Rule question, when MP’s primarily concerned with this issue on one side or the other got elected to Parliament.

The Commons has been divided between Tory and Labour as it is today or Tory and Liberal or, to go back even further Whig and Tory. Britain, mostly in the last one hundred years has never had the sort of Parliament that Israel has for example, where a strictly proportional voting system has created a lively but often unstable governing chamber occupied by a multitude of different parties.

The British system for want of a better phase has mostly worked. It’s served up strong governments that because of universal suffrage had democratic legitimacy. Whilst the Tories have governed for the majority of the time since universal suffrage came in, that has not meant that the Tories have had things all their own way. Labour challenged the Tories for the right to govern and challenged policies that the Tories had whilst in government that Labour believed would hurt their working class core vote.

Alternatively when Labour were in power the Tories countered Labour on the issues that they saw themselves as having competence in, such as the economy. There was a swings and roundabouts feel about British politics where the governing party whether it be Tory or Labour was countered by an official Opposition who despite ideological differences, were a party that at least gave the appearance of being a credible alternative government.

Even during the years of Margaret Thatcher’s dominance of politics and of the House of Commons and when Labour was in disarray, she didn’t have things all her own way. Labour had a national class based and ideological constituency that gave the party considerable on the ground support. This was true even in the dark days of Michael Foot’s leadership. Labour constituted an alternative to the Conservatives and one that was readily distinguishable from them in policy and world viewpoint.

But, years of sleaze and economic mismanagement under Thatcher’s successor John Major damaged the Tories. Their woefully backfiring ‘Back to Basics’ campaign, one that ended up being mocked as ‘back to my place’ because of the number of sexual scandals that Tories were caught out in, failed. It didn’t give them the boost that they needed and there was an increasing feeling in the country that the nation needed a change of government.

We got that change of government in the form of Tony Blair’s New Labour, a Labour party where the election losing far Left had been banished or at least removed from the public eye. However under Blair we also got the seeds of many of our current problems. We got the attacks on freedom of speech, authoritarian and easily abused ‘hate crime’ laws, and a massive growth in the size and scope of the state. We also got really excessive levels of immigration and also a lot of migration from cultures that have not always been compatible. This policy also opened Britain up to an increase in Islamic terrorism and extremism although this was already here partly due to Blair’s predecessor Major having a policy of not worrying too much about Islamic extremists provided that they were not directly threatening the UK. Under Major the UK allowed extremists to foment violence in other countries provided that the nutters didn’t look as if they were going to attack the UK. With hindsight this is looking like a disastrous policy as it allowed extremists to find a home in Britain and run operations from the UK.

However the biggest problem that the Blair and later the Brown governments bequeathed the people of the UK is a removal of trust and respect from politics, politicians and the political process. A major factor in this was the Iraq War. Blair’s actions leading up to the Iraq War are questionable to say the least and although most people, except UK service personnel who served there of course, have forgotten about it or don’t think about it much, we still live with the after effects, the disgust and distrust of the political classes that that period spawned.

Blair’s Iraq war was for me the starting point for when more and more people started to say that all politicians were the same whether they were Tory or Labour, that both parties were to basically the ‘same shit but with different gravy on them’. The vote to take military action in Iraq was the start of the time when the political classes were looked at by a lot of people with a sense of disgust. Unfortunately the inhabitants of the House of Commons did not do much to disabuse people of their view. Both the bulk of the Conservative Party and the majority of the Labour party ended up voting for military action to find and destroy the weapons of mass destruction that were alleged to be in Iraq. By doing so, the House of Commons gave the people of Britain the worrying impression that they were run not by a governing party faced with an official Opposition to hold them to account, but a Uniparty system where there are two parties but the differences between them are to all intents and purposes, meaningless.

But it was not just the willingness, with the honourable exception of the Liberal Democrats Britain’s third national party, of at least large parts of the two main parties to line up in favour of the Iraq War that has damaged the respect that members of the House of Commons are held. Later other scandals played their part.

The 2009 Expenses Scandal saw Parliamentarians from both main parties heavily involved in what came to be know as ‘troughing’, sticking their snouts into the trough of Parliamentary expenses and lining their own pockets with claims for expenses ranging from everything from second homes that MP’s rarely lived in right through to the purchase of fripperies such as duck houses for duck ponds. For weeks the newspapers were full of tales of MP’s, already on salaries that were so high as to be almost unimaginable for most Britons, behaving like greedy pigs, sucking up money that had been extorted from the public via taxation.

This scandal did nothing at all for the image of those in Parliament and as well as drawing attention to those guilty of claiming excess expenses or even of criminal fraud, the scandal also tarnished the image of those MP’s who were decent and did their best to serve their constituents wall. I believe that disgust at the expenses scandal as well as Labour looking tired and which was still mired in the lingering aftermath of the Iraq War, played a big factor in why Labour lost the 2010 General Election.

Since 2010, when Labour left office following the General Election and we had, for the first time since World War II, a proper Coalition government made up of the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, the impression that the public has that we are governed by a ‘Uniparty’ where each main party is often indistinguishable from the other, has worsened. This perception comes from he main parties having policies that are almost indistinguishable from one another, an updated form of the Butskelism of the 1950’s where two successive Chancellors from two parties both favoured a mixed economy. The period of the Coalition where the Liberal Democrats were subjected to the full glare of publicity that comes with being a governing party was not kind to the Lib Dems. At successive elections the voters have rejected the Lib Dems and they have become a shadow of their former selves. All too much these days they seem to be relegated to being a home for middle and upper class Remainers and those obsessed with promoting the gender identity cult.

When it comes to the two main parties, Labour and the Tories, there’s really not much to choose from between them. Apart from the Labour Party’s foray into Corbynism which saw Labour become a happy home for deluded Jew haters, on the main issues, education, the economy, the welfare state, the environment, immigration, culture and defence, there’s nothing much to choose from between the Tories or Labour.

Both parties are enthusiasts for favouring high tax big state policies, both parties have failed to improve education or remove the influence of the far Left from education, both want to expand the welfare state and throw money at Britain’s failing NHS. Both main parties are also wedded to extreme environmental policies that will more than likely damage the economy and impoverish Britain’s people. Neither Labour nor the Tories want to tackle issues surrounding attacks from the Left on British culture or defend freedom of speech. It’s also the case that both main parties will not improve Britain’s defences nor deal with one of the main issues that concern Britons, that of excessive and inappropriate levels and types of immigration.

When presented with ‘choices’ such as between Labour and Conservative, is it any wonder that people disengage with the political process and do not vote. After all we are too often presented with a situation at election time that looks very much like the words in the old song by The Who, a case of ‘meet the old boss, he’s the same as the old boss’.

The problem with plumping for what I call ‘the Apathy Party’ by not voting is it results in even worse politicians coming to power. You may not vote but those who favour politicians who do not have your best interests at heart will trek down to the Polling Station. Sadiq Khan in London is a good illustration of this. It’s quite possible that at both of the elections that Khan won in London, he might not have won if the turnout had been higher. Those motivated for Khan turned out but those who decided that apathy was the way didn’t bother to vote therefore ensuring that Khan won. At the last election if a mere 10-20% more people could have been arsed to bother to vote for Khan’s main Tory challenger then maybe London would have been spared the mismanagement that Khan has brought to London.

National British politics is in my opinion, in a great deal of trouble. It’s unrepresentative of large swathes of public opinion, the main parties are too often dishonest with the public over issues of concern like immigration and culture. There is too little to choose between them and both parties seem more influenced and dominated by lobby groups than they are by the people who elect them via the ballot box. This is a bad situation. but how can it be changed? In Part Two I will look at alternative parties and the difficulties they face.

PART TWO – Have there been alternatives in the past and if so what are the challenges that they face today?

It’s difficult in the British political system where candidates are voted for on the basis of First Past the Post (FPTP) for a challenger party to become a potential party of government. It’s much more difficult than it would be in somewhere like Israel where the strictly proportional system means that parties and party systems are extremely fluid and react to both public opinion and to external and internal threats and opportunities quite well.

However the cost to the national polity of Israel’s system is weak coalition governments, backroom horse-trading between politicians and tiny little parties, often tied to political and religious extremes, holding the balance of power in the governing chamber. The alternative which is FPTP delivers strong governments but often governments that are so strong that they can arrogantly ride roughshod over the views of the electorate and which are chosen mostly from a small number of what are called marginal seats where the seat might change hands often between the two main parties. In the British FPTP system a vote for the Tories in a strongly Labour held seat is a wasted vote and vice versa.

Any party that wishes to challenge the Tories or Labour has a massive hill to climb, an Everest style mountain in fact. A challenger party needs to be well funded in order to be able to afford the deposits to fight in 650 Commons constituencies, it needs to have a good ground game with plenty of supporters to deliver leaflets, canvas voters and generally supply all the labour required to mount an effective political campaign.

Whilst British elections do not have the excessive costs of campaigning such as we see in the USA and there’s no requirement for parties to buy TV adverts (in fact buying TV adverts is forbidden for political parties in the UK) at huge cost, it still takes a lot of resources to mount a national General Election campaign. These resources are available to the Tory and Labour parties because they have large, although much smaller than they once were, membership bases and high levels of funding from wealthy individuals and organisations such as companies and trade unions. Any new party wanting to properly mount a challenge to the ‘Big Two’ parties needs to be able to replicate both the financial and personnel resources of them, which is a difficult if not potentially impossible task.

It is probably correct at this point to note that the last time a challenger party fought off the ‘Big Two’ which at the time were the Tories and the Liberals, was when the Labour Party was created. Even then it took over twenty years, from the formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1899 to Labour leader Ramsey Macdonald’s first Labour government in 1923. Even then the party was helped by there being no real alternative for voicing the concerns of the newly enfranchised working classes and therefore winning an increasing number of seats in the Commons. World War One also gave Labour a boost because Labour’s then leader Arthur Henderson was brought into the War Cabinet. Whilst he was there he pushed for progressive policies that helped the working classes and also assisted Labour to be seen as the party of the workers. This benefited Labour post war.

The conditions that applied then, with masses of newly enfranchised members of the working classes and a war that helped show Labour as a credible party of government, do not exist today. Society is much more atomised and individualistic than it once was and there isn’t the class awareness or class loyalties that there once was.

The new voters that Britain does have are recent migrants who may well vote communally and for communal interests and do not see themselves as being part of a mass working class with class interests and concerns. Some of these new voters therefore vote for parties like Labour that have abandoned the bulk of the working classes in favour of migrant groups who can be relied upon, due to communal pressure, to vote Labour.

Labour is now a split party with one part targeting the first and second generation migrants and agreeing with their demands even if those demands hurt the majority of the working classes or hurt concepts such as freedom of speech, with another part of it targeting the middle and upper class Metro Left with their obsessions about gender, sexuality and other similar issues. When it comes to today’s Labour Party, the concerns of the working classes rarely seem to be able to get a look in.

Labour is now so thoroughly divorced from the working classes that it was set up to protect and whose interests it was supposed to advance that it has failed to even stand with Britain’s working classes on one of the big issues of today’s politics, that of Brexit. From the 2016 Referendum on Labour has not been aligned with the views of many of its voters on Brexit. The Parliamentary Labour Party was during this time after the Referendum, mostly a motley collection of Remainers, rabid pro-EU types and even those who had no qualms about intimating that their own voters were ‘racist’ for choosing independence over being shackled to the EU. This period was not exactly Labour’s finest hour. Gone from that post-Blair Labour party were the principled objectors to the EU like Peter Shore or Eric Heffer, people who had solid and sometimes socialist based objections to the EU and who saw it, quite rightly in my view, as a ‘bosses club’.

Labour were once a decent alternative to the main parties of government when government was a choice between Tories and Liberals but now they are very much ‘the Establishment’ with all that goes with that description.

PART THREE – Let’s look at some of the alternatives, their strengths and weaknesses.

There have been a relatively large number of alternative parties set up in recent years. The main driver for their creation seems to be the failure of both Tories and Labour to listen to the public on major issues of concern.

I will list some of them and what I see is both good and bad about them and where they’ve gone right and where they’ve gone wrong. It’s not an exhaustive list. There are a number of exclusions on the grounds that the parties I have excluded are extremists and Britain has a long history of not voting for extremists. For that reason there is no Patriotic Alternative from the Right and no Socialist Party from the Left, both entities are ones that I would not touch with the proverbial bargepole.

I’ve tried to concentrate on parties that are from the centre Left either whole or in part or from the centre Right or Right that are similarly not extreme. It is quite possible after all to believe in aspects of a left reading of the economy with the state providing essential services whilst still believing in the need for societies to have strong families and empowered individuals in order to prosper. Similarly it is just as possible to believe in free markets, a small state, reducing immigration or standing up to religious extremism, without being on the far right.

Some of these alternative parties I have at one point supported but later ended up regretting doing so, some have, in the words of JRR Tolkien, ‘looked fair but felt foul’, some who have failed dismally (often by their own actions) and others that have actually achieved something.

UKIP.

When most people think of alternative parties they may well think of the United Kingdom Independence Party and its charismatic former leader Nigel Farage. For two decades UKIP pushed for Britons to be given a choice whether to remain in the EU or leave. UKIP also did a very good job of highlighting the inherent problems within the EU and the ongoing problem of the democratic deficit that the EU has. By being elected to the European Parliament, UKIP representatives had a ringside seat to the shenanigans that go on in the EU. They also managed to communicate to Britons the high levels of waste and despotism that characterises the European Union. They managed to frighten David Cameron’s Conservative party into offering a Referendum on EU membership and UKIP, with its high number of motivated members and good ground game, managed to look as if they would manage to unseat some Tory MP’s and create again the spectre of a hung parliament and another Coalition government.

UKIP and its various campaigns to get seats in the House of Commons clearly illustrates the barriers that the FPTP voting system poses for insurgent or alternative parties. At one General Election they got over three million votes but no seats in the Commons. The swing needed to unseat an MP, even in a marginal seat, is extremely high and could not be achieved by UKIP.

However, even though they failed to get seats in the Commons via election and not defections from other parties, it could arguably be said that UKIP was the most successful of the modern alternative parties. This is because they actually achieved what they set out to achieve, which was getting Britain to leave the EU.

But, time has not been good for UKIP. Following the departure of Nigel Farage, the party imploded. A lot of infighting coupled with a succession of weak leaders really helped to kill it off as a potentially viable alternative party. An attempt by former leader Gerald Batten to make the party relevant by focussing on the issue of Islamic Rape Gangs by bringing in Tommy Robinson as an advisor on this issue failed to grab the voting public’s attention even though this is an issue that was neglected for far too long.

Whilst I acknowledge Mr Robinson as someone who had done a great deal in the past to highlight the issue of the Islamic Rape Gangs, something the Establishment really doesn’t want to properly acknowledge, his involvement in UKIP drove away useful people who might have stayed with the party had he not been appointed. Big parties can afford to lose some members via them walking away, but smaller parties, that desperately need the personnel to do the electoral leg work cannot. UKIP was also harmed by Batten’s decision to take seriously some of Britain’s worst tin foil hatters, such as UK Column News, an organisation run by Brian Gerrish, a man who I believe rightly deserves the description of ‘Britain’s pound shop Alex Jones’.

I walked away from support for UKIP when at a demo in London in support of the idea that the Referendum result should be honoured, as well as Mr Robinson speaking there were an awful lot of tin foilers such as supporters of Gerrish on the stage and I was horrified at what UKIP had become. As an aside whilst I used to have some respect for Mr Robinson as a non-racist, principled opponent to extreme Islam and the effects of unreformed Islam on non-Muslim communities but over time I’ve become more and more disappointed with him. Projects that were promised, such as lengthy and detailed films on Islamic anti-Semitism and on Britain’s grooming problem failed to properly materialise. He has all but abandoned his stance on extremist Islam and is now, at least from what I can see from his Gab channel, a full on anti-vaccination grifter. The phrase ‘he could have been a contender’ comes to mind now when I think of Mr Robinson. I hope one day he can become what he could once have been. Maybe in the light of later events and the implosion of UKIP those who walked from UKIP after Mr Robinson’s appointment as an advisor might have been right to do so?

I see no way back for UKIP. The infighting, the succession of poor leaders, the consistent and unremitting electoral failure, not just in Parliamentary elections but local ones as well along with the flirtation with Gerrish style tin foil hattery, has killed this party. It would take a miracle for UKIP to return as a force to be reckoned with and I don’t see anything that could do that on the political horizon. I’ve voted for UKIP in the past but I really cannot see myself doing so again, not unless they give me a damned good reason to vote for them.

The Reform Party (formerly the Brexit Party)

Out of all the alternative and non-extreme parties out there that have been formed in recent years, Reform is probably one of the most credible. It is appearing on various political voting intention polls which other parties by nature of their small size do not. Formed by Nigel Farage after he left UKIP, Reform, formerly named the Brexit Party, did a great deal to challenge the pro-EU Establishment and really did put the wind up the Tories and get them to support Brexit and in Boris Johnson’s words ‘get Brexit done’.

There’s a lot about this party that I like and which has a lot to commend it but it faces the same challenges to potential success as all alternative parties do which is the high barrier to election created by FPTP. However after Mr Farage left the post of party leader things started to get a bit more wobbly.

It is also to be noted that the Left have relentlessly attacked this party sometimes over what I would call ‘nothingburger’ issues such as allegations of ‘Islamophobia’ but also over matters that do and should cause concern such as senior members having dealings with people like Mark Collet of the neo-Nazi party Patriotic Alternative. Personally I don’t give that much of a toss about ‘Islamophobic’ comments as this word is, in the words that have been misattributed to the late Christopher Hitchens: ‘a word created by fascists, and used by cowards to manipulate morons’. However hanging around with genuine neo-Nazis is much more of a cause for concern both morally and politically. If I was on the Left then I would view hanging around with Stalinists with similar concern.

There are some aspects of Reform’s policies that I cannot in all good conscience get behind. The biggest of this is for me House of Lords reform. I’m horrified by Reform’s proposal that the Lords becomes an elected upper house. It will just cause a massive conflict between two elected houses and fail to be what the Lords can be at its best which is a revising and scrutinising chamber filled with people, whether they sit there by right of heredity or by being appointed, who are able to be non-political. Yes I’d like to a greater variety of people in the Lords but I do not think that elections are the way to do this. If you want to know more about my suggestion for Lords reform that involves appointment of a ordinary British subjects by lot and creating for them a new class of time limited peer then you may be interested in this article of mine, A Radical Suggestion For House of Lords Reform.

The problem as I see it with having an elected House of Lords is that it will create all the disadvantages of the US system where you can have an antagonistic Senate and House being held by different parties, with none of the safeguards or advantages provided in the US by the existence of a federal system and with many policies being decided at State level. An elected House of Lords is an almost fully guaranteed recipe for political conflict and political stalemate.

Reform despite being somewhat more credible than other alternative parties has not done well at elections. Part of this is down to not having a high profile leader like Nigel Farage, but some of this is down to both being hampered by the electoral system. But this electoral system disadvantage does not apply in those parts of the UK and those elected posts that run on a more proportional system, where Reform have also failed. They’ve picked up some council seats but not much more than that.

Brand recognition, or rather a lack of it has hurt the Reform Party but so to has bad choices of policies. For me the major bad choice is to focus on turning the House of Lords into a simulacrum of the US Senate with all that implies, but their choice to become a specific ‘anti lockdown’ party has also been part of that failure.

Although I am yet to be convinced of the efficacy of lockdowns it can’t be denied that this policy has been popular as the various polls show. Maybe it would be less popular if there was no financial support to people coming from government to help people during this period, but the lockdown policy of government is popular nonetheless. There are enough people in Britain who have seen the effects of Covid and who have lost friends and relatives to this disease to create a large body of people who support the actions being taken against Covid.

Whilst it is right to hold the government to account over the trashing of civil liberties during the fight against Covid, being an explicitly anti-lockdown party has damaged their electoral standing. Their choice of anti-lockdown being the hill that they chose to die on looks very much to me like the party deciding policy on what is popular on social media rather than what is really and genuinely popular.

If there is a need for a populist, pro-Britain, socially conservative but economically soft left party in the UK then there should be one, but I can’t see how Reform can truly become this unless it dumps policies that are unpopular. It should also roll back from its commitment to have an elected House of Lords for a start because of the inherent dangers of this policy.

Out of all the alternative parties this is the one that I would have most liked to have given my vote to but the Lords issue looms large in my decision not to. This party might be able to recover but that will depend on whether they are serious about representing those who have no real representation such as the working classes who have been abandoned by Labour or whether they continue to be a vehicle for those with half baked sixth form debating society plans for constitutional reform and a willingness to push policies that many people do not agree with. A local Reform Party candidate whether for a local or national election would have to be pretty strong and admirable, as well as having a good chance of winning for me to set aside my numerous concerns about Reform and vote for it.

The Heritage Party.

I really thought that this one had a chance. I liked their mix of being critical of the extremes of eco-nutbaggery, in favour of social conservatism, strongly defended borders and free markets along with their support for freedom of speech. I was less keen on this party’s prescriptive view of architecture and it’s vehement opposition to abortion (I view it as a necessary evil although one that should be safe and legal but as rare as society can possibly make it).

Any support for Heritage that I might once have had dissipated when the leader of Heritage, the former UKIP London Assembly Member David Kurten joined the ranks of the anti vaccination cranks. We can all see how covid vaccines have worked to reduce the intensity of disease and although these vaccines are not perfect and there is as with some other vaccines, efficacy fade, to stand against the one way out of the pandemic by being anti vax as Mr Kurten did is not really that good a look.

This is an example of a party that has gone down the pan remarkably quickly and it might be down to the fact that there might not be more of the party than Mr Kurten and his own obsessions. I do believe that there is a market for a non-racist nationalist party in British politics and a party that represents social conservatism, especially as the Conservative Party proper seems to have given up on such things. However I don’t see Heritage being this nor do I see myself supporting this party.

This party is dead in the water unless it sorts itself out, which will probably mean it getting rid of David Kurten and his crank baggage and completely rebuilding the party. It seems that other people also have a dim view of Heritage. On their last two outings in by-elections they’ve been utterly slaughtered gaining 468 votes out of 29,933 in the 2021 Hartlepool one and a miserable 33 votes out of a potential 37,786 votes in the Batley and Spen contest also held in 2021.

For Britain

This is another party that grew out of UKIP and those formerly within it who were dissatisfied with what UKIP stood for. Led by Anne-Marie Waters, who is, unusually for a nationalist party, a Lesbian, For Britain burst onto the scene back in 2017 at the height of concerns about Islamic Rape Gangs and Islamic terrorism.

Whilst pushback against the extremes of Islam and Islam related crimes like the grooming gangs were welcomed by many, For Britain have failed to make an impact electorally. They’ve gained some councillors but have been extremely lax when it comes to the vetting of candidates and potential members.

For Britain became a magnet for ex British National Party types and at one point had people within it who were connected to the now banned National Action group and also the more extreme elements of the Generation Identity movement.

They have a very slick online presence and promote some policies that might, in other circumstances be popular such as challenging the extremes of the ecological movement and securing Britain’s borders against those from cultures and nations that have potential ill intent towards Britain. However, they are tarnished by their willingness to accept those from neo-Nazi parties as members without ascertaining whether or not those members have given up on those views.

I would not vote for a party like For Britain because of its association with some serious lunatics but even if they were not present and the party was not a haven for those with the taint of neo-Nazism, then I would be put off by what I would call rabid secularism. Some degree of secularism is in my view a good thing, but For Britain take things to extremes with their extreme hostility to religious schools, religious diets and basically everything related to religion. As someone with a religious faith I don’t see For Britain as being a party that is ‘on my side’ so even if the jackboot lickers that have entered the party were removed, I would still see no reason to vote for them.

They also have had manifesto commitments that are likely to be both unpopular and unworkable such as raising the age of consent to 18. Now I’m all in favour of teenagers delaying sexual activity for as long as possible, but I ask you this: Is there really anything to be gained from criminalising those aged between 16 and 18 who engage in consensual sex with their peers? Personally I don’t think that there is.

Reclaim.

As someone who is what could be reasonably be called a free speech fundamentalist, who believes that there is an urgent need for society to be truly enriched by having a marketplace of ideas I was extremely celebratory about the arrival of the Reclaim Party led by actor Laurence Fox. However all too soon after this party’s formation Mr Fox, rather than doing what many of us had hoped he would do and set about campaigning for the return of free thinking to Britain, started to become extremely self indulgent and made some serious miscalculations.

Joining up with and so publicly aligning himself with an anti lockdown movement that has far too many close links to people like David Icke and his fans was a really bad move, especially as this policy is not popular with the public if polls are to be believed. The sight of Mr Fox self-indulgently shouting ‘freedom’ at a demo in London and standing with people who are not just a bit tin foil hat but who are the sort of people I would not trust to sit the correct way round on a toilet was not something I wanted to see. It diminished both him and his party in my view.

Freedom of speech and freedom of thought and conscience is now obviously under attack in Britain and I would have preferred to see Reclaim concentrate on this issue. They could also have promoted other policies that are genuinely popular with the public such as support for law and order, secure borders and the protection of British culture from the assaults that come from the Far Left.

As someone who believes that Britain should repatriate from the USA the love and respect for free speech that British thinkers originally exported to the nascent US in the 18^th century, I see a dire need for a political movement to support this aim. Reclaim could have been at the head of this movement or at least one of the leaders of it but to a large extent have thrown it all away.

As with some of the other minor parties mentioned here, Reclaim has not done at all well electorally. They failed in the London Mayoral and Assembly elections and Laurence Fox in the London Mayoral election only managed to get 0.9% more votes than a man dressed as a dustbin.

I still hope that Reclaim can sort their selves out and maybe as things normalise after the Covid pandemic they might. But if they are to be successful they need to concentrate on the things that people want to be achieved as well as campaigning for freedom of speech. With the exception of UKIP prior to the Referendum and the various Irish Home Rule parties that entered parliament in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, single issue parties have never fared that well in the British system.

If you don’t stand up for the bread and butter issues that do concern the population then you are literally going to be toast. People might want to vote for a party that expressly is favourable to freedom of speech but if they have nothing to say about the economy, immigration or education or any other of the myriad issues that drive voters to the polling stations to vote then you are on a hiding to nothing.

The Social Democratic Party (which is not the old Social Democratic Party)

 

Last but by no means least is the Social Democratic Party. This is a particularly interesting political creature whose name and indeed their logo will make political historians and politics nerds sit up and take notice. They are the heirs and successors of the original Social Democratic Party that was itself made up mostly of those, such as the ‘Gang of Four’ who abandoned the Labour Party in the early 1980’s when the then opposition Labour Party shifted a long way to the Left. The original SDP merged with the Liberal Party in the late 1980’s to form a new party, one that is called the Liberal Democrats and which sadly is often neither liberal in the classical sense nor democratic as we saw from the party’s hostility to the Brexit vote.

The new SDP was formed by those members of the old SDP who didn’t want to join together with the Liberals, the new SDP struggled on for a few years and folded but the name and the party was revived by those who didn’t want to see the SDP die a couple of years after the party folded. It got a boost from some of those ex-UKIP types such as Patrick O’Flynn who joined it when he found himself in disagreement with some of former UKIP leader Gerard Batten’s policies such as bringing Tommy Robinson on board as Islam advisor.

Of all the alternative parties that I speak about in this piece, the SDP is probably the most identifiably ‘left’ of all of them although plainly not rooted in Marxism in any way. They are nationalistic but not in any exclusionary way, want a points based immigration system and believe that the family is important and needs to be supported. It also believes that the nation state should be the highest democratic unit. The SDP says that it is against supranationalism but also contradicts itself by claiming that it wants international cooperation on things like ‘climate change’.

Although I say that there are elements in the SDP, that are identifiably ‘left’ such as their desire that natural monopolies come into public ownership, there are also elements that are identifiably ‘right’ such as their description of themselves as ‘communitarian’ about which they say in their statement of values: “A widespread values and virtues-led cultural renewal is needed, aimed at improving citizens’ happiness, health and well-being. Government – along with civic society – must play its role. We are communitarians. We reject laissez-faire libertarianism as indifferent and ineffective. There is such a thing as society and, as Jo Grimond rightly said, it is as necessary to the individual as water is to fish.”

 

To get a flavour of what the SDP are like as well as reading their statement of values I’d advise reading Patrick O’Flynn’s Twitter feed. I don’t always agree with it but it is always interesting. Mr O’Flynn is an excellent political writer and you can see that for yourself from this article in The Critic magazine.

Like the other alternative parties their record of electoral success is not good, it’s held and gained some council seats and one of their number was a small town mayor. But it’s never won a Westminster seat and under the FPTP system, unless they find a seat where both main parties are equally hated by the electorate, then it is unlikely to. Would I vote for the SDP? I’m really not sure. For me they are a bit of a ‘curate’s egg’, good in some parts and not others. But what I will say is that the SDP seem less affected by nutbaggery than some of the other parties and I can see no desire in them to tinker with the constitution in dangerous ways like Reform want to do. Maybe introducing some element of proportionality into the voting system and therefore more viewpoint diversity into the House of Commons as the SDP want to do could be a good thing? I have an open mind on the SDP, I like some things about them but not others.

PART FOUR – Conclusion.

Nearly all of the parties, with for me the exception of For Britain, have one or more aspects that attract me but they also have things that put me off and which may put off other voters as well. All these parties are doomed to fail if they stand as individual parties in either a Parliamentary General or by-election.

It’s a shame that we cannot have presented to us on the ballot paper a party with the strong commitment to free speech of Reclaim, the scepticism of supranational bodies of Reform, the support for those who are socially conservative of Heritage, the willingness to ask hard questions of certain religious ideologies and their wrong ‘uns of UKIP and the desire such as that espoused by the SDP, to see the British community rebuild itself. These are all things that I think are good and what I would like to vote for. However it’s very difficult to vote for the individual parties that agree with what I like because that would also mean having to vote for stuff that I vehemently disagree with whether that be an elected House of Lords or anti-vaccine nutbaggery.

These parties have no chance of being elected as individual parties under the FPTP system. The barrier is just too high for them. In addition to that their followers and those who would most likely vote for them are spread across different Parliamentary constituencies. They do not have the advantage of having many potential voters in one seat. They cannot exploit the dissatisfactions of one particular group and harm one of the main parties which is what George Galloway’s Workers Party did in the Batley and Spen by-election. Galloway was able to garner the support of disaffected and somewhat extreme Muslims against Labour. Galloway had a lot of people who were potential voters living in one Parliamentary seat. The supporters of the alternative parties that I have mentioned above do not live in large numbers in one particular area, they are spread out across seats and that, with FPTP is a distinct disadvantage.

The only long term way to change this situation and make smaller parties more viable is to change the voting system but we rejected that at a referendum in 2011. Maybe this was a mistake to do so but I looked at the motley collection of far leftists, extreme greens and celebrities that were backing voting reform and it put me off voting for an alternative electoral system. I must admit I did think that if the sort of people and parties who I’m opposed to and who I believe will make my life and the lives of my family worse want PR then maybe I don’t want PR after all if it is parties like these that will benefit. Going by the results of the PR referendum it seems that other Britons thought the same way and voted to keep the FPTP system.

If we are not to have a PR voting system then how can alternative parties break through? I think the first thing that people interested in providing an alternative to the big two is that this is a long term process. We have the example of the Labour Party which took several decades to become a credible party of government from being a representation committee. It’s quite possible that this is a process that will need to be replicated with different groups and different parties creating a representation committee that will hone policies, train candidates and fund campaigns for election.

I really do not see any prospect of some of these smaller parties going it alone. There will have to be some sort of merger in the long term. Maybe the short term solution would be some sort of Populist Alliance where some of the more sensible alternative parties especially the ones that have a more broad appeal than others may have, agree to work together to fight in particular target seats?

Creating such an Alliance will of course involve compromise. Some parties might have to dump much cherished obsessions in order to appeal to a wider audience than just those who follow them on Social Media and compromise might not be that popular with those whose own self image is that of an outsider.

Whilst it might be fun to see oneself as an outsider, it is only possible to make political changes as a insider as part of the political system. Power, like it or not, is everything. If you have no power then you can effect no change.

This means getting elected to parish, local and county councils whether as part of a party or as an independent and proving your worth to the people who elected you which is damned hard work. It’s much harder than screaming about your obsessions on social media for a self selected adoring audience. Only after you’ve proved yourself as an effective voice for people in councils can you truly say that you might stand a chance of being elected to Parliament.

I don’t believe that we need to be stuck in a situation where at General Elections we vote for the least worst option. I do believe that we should have more credible choices at election time but creating that credible choice will take time and effort. As well as effort from those who stand for election it will also take effort from us the voter to create credible choices on Polling Day. That means getting off your arse and helping the independent candidate or smaller party candidate with the donkey work of electioneering. It also means not reinventing the wheel and instead copying what other more successful parties do: For example the Lib Dems don’t just appear at election time, they put out local leaflets in between elections to ensure that their message is heard and understood outside of election time. It’s a policy and a tactic that has been very successful for them in local government and as it works it might be wise to copy it.

To conclude: We need more credible and hard working people to stand for elected posts, but they cannot do that without backing. This is why an alliance of alternatives or an alliance of independents is probably a good idea.

We don’t have to vote for the same old parties or candidates every time, we can choose alternatives. But if we want those alternatives to be successful and gain power at whatever level they are aiming for then it will take hard work, creativity and a hard nosed pursuit of power to do that.