After nearly becoming extinct in the 1940s and 50s, the Liberal Party revived its fortunes somewhat under the leadership of Jo Grimond in the 1960s, by positioning itself as a radical centrist non-socialist alternative to the Conservative and Labour Party governments of the time.

There was much speculation and fear about the prospect of a Labour government, and comparatively little about a Liberal government, even though it could have plausibly presented an experienced team of ministers compared to Labour's almost complete lack of experience, as well as offering a middle ground that could get support from both Conservatives and Labour in crucial Commons divisions.

But instead of trying to force the opportunity to form a Liberal government, Asquith decided instead to allow Labour the chance of office in the belief that they would prove incompetent and this would set the stage for a revival of Liberal fortunes at Labour's expense.

Share of the vote received by Conservatives ( blue ), Whigs / Liberals / Liberal Democrats ( orange ), Labour ( red ) and others ( grey ) in general elections since 1832.

Ramsay MacDonald was forced into a snap election in 1924, and although his government was defeated, he achieved his objective of virtually wiping the Liberals out as many more radical voters now moved to Labour whilst moderate middle-class Liberal voters concerned about socialism moved to the Conservatives.

( Several Labour ministers of later generations, such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn, were the sons of Liberal MPs.

Lloyd George offered a degree of support to the Labour government in the hope of winning concessions, including a degree of electoral reform to introduce the alternative vote, but this support was to prove bitterly divisive as the Liberals increasingly divided between those seeking to gain what Liberal goals they could achieve, those who preferred a Conservative government to a Labour one and vice-versa.

Over the next ten years there would be further defections as MPs deserted to either the Liberal Nationals or Labour.

With many traditional domestic Liberal policies now regarded as irrelevant, he focused the party on opposition to both the rise of Fascism in Europe and the appeasement foreign policy of the British government, arguing that intervention was needed, in contrast to the Labour calls for pacifism.

In 1957 this total fell to five when one of the Liberal MPs died and the subsequent by-election was lost to the Labour Party, which selected the former Liberal Deputy Leader Lady Megan Lloyd George as its own candidate.

The agreement lasted from 1977 to 1978, but proved mostly fruitless, for two reasons: the Liberals ' key demand of proportional representation was rejected by most Labour MPs, whilst the contacts between Liberal spokespersons and Labour ministers often proved detrimental, such as between finance spokesperson John Pardoe and Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, who were mutually antagonistic.

The King, senior Anglican bishops, MPs from the Liberal and Labour parties, Oswald Mosley, Jan Smuts, the Trades Union Congress and parts of the press were increasingly critical of the actions of the Black and Tans.

His greatest achievement, surpassing many of these, was, perhaps, the establishment of a political and economic consensus about the governance of Britain that all parties, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal subscribed to for three decades, fixing the arena of political discourse until the later 1970s.

However, in the run-up to the 1997 general election, Labour opposition Tony Blair was in talks with Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown about forming a coalition government if Labour failed to win a majority at the election ; however there was never any need for a coalition to be formed as Labour won the election by a landslide.

The 2010 general election resulted in a hung parliament ( Britain's first for 36 years ), following which the Conservatives ( led by David Cameron ), which had won the largest number of seats, formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in order to gain a parliamentary majority, ending 13 years of Labour government.

It was also the first full coalition in Britain since 1945, having been formed 70 years virtually to the day after the establishment of Winston Churchill's wartime coalition, although there had been the " Lib-Lab pact ", an agreement stopping short of a full coalition between the Labour and Liberal parties, from March 1977 until July 1978, when a series of by-election defeats had eroded Labour's majority of three seats which had been gained at the October 1974 election.

When elections were held to the newly created Scottish Parliament in 1999, as leader of the Scottish Labour Party and through a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Dewar became the inaugural holder of the First Minister of Scotland post.

Here, he met his close friend, John Smith ( who would later become leader of the Labour Party ), Sir Menzies Campbell ( who would later become leader of the Liberal Democrats ) and Lord Irvine of Lairg ( who would serve as Lord Chancellor in the same cabinet as Dewar ) through the Dialectic Society.

The ALP was founded as a federal party prior to the first sitting of the Australian Parliament in 1901, but is descended from Labour parties founded in the various Australian colonies by the emerging labour movement in Australia, formally beginning in 1891.

Colonial Labour parties contested seats from 1891, and federal seats following the Federation at the 1901 federal election.

Further, they opposed the creation of an electoral college to elect the leader of the Party, who had previously been elected by members of the Parliamentary Labour Party – in particular, the arrangement of block voting by constituency parties and trade unions, with the total votes of a constituency party or trade union being given to a candidate based on a first-past-the-post within that CLP or union, or changed at the discretion of delegates ( similar to primary elections in the United States ).

* In November 2007, it emerged that more than £ 400, 000 had been accepted by the Labour Party from one person through a series of third parties, causing the Electoral Commission to seek an explanation.

All major parties were committed to this aim, but perhaps Attlee and Labour were seen by the electorate as the best candidates to follow it through.

Irish coalition governments have traditionally been based on one of two large blocs in Dáil Éireann: either Fianna Fáil in coalition with smaller parties or independents, or Fine Gael and the Labour Party in coalition, sometimes with smaller parties.

The Government of the 31st Dáil, though a traditional Fine Gael – Labour coalition, resembles a grand coalition, due to the collapse of Fianna Fáil to third place among parties in Dáil Éireann.

Apart from this, when no party has had a majority, minority governments normally have been formed with one or more opposition parties agreeing to vote for the legislation governments need to function, as the Labour government of James Callaghan formed a coalition with the Liberals in 1977 when it lost its narrow majority gained at the October 1974 election.

With Saville and others, he set up the New Reasoner, a journal that sought to develop a democratic socialist alternative to what its editors considered the ossified official Marxism of the Communist and Trotskyist parties and the managerialist cold war social democracy of the Labour Party and its international allies.

In that election five regionalist parties got seats: the Social Democratic and Labour Party ( SDLP ) of Northern Ireland, the Scottish National Party ( SNP ), the Flemish People's Union ( VU ), the Walloon Democratic Front of Francophones ( FDF ) and the South Tyrolean People's Party ( SVP ).

Under the banner of Christian Social Party, he later on established a one-party dictatorship rule largely modeled after fascism in Italy, banning all other Austrian parties including the Social Democratic Labour Party ( SDAPÖ ).

Aiming to carry out the parties proposals through a series of constitutional referendums, the proposals were echoed by Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, when he proposed his own constitutional crusade at his 2010 party conference, shortly after.

Fianna Fáil has led governments including parties of the centre-left ( Labour and the Green Party ) and of the centre-right ( the now-defunct Progressive Democrats ) and is often seen as a pragmatic party of the establishment.

" Having witnessed the success of the anarcho-syndicalist communities, for example in Anarchist Catalonia, and the subsequent brutal suppression of the anarcho-syndicalists, anti-Stalin communist parties and revolutionaries by the Soviet Union-backed Communists, Orwell returned from Catalonia a staunch anti-Stalinist and joined the Independent Labour Party, his card being issued on 13 June 1938.

Although it was not legally recognized until 1982, the CGT was originally formed in 1970 by the Christian Democrats and received external support from the World Confederation of Labour ( WCL ) and the Latin American Workers Central ( Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores — CLAT ), a regional organization supported by Christian Democratic parties.

The Labour Party, historically the state's third political party has only ever been in power when in coalition with either of the two main parties.

Eventually effective political organisation for working people was achieved through the trades unions who, after the extensions of the franchise in 1867 and 1885, began to support socialist political parties that later merged to became the British Labour Party.

* 1952 – The Pan-Malayan Labour Party is founded in Malaya, as a union of statewise labour parties.

To this end they may pursue campaigns, undertake lobbying, or financially support individual candidates or parties ( such as the Labour Party in Britain ) for public office.

* Labour Party, political parties named after the labour movement.

Two parties have dominated Malta's polarized and evenly-divided politics during this period: the Partit Nazzjonalista ( Nationalist Party ) and the Partit Laburista ( Labour Party ).

This approach stood in contrast to the Labour Party's seemingly slicker campaign and it chimed with the electorate, along with hard-hitting negative campaign advertising focusing on the issue of Labour's approach to taxation.

Although Tim Smith stepped down from the House of Commons at the 1997 General Election, both Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken sought re-election for their seats, and were both defeated, in Hamilton's case by the former BBC Reporter Martin Bell, who stood as an anti-sleaze candidate, both the Labour and LibDem candidates withdrawing in his favour, amidst further publicity unfavourable to the Conservatives.

This stood in contrast to the British experience, where moderate New Model Unions dominated the union movement from the mid-19th century and where trade unionism was stronger than the political labour movement until the formation and growth of the Labour Party in the early years of the 20th century.

" Foot joined the Labour Party and first stood for parliament at the age of 22 in the 1935 general election, when he contested Monmouth.

In the following May 2010 UK general election, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, launched in January 2010 and backed by Bob Crow, the leader of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union ( RMT ), other union leaders and the Socialist Party among other socialist groups, stood against Labour in 40 constituencies.

In reaction, Livingstone stood as an independent candidate, resulting in his expulsion from the Labour Party and in March 2000, was elected as Mayor of London.

When Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, won the 1979 general election defeating the incumbent Labour Party led by James Callaghan, Britain had endured several years of severe inflation, which was rarely below 10 % and by the time of the election in May 1979 stood at 10. 3 %.

His second son Hilary was a councillor in London, and stood for Parliament in 1983 and 1987, becoming the Labour MP for Leeds Central in 1999.

On 1 November 1950, he was unexpectedly selected to succeed Sir Stafford Cripps as the Labour candidate for Bristol South East, after Cripps stood down because of ill-health.

In 1981, he stood against incumbent Denis Healey for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, disregarding the appeal from Michael Foot to either stand for the leadership or abstain from inflaming the party's divisions.

She stood for Parliament as Labour candidate for Cheltenham in the 1950 general election.

Only Sinn Féin, the party that stood to gain most from the proposal, supported it, while the more moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party ( SDLP ) described it as a step forward.

In the 1935 General Election, he stood for Chatham as the Labour candidate, but was defeated by the Conservative Leonard Plugge.

After Barbara had left home Annie stood for elections, and served as a Labour councillor, a role which she kept quite secret from even her close family.

She organised mock elections at the school, in which she stood as the Labour candidate.

Supporters of the Irish Labour Party stood aside to allow the constitutional situation to run its course.

When Martin Bell, a well-known BBC war correspondent, announced he would stand as an independent candidate in Tatton, the Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates for the area stood down in order to give Bell a clear run against Hamilton.

Smith first stood as a Labour parliamentary candidate at a by-election in 1961 in the East Fife constituency, and contested that seat again in the 1964 general election.

Her husband stood as Labour candidate in the safe Conservative seat of Tiverton in 1959, and came close to winning Plymouth Sutton in 1964, losing by just 410 votes ( David Owen would later hold for several years for Labour ).

Dunwoody stood as the Labour Party candidate for the Exeter seat in the 1964 general election.

In 1983, Dunwoody stood for election as deputy leader of the Labour Party, alongside Peter Shore, on a Eurosceptic platform ( a position she consistently maintained throughout her career-she voted against the Maastricht Treaty seven times ).

Her sister, Lady Clare Annesley, was a feminist and pacifist, and stood as a Labour Party parliamentary candidate in the 1920s and 1930s.

Soon afterwards, Smith resigned from the Conservative Party, and stood as a parliamentary candidate for the United Kingdom Independence Party in Portsmouth North where the Labour victory was claimed by the Conservative candidate to be a result of the UKIP candidacy, a claim also made by Richard North of the Bruges Group.

Militant stood Lesley Mahmood as a " Real Labour " candidate in the Liverpool Walton by-election, 1991, its first steps outside the Labour Party electorally, giving the Labour Party further grounds to continue with its expulsions.