Volume Two The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Norther(8)

The political parties

Three major national parties: the Conservative party and the Labour party are the two biggest, and any general election is really about which of those two is going to govern. The third important party is the Liberal Democrats.(Zhu, 47)

The Conservative party: one of the two biggest parties in the UK. It is basically the party of the individual, protecting the individual’s right to acquire wealth and spend it as he/she wants. It advocates economic policies which are favorable to businessmen, such as low taxes. From 1979 to 1997, the Conservative party won 4 consecutive elections and was in power for quite a long period of time.

The Labour party: one of the two biggest parties in the UK. It is also the newest party, created by the trade union

movement at the end of the 19 century. It is a socialist party, believing that a society should be relatively equal in economic terms, and that the government should redistribute the wealth between the rich and the poor. It also thinks that the government should provide a range of public services for all the people.

The Liberal Democrats: the third biggest party and often seen as a party of the “middle”, occupying the ideological ground between the two major parties. They are comparatively flexible and pragmatic in their balance of the individual and the social. They emphasize the need to change the Britain’s constitutional arrangements to make the government more democratic and accountable.（负有责任的，有说明义务的）

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Margaret Thatcher: she came into power as Britain’s Prime Minister in 1979 when her Conservative party won the general elections. She advocated the idea of small government （政府少参与） and free-market economics. During her term as the Prime Minister, she carried out policies to privatize the nationalized industry and to cut tax rates. As a result, many businesses boomed but unemployment rate increased. Basic traditional values about human relations were damaged and selfishness ran rampant. To gain wealth and to seek pleasure became the only goal of life. The so called “permissive society” conception even spread among government officials. She was later replaced by John Major in 1990.

John Major: the leader of the

Conservative party and is the ex-Prime Minister of the UK. In 1990, he was elected the leader of the Conservative party, replacing Mrs Thatcher. After he came into power, he has continued to carry out Thatcher’s policies but in a milder way. He launched his “Back to Basics” campaign for higher moral standards.

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