Research on small parties has found that there are two main issues facing small parties in all parliaments: a lack of resources and a lack of visibility. Resource problems can be seen in parties’ finances – poor electoral performance manifests itself in fewer donations from big business or wealthy individuals (see the latest donation figures reported to the Electoral Commission and how donations to the smaller parties are dwarfed by those to Labour and the Conservatives). It also brings a smaller ‘short money’ grant (the public funding given to opposition parties to enable them to scrutinise the government properly in parliament). Poor visibility can be the result of chamber design (with no designated despatch box from which to speak), procedural rules which privilege the larger parties in terms of guaranteed, full-length speeches and outside observers, particularly the media, who have little appetite to hear arguments made in parliament beyond those by the largest two or three parties. The party says on its own website that you probably won’t hear about the work of its MPs on the ten o’clock news.
Davey’s parliamentary leadership so far demonstrates this well. He waited nearly three weeks to make his Commons debut as leader, making a short, three-minute speech during the Second Reading of the controversial Internal Market Bill, waiting for over three hours in the Commons in order to do so. The same week he was called at Prime Minister’s Questions, pressing Boris Johnson for reassurances around care for disabled people during coronavirus restrictions, but he had not been called at all on the previous two Wednesdays.
blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/libdems-parliamentary-impact/
