Rethinking the role of small parties in the UK's parliaments

我们倾向于认为英国政治由两个政党(工党和保守党)主导。这一点反映在威斯敏斯特的议会政治风格上，在这种政治风格中，选举产生的政府会遭到“官方反对党”的反对。辩论往往在这两个人之间进行。每周总理提问时间的观察者将看到这一点的最好证明，届时官方反对党领导人被授予在调度台发言的特权(其他所有政党的领导人都不能这样做)，并有机会向总理提出最多六个问题。第二个反对党的领导人会收到两个问题。规模较小的反对党没有得到这样的问题保证。因此，议会程序加强了两党的主导地位，这些程序赋予最大的反对党更多的发言时间和委员会成员资格。但在19世纪和20世纪的英国政治中，小党一直扮演着关键角色。它们在21世纪变得更受欢迎，因为在多少有些幻想破灭的选民中，大政党的吸引力已经减弱。工党和保守党在20世纪中叶经常获得超过90%的选票，但在2015年只获得了67%的选票。这一缺口正在被较小的政党填补，其中超过300个政党目前在英国选举委员会登记。这些政党在地方选举中争夺的席位比以往任何时候都多，至关重要的是，他们在全国选举中赢得了相当多的席位，包括英国议会以及北爱尔兰、苏格兰和威尔士的权力下放议会。2015年大选后，下议院有10个政党的代表，总共有85名议员(占下议院的13%)。事实上，2015年是英国独立党、苏格兰民族党和绿党在大选中表现最好的一年。在2017年大选中，这一数字下降到只有6个政党，但出人意料的无多数党议会只有一个小党(DUP)，并有可能赋予议会中所有其他小党权力。除了在威斯敏斯特的这一席位外，19个政党在英国的地方议会中也有代表。尽管英国的地方议会有更多的共识做法，但现有的研究仍在进行，就好像“反对党”是一个议会团体一样。因此，我们仍然对个别政党在这些议会中的作用知之甚少。但这些议会中个别小党派的作用几乎完全被忽视了。这个为期三年的项目旨在更好地了解英国下议院、北爱尔兰议会、苏格兰议会和威尔士议会中小政党的工作。它使用对议员和议员的大规模采访，以及对自2015年以来的关键议会文件、辩论、问题和立法修正案的分析，来调查小政党在我们的政治体系中扮演的角色。在这样做的过程中，IN考虑了他们在议会机构中面临的挑战，以及他们能够对政府和立法的审查产生的影响。在这样做的过程中，它将突出议会生活中一个通常被隐藏的领域，揭示出最佳实践，并将与议会官员、议员和工作人员分享。

We tend to think of British Politics as being dominated by two political parties (the Labour Party and the Conservative Party). This is reflected in the style of parliamentary politics at Westminster, in which an elected government is opposed by the 'Official Opposition'. Debate tends to move between the two. Observers of the weekly Prime Minister's Question Time will see a prime demonstration of this, when the leader of the Official Opposition is granted the privilege of speaking from the dispatch box (something which is denied to the leaders of all other parties), and has the opportunity to ask up to six questions to the Prime Minister. The leader of the second opposition party receives two questions. Smaller opposition parties receive no such guarantee of a question. This two party dominance is therefore reinforced by parliamentary procedures, which grant greater speaking time as well as committee memberships to the largest opposition party. But small parties have played pivotal roles throughout nineteenth and twentieth century UK politics. They have become even more popular in the twenty first century as the appeal of the large parties has waned amidst a somewhat disillusioned electorate. The Labour Party and the Conservative party were regularly polling over 90% of the vote in the mid twentieth century, but managed only 67% in 2015.This gap is being filled by smaller parties, of which over 300 are currently registered with the UK Electoral Commission. These parties are contesting more seats than ever before in local elections and, crucially, they are winning a significant number of seats in national elections, to the UK Parliament and the devolve assemblies of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Ten political parties were represented in the House of Commons after the 2015 General Election, with a total of 85 MPs between them (accounting for 13% of the chamber). In fact, 2015 saw the best General Election performance ever for UKIP, the SNP and the Green Party. This fell to only 6 parties in the 2017 general election, but the unexpected hung parliament has seen one small party (the DUP) and has potentially empowered all other small parties in the chamber. In addition to this presence at Westminster, 19 parties have representation in the UK's sub national parliaments. Although the sub-national parliaments of the UK have more consensual practices, existing research still proceeds as though the 'opposition' is one parliamentary grouping. As such we still know little about the role of individual parties in these parliaments. But there has been an almost complete neglect of the role of individual small parties within these parliaments. This three year project aims to better understand the work of small political parties in the British House of Commons, the Northern Ireland Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. It uses large scale interviews with MPs and assembly members and analysis of key parliamentary documents, debates, questions and amendments to pieces of legislation since 2015 to investigate the role which small parties play in our political system. In doing so, in considers the challenges they face in parliamentary institutions and the impact they are able to make on scrutiny of government and of legislation. In doing so, it will highlight an area of parliamentary life which is usually hidden, uncovering best practice which will be shared with parliamentary officials, MPs and staff.