Becci's Political Musings

The last two governments have got into power after a rebranding of their political party. Labour rebranded themselves as New Labour in the hope of moving away from their traditional manual labour voters to the new service sector workers. The Conservatives also saw the need to move away from the Thatcherite view of the party to get re-elected in 2010. These were very obvious rebranding, but what effects have they had on the way in which traditional voters of the political parties see the parties? The political parties seem to be questing after the floating voters which make the difference between being in government and opposition. The problem with this is that only about 100 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons have a chance of changing hands at a general election, but the number is often less than this and only higher when a landslide result takes place. This post will aim to describe the way in which the political parties have rebranded themselves and the ways in which this has ...

It was clear from the local elections and the South Shields by-election on the 2 May 2013 that the main winner of the day was UKIP. From being one of the “other” parties in the previous local elections, taking an unknown portion of 13 per cent of the vote (which had won them 12 councillors), the party now gained 23 per cent of the vote alone and 147 councillors. This was such a new phenomenon that a fourth party place was dedicated to them on Wikipedia, something not seen before. In the South Shields by-election UKIP secured second place, as they had done in the Eastleigh by-election (a previous post has been written on the topic), despite not standing in the seat in the 2010 general election. These results all point to a very successful day for UKIP, but was it really a result of the success and appeal of UKIP? This blog post will explore the ways in which the UKIP results were more a consequence of the failings of the three main parties (Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats)...