To what extent are the major UK parties, internally united over ideas and policies

However, the unity within the major parties has also been affected by the coalition government weaknesses and constraints. The coalition government is a dependable government which means that David Cameron needs Nick Clegg to stay in power and it is vice versa, so both party leaders had to compromise and change their polices such as the concerns about Europe, Devolution of bodies, and they enforced a fix term parliament.

The Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition introduced a fixed term parliament, which is set at 5 years, (so the next time that there would be a general election would be on the 7th May 2015), an advantage of the fixed term parliament is that it creates political stability and it gives politicians the chance to implement their policies due to the full term service however the disagreement for the fixed term parliament in the sense of lack of democracy is that by elongating the office term, it would generally equal a less responsive government towards the electorates. Notably, the fix term parliament cancels the 55% rule where the government in power must maintain an average of 55% of the House of Commons to maintain their party rule. This suggests that some policies that the two parties within the coalition government enforced have not been entirely accepted amongst their individual parties.

Secondly, considering the European Community they allocate 12,000 regulation or directives to each EU members. It has been an issue which has split Nick Clegg from David Cameron and the compromise that have been made has split Nick Clegg from is traditional members who are absolutely in favor of the intervention with the European community, however apart from David Cameron and is Eurosceptic party, a poll which asked the question "Should we still be a part of the EC?" showed that 49% of the 79% who voted stated that they want the withdrawal of UK from the EU; contrastingly 40% stated that they prefer to stay within the EU.  

In a nutshell the liberal democrats has a lot to lose due to the fact that they are the smaller party and being a minority, you suffer from a loss of political identity and it questions the loyalty of your supporters e.g. the Liberal Democrats backbenchers disloyalty, in December 2010 when the majority of Lib Dem MPs voted against the coalition government policies on the NHS and the tuition fees. Also the liberal democrats wants to devolve more power however the Conservatives argue that by devolving more power, it would increase the case of the West Lothian Question, which argues that 'Is it fair that devolved bodies can intervene with national English problems, which we cannot intervene on their national issues?' Issues like these which have cause a great political split amongst the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives traditional and modern members. Consequently, the above reasons implements why there has been political disunity within the parties to a large extent and why I believe that the disunity amongst the Liberal Democrat and Conservatives are roughly 80%.

Thirdly, due to the distribution of power within the parties, it could be argued that they are not internally united over ideas and policies because by relying on individuals and big businesses to fund the party, they are then vulnerable to accept any influence from the party backers on policy formulation and development. Labour receives most its funding's from the Trade Union, however due to Ed Miliband not supporting the Trade Union on the issues of strikes about the public sector pensions and the cuts, this disloyalty has questioned the fact that will the trade Union, support Mr. Miliband during his reign as party leader.

To come to a conclusion, I have argued, that there is a large amount of internal disunity within each parties, however there has been a small amount of unity which are sometimes present. I also believe that since the post-Thatcherism era, and the modernizing of each policies the individual parties had to undergo, has been the trigger to why there has been a lot of factionalism within the parties; these disagreements are highlighted greatly amongst the traditional MPs who believe that the party should stick to the traditional core values and the more modern MPs who wants a less programmatic approach and a change from tradition values. To be specific I believe that the party that has the most disunity is the liberal Democrats, due to the loss of traditional policies and political identity which has shown the weaknesses of the party. Contrastingly I believe that the Labour party contains the least amount of disunity amongst the three parties because they have encountered the lesser amount of political change which has caused disagreement amongst other parties internally.