What happened to those new political parties?

With both Jury Team and Libertas planning to contest June’s European elections, there has been plenty of talk in the media about the launch of these two new parties. What there has been rather less of are reminders about the enormously high failure rate amongst new political parties. Only very rarely does a new party make much of an impact after its launch.

Already the prospects for Jury Team are looking pretty ropy, with their failure to find sufficient volunteers to be candidates and very few members of the public taking part in their public votes to choose candidates. (For details, see my previous blog posting here.)

If Jury Team does indeed flop, it will join the long line of political launches based on the claim that the new body is in touch with the public and that existing political parties are awful – and yet when reality hits, it turns out those awful political parties are actually far, far more popular.

Here are two examples which illustrate this pattern:

The New Party (People’ Alliance)

The BBC reported on its launch in 2003:

Under the People’s Alliance, all new laws would stand or fall by the votes of the public at referendums.

Hailing its internet launch as the first of its kind, the alliance – formerly the New Party for Britain – said it would scrap current benefits and give one allowance to everyone – rich and poor …

In an interview with BBC News Online, Mr Hodgson insisted the party “will win seats” at May’s Scottish elections.

It didn’t. Although superficially it has had some fundraising success, with £1.2 million in donations plus a further £57,000 in gifts in kind declarable to the Electoral Commission, every single penny of those came from the firm of one of the party’s founders.

Mum’s Army

The Guardian reported in 2006:

On the face of it, the decision by Take a Break magazine to launch a political party as a way of boosting its own profile was a pretty neat PR move. Despite maintaining its lead as the best-selling women’s magazine market in this cluttered niche market, the Bauer-owned media publication is not resting on its laurels.

The mag that managed to bag the prime minister, Tony Blair, last year with a caption that read, “Hooray, I’m in Take a Break” now boasts that, “Britain’s biggest-selling women’s magazine is about to launch its own ‘Mum’s Army’ party with 54 candidates standing for election”. According to its editor, John Dale, the magazine already has a register of over 10,000 supporters and this may only be the “beginning”.

It didn’t turn out to be much of a beginning. In the local elections of May that year the party stood just three candidates and the party has not prospered since. Except for “gifts in kind” of office space and staff from the publishers of Take a Break, the party has not received any declarable donations during its existence.

So next time you read a write-up of how a new party is set to change British politics, remember – nearly all of them barely make an impression.