Protest parties will rise but not threaten two party rule

British politics has a long tradition of protest parties who voters have supported as a way of sending a message to the two major political parties without fear of putting them into power. In 2005 the Liberal Democrats received a surge in votes for their anti-Iraq War stance^[1] and in 2010 received a sizeable portion of votes rewarding their opposition to university tuition fee rises.^[2] In 2015, the United Kingdom Independence Party and the Scottish Nationalist Party made record gains at the expense of the main parties.^[3] Even in 2019, the general election debate was shaped in part by the smaller parties and the Scottish Nationalists maintained their status as the largest party in Scotland. Despite the continued popularity of protest parties in British general elections, the UK's first past-the-post-electoral system deliberately favours the two main parties over inflating the amount of seats they receive relative to the percentage they achieve nationwide. Smaller protest parties, while benefitting from disillusionment with the major parties and popular backlash against single issues, often find their voters geographically dispersed. This makes it difficult to translate a high nationwide vote into parliamentary seats. Nowhere was this more evident than in the 2015 General Election when the United Kingdom Independence Party received over 3.8 million votes (amounting to 12.6 percentage of the vote nationally) but returned only one Member of Parliament. This compared to the Conservatives who won just 36.8% of the vote nationally in 2015 but returned over half of all the Members of Parliament.^[4]

[P1] The UK's first-past-the-post electoral system favours larger established parties. [P2] There will always be a rotating cast of protest parties responding to public opinion on prominent political issues of the day.