Major Parties in The House of Commons
Three parties dominate politics in the House of Commons. They all operate throughout Great Britain (only the Conservative and Unionist Party stands candidates in Northern Ireland). Most of the British Members of the European Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales represent one of these parties:
- Conservative and Unionist Party, centre-right (traditionally centre-right and pragmatic; has always been a diverse and not always harmonious coalition) (306 seats in the House of Commons)
- Labour Party, centre-left (a broad social-democratic party with Third Way policies, was traditionally democratic socialist in orientation) (258 seats)
- Co-operative Party (all Co-operative Party MPs are also Labour MPs as part of a long-standing electoral agreement)
- Liberal Democrats, radical-centrist (heavily influenced by social liberalism). (57 seats)
Read more about this topic: Political Parties In The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the words major, parties, house and/or commons:
“Lets just call what happened in the eighties the reclamation of motherhood . . . by women I knew and loved, hard-driving women with major careers who were after not just babies per se or motherhood per se, but after a reconciliation with their memories of their own mothers. So having a baby wasnt just having a baby. It became a major healing.”
—Anne Taylor Fleming (20th century)
“A foreign minister, I will maintain it, can never be a good man of business if he is not an agreeable man of pleasure too. Half his business is done by the help of his pleasures: his views are carried on, and perhaps best, and most unsuspectedly, at balls, suppers, assemblies, and parties of pleasure; by intrigues with women, and connections insensibly formed with men, at those unguarded hours of amusement.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (16941773)
“Platonic England, house of solitudes,
rests in its laurels and its injured stone,”
—Geoffrey Hill (b. 1932)
“Anybody who enjoys being in the House of Commons probably needs psychiatric care.”
—Ken Livingstone (b. 1945)