Is the UK (still) a two party system?

Well...
Lets take a look at our political parties other than the big 2.

Lib Dems- Already irrelevant.
UKIP- Currently being sucking into the black hole of irrelevancy.
Greens- They only get one seat.
SNP- They can only get seats in scotland.
Plaid Cymru- They can only get seats in Wales.
DUP and UUP- Eh
Sinn Fein- They never turn up in parliment.
Women's Equality Party- lol, who the **** are they?

And thats pretty much it. At the moment, it is pretty much a two party system with other parties making some impact.

We have a two party system in terms of winning the election outright. However, it is likely that the main parties will still need to work with a smaller party to get a majority. So they are relevent In that sense.

Yes and no. I don't think Labour or the Conservatives have widespread public support that matches their vote totals/seat shares. I think the FPTP system we have forces voters to choose the lesser of two evils, which means that smaller parties may have greater public support, but much less representation. I mean, UKIP won 12% of the vote in 2015 and only got 1 seat. UKIP voters learned from 2015 that our current system means it's pretty much pointless to vote for anyone other than Labour or the Tories.

Yes and no. I don't think Labour or the Conservatives have widespread public support that matches their vote totals/seat shares. I think the FPTP system we have forces voters to choose the lesser of two evils, which means that smaller parties may have greater public support, but much less representation. I mean, UKIP won 12% of the vote in 2015 and only got 1 seat. UKIP voters learned from 2015 that our current system means it's pretty much pointless to vote for anyone other than Labour or the Tories.

Hi. You’re right about UKIP. I think the reason their vote share was high compared to seat count has because their votes were spread across the country. They came second in many safe seats which puts up the vote share, but not the seats, I think you are also right about FPTP.

Yeah, I'm an ardent supporter of PR. I'm not a UKIP supporter by any means at all, but the 12% that voted for them in 2015 deserved equal representation in Parliament. Hopefully Farage will make electoral reform his next project after Brexit haha

for as long as the first past the post voting system is in check, it'll probs remain a two party system.

There is a bigger party than any of those mentioned, and that is the large number of people in this country who have no party that really represents their views.

Interesting. I can see the arguements for PR.

Also uninteresting fact of the day. In 2011 we had a referendum on whether to replace FPTP with AV (where you rank candidates). With prime Minsiter David Cameron being opposed to this. However AV was the system used to elect the Conservative leader at their last leadership election (in 2005) had they used FPTP, Cameron would have lost to David Davis. So Cameron was fighting for a voting system in which he wouldn’t have been party leader...



I don’t know why I told that story.

Well as far as Westminster is concerned for general elections we are a two-party system on a national scale as the conservatives and labour have obtain power predominantly trough the current century, however nationally the figure is different, the SNP dominates Scotland with the the conservatives and labour in opposition, as for local politics there’s a more diverse range of political party occupation so in theory locally there is a multi party system locally such as Dudley council, the Conservative party run the administration with UKIP councillors as a coalition