This content provides a comprehensive overview of political parties and their funding in the UK, focusing on the sources, debates, and potential reforms, particularly state funding, relevant for A-level politics students.
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hi my name's Ollie and in this politics
explained video I'm going to give you an
introduction to political parties and go
through everything you need to know
about party funding in a level politics
so that's not just all the knowledge and
some key examples you need to know but
also key points of analysis and the key
questions that you could get asked so
that you can be properly prepared for
the exam so I'm going to start by going
through an introduction to political
parties and party systems looking at
what political parties are an
introduction to the political spectrum
and what types of different political
parties there are looking at major and
minor parties from there I'm going to go
and look at party funding looking at um
the key kind of sources of party funding
currently and how parties are currently
funded in the UK looking at membership
subscriptions trade unions and donations
Public Funding is key ones and from that
I'm going to look at some debates and
issues in relation to party funding
um including a number of scandals in
relation to party funding that you can
use as examples in your essays and then
finally I'm going to look at the debate
over estate funding of political parties
and the arguments on either side for
whether there should be State funding of
political parties so yeah um the PDF
that you should be seeing up there you
can find it on the politics explained
website in the first link in the
description where you can also find lots
of resources to help you in a level
politics including essay plans um essays
everything you need to know guides
um as well as a place to sign up for
tutoring if that's something you'd be
interested in so yeah without further
so starting off with the kind of key questions
questions
um you could get asked in key debates so
in terms of the introduction to
political parties and party systems you
can't really get a question asked just
on that
um if you look at another video on the
post it's explained a YouTube channel on
minor parties the lib Dems and kind of
debates over a multi-party system
um in there these kind of themes can
come up a little bit but you can't get a
question just on this where you can get
questions is on party funding and
there's effectively only one key
question you could get really up you
could really get it can be
um phrased in different ways but if you
plan kind of one of those two questions
on evaluate the view that political
parties should be state funded or
evaluate the view that from the funding
of political parties in the UK should be
reformed if you make a kind of really
detailed essay plan on one of those and
revise from that you should be very well
prepared for the exam so that's kind of
the real key type of question you could
get asked
so yeah starting off with an
introduction to political parties and
party systems so starting off with what
are political parties and how are they
distinct from pressure groups so a
political party is a group of people
Drawn Together by a broad ideology
um even if they don't have completely
identical views and they aspire to form
a government and enact a range of policy
commitments through standing in
elections and kind of setting out
manifestos some parties such as ukip are
mainly folks around distinguish you but
they normally develop a broader set of
policies to grow their supporter base as
well will have a Manifesto which covers
um almost everything in in politics in
case they get elected
pressure groups crucially aren't the
same as parties they often represent a
particular sexual group or interest
um there's a video on policy explained
YouTube channel on pressure groups if
you're interested
um this kind of key part of the course
and pressure groups trying to influence
parties and politics but crucially they
don't enter their own candidate certain
elections and that's what makes parties different
different
so what key roles the parties play
there's kind of five key functions or
roles of political parties the first one
is that they represent the views of the
people with a certain set of common
beliefs and therefore play a really key
um Democratic role the second one is
that they encourage political
participation among the public through
encouraging voting
um joining parties kind of parties up
big big memberships supporting them
through funding and spreading the message
message
um a third one is that parties crucially
recruit uh future politicians and
leaders and can be really important
um in kind of governing the country and
kind of having future potential
um in the labor party
and kind of party develop candidates
through the political skills they learn
as campaigners so in terms of kind of
Future Leaders of parties often come up
from the Grassroots of the party
um and Having learned a lot um
um
so parties also formulate policies to
deliver on the ideas they stand for and
that's as I said they in elections these
all come together in a big Manifesto
which voters can look at and decide okay
is this the right party for me and the
final one um kind of role of parties is
foreign governments so parties who stand
in elections provide government and run
the country if they're successful so
they kind of control parliamentary
business with the aim of implementing
the policies in their manifestos so they
set our manifestos
um and once selected they're supposed to
opposed to enactment
so that's the introduction to political
parties what I've got now is looking at
the political Spectrum so what is the
political Spectrum the political
spectrum is a way of measuring and
describing the overall policy positions
of different political parties so
different parties adopt different parts
of the political spectrums whether
that's left right authoritarian
um libertarian and therefore offer
voters a wide range of choice elections
based on which part of the political
Spectrum the voters find themselves at
um and which kind of policy positions
they support traditionally the key
division between labor and the Tory
party was on the Left Right Dimension so
labor was left-wing and the conservative
party was right with and it's still very
much the case the labor labor and more
left-wing and the conservatives
um are more right-wing but in the 2019
election the conservative party kind of
economically so the left right Dimension
is very much
um well largely in terms of economics
the Tory party shifted quite
significantly to the center in terms of
economics kind of pledging to end
austerity and spend quite a bit more
kind of discussion kind of leveling up rhetoric
rhetoric
um and they were able to gain a lot of
Voters through kind of more cultural
politics rather than traditional Left
Right politics so kind of brexit and
other cultural issues so though I think
it is still very much true that the
political Spectrum in the UK is still
left right and it's still labor on the
left and the conservatives on the right
it is becoming a little bit more
complicated that can than that compared
to how it maybe was
um in the post-world War II period
so looking at what kind of left-wing
parties are some key principles of them
is that they desire change reform and an
alteration to the way that Society
operates so that often
um in favor of big government and a
large welfare state so high taxes
um High public spending
in order to really kind of change
society and improve Society especially
through tackling um inequality
they um kind of at one end of it they
they really include socialists who are
critical of capitalism and a free market
economics they have tended in history to
be on the kind of right side of social
issues as well so that's not writers in
right wing um but on the kind of correct
side of social issues in relation to
issues such as
um gay marriage
in terms of right-wing parties
um they're more um supportive of
conserving the status quo and supporting
kind of little or no change so
maintaining Society largely as it is
currently they stress the importance of
order stability hierarchy and private
property so they're all big supports of
capitalism and they're broadly more in
favor of smaller government
um individualism and self-determination
so that's lower taxes and lower public
spending so kind of less of an attempt
to really change society
um and less of attempt to really tackle
inequality within Society
in terms of the different types of
political parties
um you can kind of split this into two
types of obviously more more ways you
could break this down but you can in the
UK you can broadly split it up into
mainstream or major political parties
and then minor or minority political
parties so major or mainstream parties
are parties that run candidates in all
constituencies develop policies in all
areas of policy and have realistic
attempts at forming a government so it's
normally just conservatives the
conservatives and the labor party
there's definitely a period
um kind of in the early 2000s um and
especially looking at the 2010 election
where you could argue the lib Dems were
in that category as well but it's mainly
laboring the conservative party you have
a realistic chance of forming a government
government
um but kind of since the 2015 election
the lib stems um support has really dropped
dropped
um and I wouldn't argue that they are
any longer a major political part
in terms of minority parties these
parties also stand candidates at
elections of very little chance of
winning elections themselves they may be
able to enter um government as a minor
partner in a coalition or in a kind of
confidence and Supply agreement as the
dup did with the conservative party in
2017 and some of these parties such as
ukip or the green party stand candidates
in the vast majority of constituencies
they still have a large number of
candidates but some of them are only
stand candidates and constituencies in a
certain part of the UK so such as the
dup the Democratic unionist party who
only stand candidates in Northern
Ireland kind of you can break these
minor parties down into a couple of
different types so some many of them are
nationalist parties such as the SMP
applied kumru Shin Fein who only stand
candidates in a part of the UK and
campaign for the independence or
self-rule of that part of the UK whilst
a lot of these minor parties um are also
single issue parties such as the green
party ukip and the brexit party we're
really mainly focused on campaigning for
only one kind of particular issue policy
area or cause
these parties can can be seen as very
similar to pressure groups as they have
very little chance of really getting
into government and effectively could be
described as pressure groups that use
the electoral process
um to seek to achieve and draw attention
to their aims so that'll be covered more
in the final video on the political
parties topic on the politics explained
YouTube channel um kind of the lib Dems
and like kind of the importance of minor
parties in the UK so look at that if you
want to kind of you could bring in that
perspective to those essays potentially
so yeah that's everything in terms of an
introduction to political parties what
I'm now going to go into is kind of the
main part of the video and the kind of
key kind of part of the course that you
could get asked a question on and that's
so starting off with party with party
funding why do political parties need um
funding ultimately political parties use
funding in order to carry out a number
of their key functions such as fighting
elections they spend money on
advertising and campaigning holding
party conferences which are really
expensive carrying out research and
develop developing policies and
manifestos and key to this is ultimately
employing special advisors and having a
lot of stuff so a lot of funding just
goes to employing members of staff to
help develop policies to help run party
conferences to help kind of develop
strategies to fight elections
in 2021 the top five total incomes of
political parties in the UK were as
follows so the labor party gets the most
funding at 45 million the conservative
party gets the second most at 31 32
million bear in mind these kind of
levels of funding especially for the two
main parties do go up significantly in
election years and aren't kind of stable
especially for the conservative party
where it's quite dependent on donations
it is quite variable
um so that at some points they may be a
lot closer to labor and then from there
you have a big drop off to the minor
parties the rest of the party so the lib
Dems have an 86 million pounds um in
funding the SNP around four and a half
million and the green party
um have around 3 million
so now we're going to look at kind of
where this funding comes from right so
how are parties currently funded the
first key type of funding is through
membership subscriptions so members of
political parties pay monthly membership subscriptions
