Given (to recapitulate Part I) that none of the currently significant political parties in the UK appears to be capable of dealing with the our extended national crisis, our mission was to research all parties that existed on the Electoral Commission, weed out some categories as irrelevant and prepare short lists of possible candidates for replacements of either the Tory Party or the Labour Party or both without allowing their current equally second-rate rivals (Green, Liberal Democrat, SNP) to displace them. The alternatives had to meet certain fairly loose policy criteria (see Part I) and be at least theoretically capable of sufficient organisation to make a difference.
For convenience, I repeat that I excluded: a) local resident-based parties (although the Independent Network may be included under 3. Process-Driven Parties below), b) all trivial or one person parties despite the temptation to consider the late Count Binface possibly more useful to the nation than most MPs, c) single issue parties with four exceptions for their gadfly possibilities, d) parties of the liberal left clearly committed to unravelling Brexit and falling into the open maw of mindless pro-NATO positions (which excludes nearly all Green and middle class graduate centre-left operations), e) essentialist right-wing parties that believe in the mythology of the Christian West, were Christian nationalist or white supremacist or were obsessed with cultural politics at the expense of socio-economic reality. Interestingly this latter sort of nonsense can be found deep within the Tory Party which has elements that are more Far Right than some organisations generally regarded as Far Right - of which more may be said later in the series.
This left us with four large categories worth further investigation in order to eliminate more operations as well as allowing us to give honourable mentions to some single issue gadflies. Four
or five single issue parties are likely to be noted but
without any expectations that they will be more than change some
attitudes in other parties over time. The four main categories are:
1. Around nine broadly centre-right challengers to the Tory status quo which look as if they may meet the policy challenges of the day (I have included the Social Democrat Party in this Group although it might class itself as centre-left and as a challenge to the Labour status quo). The other most noticeable name on the list is Reform UK but this is in the query basket because under Richard Tice it has appeared (so far) to be more concerned with attracting Johnsonite Tories (precisely the worst sort of people as far as the national interest is concerned given the abysmal failures of his administration) whereas Nigel Farage had been able to maintain a much stronger independent challenge to the establishment Tory Party. The very recent resignation of Boris Johnson from Parliament suggests a very serious risk that the chances of a dynamic challenge to the existing system from the democratic alternative Right could be weakened in the effort to win his populist vote by mimicking his policies and attitudes. We will deal with that later.
2. You may be surprised to find that I am looking at six allegedly Far Right parties even though I would guess nearly all will be counted out eventually for 'essentialism' about the nation, Christianity or race. This is because, while I could easily exclude most Far Right organisations for the reasons already suggested, my research suggested a) some of these groupings had some interesting ideas that should not be dismissed outright simply because the liberal mainstream media had decided to traduce them, b) the term Far Right is imposed on some of them (and centre-right challengers) as a political warfare operation by liberals and should be resisted as manipulative and, in some cases, false and c) what was an unacceptable organisation some thirty or forty years ago may have transformed significantly (evolved) in the meantime. I doubt whether any will survive the final cut but they should be given the chance. I found far more 'evolution' (from essentialism to populism) on the Far Right than the Far Left, much of which seems to have ossified somewhere around 1989.
3. We have a third group of seven process-driven operations who seem to have no policies other than democratic transformation. I am deeply suspicious of some of these as stalking horses for left-liberalism but my greatest doubt lies in the belief that piddling around with democratic processes (other than proportional representation) will solve anything fundamental or deal with the crisis of our time which is the manipulation of minds by centres of socio-economic power and the need for political organisations that are committed to clear policies that can be explained to voters and gain their assent under conditions of full information. Nevertheless this curious liberal phenomenon of believing in process requires further investigation and may (if its policies were more intelligent) change one day the prospects for at least one of the failed mainstream parties which sometimes does have determinable policies beyond its slavish adherence to European federalism - the Liberal Democrats. As it things stand, either I will sweep away this group after closer study or produce an analysis with links so that the 'political engineers' amongst my readers who still believe that process is what politics is all about can come to a view.
4. The largest group is the most unstable. It compromises 12 separate Left and Far Left organisations, In policy terms, it is probably the group with which I have most intellectual and emotional sympathy. However, a) half of these seem to be groupuscules trapped in ancient ideology and b) those that are not have a tendency to drift into the worst sort of liberal leftism as they grow and as graduate middle class activist engagement and influence increase. I would hope to whittle these down to perhaps two or three that look most likely to be both the most adaptive to socio-economic and political reality and the least likely to become the play thing of the usual suspects in the petty graduatocracy that is at the heart of the run-down of the nation. The internationalism of this group is no problem insofar as its ideal remains inter-nationalism and is cast in terms of co-operating nation states against imperialism and against process-driven liberal federalisms. This must also require some analysis of the role of the disenfranchised Corbynistas who are as dangerous in their potential to neuter the Left as the Johnson populists are on the Right. If anything is likely to endorse the power of the failed Centre in the eyes of an exhausted and demoralised public, it is the emergence of graduate left wing activists and petit-bourgeois Tories as the leading representatives of an alternative politics.
The next stage is to separate out these categories, analyse each and report on them separately. The final short list will be drawn from those that survive this process.
