The most interesting small political parties in the 2024 UK general election
A selection of smaller and lesser-known parties contesting the election.
A million billion years ago (OK, it was actually only 2015), I wrote a brief guide to some of the weirdest, wildest and wackiest parties running in the UK general election.
This coming election is an odd one, where a Labour victory seems pre-ordained and the main discussion is whether it will be ‘only’ a landslide or a complete wipeout of the Conservative Party. I was one of a group of commentators that wrote about this back in early 2023 and I STILL don’t think it’s quite begun to sink in what happens if the Tories drop below 100 seats.
But I thought we could still use a little comic relief.
The parties contesting the 2024 election, though, aren’t quite as whacky and funny as they were in 2015. There’s no Birthday Party, Roman Party, Children of the Atom or 3. Al-Zebabist Nation of OOOG. I’m not sure whether this is a reflection of the times, or perhaps a decision by unconventional candidates to go it alone as independents instead of forming parties.
Still, here’s my selection of interesting small parties standing candidates in the general election.
A Blue Revolution
This party claims to be an “organisation whose aim is to bring an end to party politics”. Though it doesn’t say so explicitly, it seems to be a Marxist party because it keeps citing Marx all the time in its manifesto and its analysis is thoroughly Marxist too. It also wants to ban whipping — the party political kind. I think.
The founder, candidate and possibly sole activist, Mike Gilbert, spoke to the Shropshire Star in 2017 about his policies:
Policies are based on the idea that “nothing is given or received unless it is contracted for, freely chosen and consented to” – for example, parents would be required to sign a contract committing to being responsible for the child they are having before birth.
No word on what happens if they refuse to sign.
The Confelicity party
Just one of many local-issue parties, this one is based in Southend. But it has such a lovely name.
Confelicity.
Confelicity is the opposite of schadenfreude; it’s taking delight in another’s happiness. And it’s feels good to say too, like a hug in your mouth.
Confelicity.
Count Binface Party
Count Binface is challenging Rishi Sunak in his constituency of Richmond and Northallerton.
There’s a convoluted history here. Originally, Lord Buckethead was a Darth Vader parody from a 1984 film “Hyperspace”. In the 1987 election, comedian Mike Lee ran against Margaret Thatcher as Lord Buckethead. He did the same against John Major in 1992.
Jonathan Harvey revived Lord Buckethead in 2017 to fight Theresa May, but unlike Lee, he didn’t have the rights to the character and was forced to reinvent himself as the new, improved Count Binface in 2019 where he contested Boris Johnson’s seat.
(The rights-holders to Lord Buckethead allowed someone else to wear the bucket that year as a Monster Raving Loony candidate, resulting in both Binhead and Bucketface standing in Uxbridge. Boris won).
Binface’s policies include reintroducing Ceefax, inviting European countries to join the UK rather than the other way round, price-capped croissants and mandatory national service for former prime ministers.
The English Constitution Party
This outfit, which is standing four candidates, is an English nationalist campaign group whose leader is known as “Daddy Dragon”, a former QAnon promoter who’s recently taken to ranting about Jews and Jesuits on Twittert.
His party are sovereign citizen types who believe an independent England would restore ‘common law’ and make everyone immune from taxes, and they’re best known for trying to disrupt the coronation of Charles III with eggs and whistles.
The Fairer Voting Party
A one-man show promoting an, erm, eclectic idea of electoral reform: the top two candidates in each constituency should both become MPs, and their Commons votes will be weighted proportionally to the number of actual votes they received. Also there will be mandatory ‘independents’ elected, somehow. This is supposed to Fix Everything. Hmm.
The Freedom Alliance
A party born out of opposing COVID restrictions, their manifesto is a dully familiar list of global control conspiracy theories. They’re against 15 minute cities, central bank digital currencies, the Great Reset, Net Zero, ULEZ, social credit scores and so on.
Their strongest asset: a really good logo. See how it combines the letters F and A into a dove with an olive branch? A bit of a waste, really.
New Open Non-Political Organised Leadership (NONPOL)
A lot of these small parties are ‘anti-politics’ and this one puts it right in the title. But they also have a pretty broad manifesto that, while hard to characterise, is certainly ‘political’ and fits more comfortably on the Right of the political spectrum. They want to leave NATO, dump Ukraine, make the tax system regressive, make prisons into labour camps, scrap Net Zero… but they also say climate change is catastrophic, just inevitable so why waste time fighting it. Instead we should all flee to space. Quickly.
Psychedelic Movement
With four candidates standing in the 2024 election, the Psychedelic Movement wants to legalise psychedelic drugs, of course. It also wants to incorporate them into Church ceremonies.
But there’s a surprising right-wing streak in the party’s manifesto, too. Their Southend candidate wants to “bring back exile” as a punishment and in the 2022 by-election caused by the murder of David Amess MP, their materials had a strong anti-Islam bent, praising Tommy Robinson and Hatun Tash and they seem to use the racist Gab platform as their main social media. Not, perhaps, quite the Peace and Love you’d expect from the party of LSD and shrooms.
Rejoin EU
This party wants to (wait for it….) rejoin the European Union. There are 26 Rejoin EU candidates standing in the 2024 election, mostly in London constituencies, making them one of the larger ‘small’ parties. Only three of their 26 candidates are women, though.
Save Us Now
Are you mostly worried about 5G mobile networks killing us all? if so, you’re probably a conspiracy theorist and generally wracked with worry about the modern world. But at least there’s a political party just for you! Save Us Now (SUN, geddit?) is a one-man party run by Mark Steele, who believes that mobile phone networks are part of some nefarious plot to microwave us all. Of course, he also thinks 5G caused Covid and that vaccines are 5G boosters or transmitters or something.
The Common People
The website of the Common People party declares that they are “seeking to form a majority Westminster government”. Well, that’s going to be tough because they’re only standing in one constituency, St Ives.
They say they believe in a rehabilitation-focused justice system, nationalising utilities, scrapping almost all “multicellular” farming and replacing it with algae farms, and giving votes to 12-year-olds.
Anyway, I’d have been a lot less confused about this party if I’d started with their election flyer, where the candidate wears his hammer-and-sickle beret. Now I get it.
The Mitre TW9
This party sounds like the name and address of a pub, and that’s because it is the name and address of a pub. The Mitre is in Richmond, and its owner Chris French is standing in Richmond Park as a publicity stunt for his business.
Mr French told the Press Association:
“…about 12 months ago, I stumbled across that if I actually registered to run in the election, I would actually get the free advertising on 77,000 ballot papers”.
The Yoruba Party in the UK
Founded by Olusola Oni, the Yoruba Party supports the Yoruban separatist movement in Nigeria. Oni wrote that he was trying to imitate the model and success of the UK Independence Party:
“YorubExit, like Brexit, is all about sovereignty. The question is how we Yoruba could play this sovereignty card, and make the people of Britain support Yoruba sovereignty. To achieve this requires that the Yoruba have a direct political voice at Westminster.”
Good luck with that.
The True and Fair Party
Remember Gina Miller of Miller and Miller 2 fame? Her first legal action against the UK government forced a parliamentary vote to trigger the Article 50 process that took the UK out of the EU, and her second undid the prorogation of Parliament by Boris Johnson. True and Fair is her party, and I have to say they have lovely branding and a pretty logo.
Politically, True and Fair wants to “fix our broken politics”, do some positive stuff on climate, and rejoin the EU. Mostly, I’m not sure why they aren’t just part of the LibDems.
UK Voice
Nope, not the talent show. This is a one-man party contesting SW Herts, with a dry and technocratic manifesto. The most important question I have is: does Pipaliya Ketankumar, the candidate, had a mustache or not?
The official election materials are contradictory on this important question.
Their logo is a map of the UK, coloured in a Union Jack, holding an umbrella while speaking into an old-time radio microphone. So yeah.
Volt UK
Set up as the British branch of the European federalist Volt Europa party, Volt UK ran a joint slate with Rejoin EU (see above) for the London Assembly election back in May, keeping their deposits with 2.5% of the vote.
The only real policies on their website are rejoining the EU and rejoining all of the other stuff around the EU, like Erasmus and Euratom.
Also their main colour is purple, which is all a bit UKIP.
AI Steve
Finally, an honourable mention for AI Steve, the avatar of Steve Endacott, who’s standing in Brighton Pavillion. Endacott promises, if elected, to vote in accordance with what AI Steve tells him to do.
You can go to the website and talk to “AI Steve”, which uses a large language model, voice recognition and voice-to-text to create a very natural sounding person. But it was only one question in that it started making stuff up, as you can see above. ChatGPT was not developed by Meta AI. I also asked about its voice and it said it doesn’t have a voice, because the text model doesn’t know about the voice-to-text service.
It’s a cute stunt, but neither Steve registered a political party so it doesn’t really belong on this list.
Polling day is in just over two weeks. None of the candidates on this list will win, of course, and most of them won’t even get enough votes to save their deposits. But there’s something of the carnival about these hopeless parties, some silly, some very serious, giving it a go.