Breakaway parties

[ICTChris]

The earth shattering launch of the Alba Party set me thinking about the various breakaway parties we’ve seen in recent years. There is a long and varied tradition of this in British politics, with the consistent factor being the breakaway parties abject failure.

 

Probably the most successful was the SDP, formed in 1981 when four former Labour cabinet ministers left the party due to its leftward turn. Despite capturing significant percentages of the vote and some high profile by election wins the party never made a breakthrough and merged with the Liberals in 1988.

 

The main U.K. parties have had some too -Arthur Scargill formed the Socialist Labour Party when Blair binned Clause Four but they’ve never even retained a deposit as far as I know. Bizarrely they stood a full list slate in Scotland for a number of years though, probably hurting the various socialist named parties here. We had Change UK or TIG or whatever the heck it was a few years ago who formed, went to Nando’s and then seemingly immediately collapsed. Seems a good way to do it.

 

I am old enough to remember when the Pro Euro Conservative Party was formed and briefly seen as a viable object but they merged into the Lib Dem’s very quickly and the Conservatives moved on and we haven’t heard anything about Europe from them ever since.

 

I’ve deliberately left the tankies and trots out of this as trying to break down the all their Byzantine splits and icepick wielding hatred is beyond my remit. The most interesting of them is probably the Revolutionary Communist Party who did an about turn to libertarianism, became Spiked and now have several members in positions of real influence (the head of the Downing Street policy unit is a former RCPer).

 

What are your favourite breakaway parties?

[ICTChris]

18 minutes ago, ThatBoyRonaldo said:

The Socialist Labour Party got like 15% when they stood against Michael Martin when he was speaker, presumably due to people confusing them with the actual Labour party in the absence of an official candidate.

Ah that’s right. 
 

They aren’t really a breakaway party but the guy who stood in a razor tight Tory-LD marginal as a Literal Democrat and got 20,000 votes is certainly something.

[NotThePars]

"Pro-status quo, anti-establishment" has done me in

[eindhovendee]

Not sure who this guy was breaking from but I would vote for him.

[Granny Danger]

19 minutes ago, eindhovendee said:

Not sure who this guy was breaking from but I would vote for him.

I wish I had the technical skills to photoshop James McPake’s photo onto that.

[GNU_Linux]

2 hours ago, NotThePars said:

"Pro-status quo, anti-establishment" has done me in

Didn't you know a da' rock band from England is a form of subversive protest in Pakistan.

[ICTChris]

6 hours ago, Pato said:

I like the Pakistani ones where it's all the same name but with one letter in brackets to tell it apart from the main one:

also I had no idea @WATTOO was such a splitter

I worked with a guy whose family was from Pakistan and he was all in favour of periodic military dictatorships there, he said democracy didn’t work in a place like Pakistan because the parties were just run by rich, corrupt families who essentially dragoon all the illiterate peasants in their territory into voting for them. 
 

It was interesting to actually hear someone argue that military coups are, in fact, good. Not enough backing of tanks rolling into Holyrood in Scottish politics IMO.

[tamthebam]

There was a guy in Edinburgh who used to stand as a Liberal, as in the old party, against the Liberal Democrats. He probably regarded the Liberal Democrats as splitters.

 

[sparky88]

FPTP creates coalitions within parties. In every case I can think of, where a coalition has broken away from the larger party it has ended up being some shade of disaster. TIG being a great example of this.

[Mark Connolly]

19 hours ago, NotThePars said:

"Pro-status quo, anti-establishment" has done me in

[speckled tangerine]

9 hours ago, tamthebam said:

There was a guy in Edinburgh who used to stand as a Liberal, as in the old party, against the Liberal Democrats. He probably regarded the Liberal Democrats as splitters.

 

Wasn't that John Hein? When I was a postie I used to deliver his post. He lived in Montgomery Street.

I dreaded having packets for him as he had a wee edwardian letterbox. He would always answer the door in his cheesy Y fronts. I'd be straight back over the road to the depot at Brunswick Road for the smelling salts.

He was a fucking oddball.

[Highland Capital]

Was reading on Twitter yesterday that apparently Ian Davidson had floated the idea of Labour and the Co-Op Party running candidates individually to try and maximise the list vote.  Labour in the constituencies, Co-Op in the regions I assume.

[ICTChris]

5 hours ago, speckled tangerine said:

Wasn't that John Hein? When I was a postie I used to deliver his post. He lived in Montgomery Street.

I dreaded having packets for him as he had a wee edwardian letterbox. He would always answer the door in his cheesy Y fronts. I'd be straight back over the road to the depot at Brunswick Road for the smelling salts.

He was a fucking oddball.

Yeah, he used to run in my constituency.

He was accused of laundering money stolen in a huge Moldovan fraud scam. He and his partner ran a business registering firm from their flat, for a fee they would register you a anonymous Scottish limited Company.  Some of these firms were used for money laundering purposes by organised criminal groups.

Dueing the 1970s Hein was also a member of Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) a group that lobbied for the rights of paedophiles. Numerous men involved in PIE have been convicted over the years for child abuse offences, although Hein was never convicted. In the 1990s and 2000s he published Scotsgay, a magazine covering LGBT issues in Scotland. Several writers for Scotsgay were convicted for crimes related child abuse. 

Hein died in December after a long illness. When he died a charity he was trustee of was under investigation for unspecified irregularities and had been placed under the control of a judicial factor by the Scottish charity regulator. 

[ICTChris]

Bumping this thread as not only is there talk of Jeremy Corbyn launching his own party but the big political news today is Gina Miller launching the "True and Fair" party.

 

What a success I imagine the True and Fairers will be.  

Corbyn's party (I think he has something lined up called Peace and Progress) will doubtless match the wild electoral success of previous breakaway socialist parties. 

[NotThePars]

6 hours ago, ICTChris said:

Bumping this thread as not only is there talk of Jeremy Corbyn launching his own party but the big political news today is Gina Miller launching the "True and Fair" party.

 

What a success I imagine the True and Fairers will be.  

Corbyn's party (I think he has something lined up called Peace and Progress) will doubtless match the wild electoral success of previous breakaway socialist parties. 

I think they're on about taking his Peace and Justice Project and turning it into a party. It was reported first in The Telegraph though which as you know has it's finger on the pulse of the left in the UK.

[welshbairn]

Could be that the Scottish Conservatives will revert back to their Unionist Party (1912-1965) roots?

[ICTChris]

For my dissertation I actually interviewed a Tory MSP who a couple of months later left and formed a new party, funded by a load of old guys with more money than sense.

[hearthammer]

Thought all parties were banned during lockdown  ??   Unless, of course, you were an Eton alumni and you could do whatever the f*ck you wanted - sans worrying about repercussions   -  oh, wait    !!!!!!!!!!!