What is a “Progressive Alliance”?

With all the hype around the General Election in the UK, following the Tories big victories at the local elections, many people are crying out for a ‘Progressive Alliance’, but what exactly does that mean, and is it a good idea?

For those who don’t really pay much attention to politics, it can get very confusing especially in multi-party countries where politicians spend more time bad mouthing each other rather than actually talking about policies.

Overall political parties tend to fall into two categories:

Right Wing parties, who oppose socialism and social democracy. Right-wing parties include conservatives, Christian democrats, classical liberals, nationalists and, on the far right, racists and fascists.

Left Wing Parties, support social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy and social inequality

These days in British politics there are two major parties who fall into the right wing, the Conservatives and UKIP, while there are three on the left, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Green Party. Having been one of the driving forces behind Brexit, UKIP is now on the decline having completed their objective realistically leaving only one right wing party against three more left wing parties.

Surely one against three means the conservatives don’t stand a change right? Wrong. If you assume that only 30% of the country supports right wing politics all of their votes go to the conservative party as they have very little option, while the remaining 70% of the country splits their votes between the other three parties, giving them only 23.3% of the vote each. As such the right wing party wins the vote, despite reflecting the views of a smaller proportion of the country. Just taking figures from the local election for my district there were 1250 right wing votes against 1850 left wing votes, but because of the breakdown, the right wing party won.

It’s because of these facts that several people have called for a ‘Progressive Alliance’, basically a collaboration between the left wing parties to gain each party more seats in Parliament, and thus a louder voice in deciding the direction of the country. This is in theory great if you’re a left wing supporter as there are more voices to contend policies, and you can wind up with a fair split of left and right wing voices.

Sounds great if you’re a supporter of the left, so why isn’t it a foregone conclusion? At the end of the day the largest problem is basically politics. Each of the three parties not only wants to campaign for government, but also keep their supporters happy, and achieve slightly different goals than those of the other two. Also, there is concern that by stepping aside for another candidate they wind up making their party look weak, which in turn weakens their public image especially when the reigning government is preaching about being “Strong and Stable.”

Furthermore, a lot of people who stand for parliament are career politicians, and are looking to not only support their country but also earn a living. If your boss asked you to step aside for the next four years to allow someone else to take your role just to provide equal opportunities I’m sure you wouldn’t be too happy about it.

Overall, if you are a supporter of left wing politics at this moment in time a Progressive Alliance is good for you, trying to offer a fairer representation by removing the number of choices to vote. Of course it does also run the risk that those whose political thoughts lay in the middle turning to the right wing rather than the left if their usual first choice is removed.

With just under a month now until the elections, time will tell which way the major parties fall.