Policy Research Media Morhamburn

When the idea was touted that everyone here at Morhamburn Towers would be following one party for the duration of the election campaign, I got quite excited. I had visions of really getting my teeth into Brown or Cameron’s make-or-break manifestos, or properly scrutinising what role the Lib Dems or the SNP might play in the next parliament.

Of course, I picked ‘others’ out of the hat. That non-descript wee column that clings-on to the extremities of opinion polls, represented by the dull grey coloured bar, a bar that barely seems to rise above the line representing 1%.

A morass of deposit-losing extremists who waste everyone’s time campaigning for some nonsense that nobody cares about; a waste of ink on the ballot paper, and a waste of a column in the opinion polls.

I felt like I had been left standing in the street while everyone else went off to the party of the year.

But hurrah, out of the gloom came an ethereal glow, and a brilliant white steed emerged to shatter my despair; and no ordinary steed was this, because atop its brow sat a spike of brilliant white ivory and I knew there and then that this mythical beast had been sent to rescue me.

For just when I felt all hope was lost, the British Unicorn Party leapt up from the surprisingly long list of registered political parties on the Electoral Commission’s website, and renewed my interest in ‘others’.

What is this wonderfully named party? What are their policies? Are they campaigning for Unicorn rights, or just the rights of every spoilt little daddy’s girl? Or perhaps this is some clever socialist allusion to George Orwell’s The Lion and the Unicorn?

And then there is the All the South Party, who want fair government for Southern England, and who claim to represent the people of Wessex; perhaps those pesky Normans are planning another invasion?

Which brings me very nicely on to the raft of anti-European parties and the sinister sounding nationalist parties such as BPP – ‘Putting Britons First’ (yes, it reminded me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail too) and the rest of the extreme right, not to mention a barely credible number of extreme left and communist parties.

And how could we forget the British Right Alliance (Bra) who apparently have the really original ideas of cutting council tax, making illegal immigration illegal, ending political gravy trains and of course ‘no to Euro, no to Europe!’. Who says politicians don’t have their fingers on the pulse of the nation?

This wonderfully disparate list of 389 different parties includes one designed to ‘free the people of Blackburn’ (from whom it does not say), and one each designed to ‘free England’ and ‘free Scotland’ (no, not the SNP), one called the Dungeons, Death and Taxes Party, the rather confused sounding European Nationalists and the spectacularly ironic Impact Party.

The Generalist Party are obviously difficult to pin-down on an issue, and the Landless Peasant Party (there is no wealth but the land, apparently) seem about 500 years too late.

Obviously over the coming weeks I will focus on the more serious and established ‘others’ but I thought what a better way to start my journey through the political non-establishment than a look at its very dregs.

However in the course of my research I did come across one party, the banner of which I think we can all rally to in these difficult political and economic times in the name of unity, the collective good, and a cheaper pint; the Reduce Tax on Beer Party – just think what they could achieve in a hung parliament.

[The views expressed by Morhamburn people in their blogs are theirs and theirs alone. they do not represent the thoughts of the company as a whole or our clients. If you have a comment to make on any blog, please email info@morhamburn.com and we’ll put the printable ones up on the website]