Interview: Rise of minority parties leads to UK political "fragmentation" in general election

Since the last general election, the British political landscape has become more fragmented, and now looks likely to produce a hung parliament in the vote on May 7.

How has this fragmentation come about in a system that for several hundred years was almost always a two-party system, and what does it signify for Britain's position in the international community?

"The number of parties has basically doubled since the 1950s. In what ways has it fragmented? A lot and all over the place," said Caitlin Milazzo, assistant professor in the faculty of social sciences at the University of Nottingham.

"The reasons for this change -- there are a lot of explanations. One of the reasons we might look to is the ways that British society has fundamentally changed. In the past, in the 50s or the 60s, the way that you voted was very much determined by social class," she said.

The British class system had changed since that time with increasing wealth and greater access to higher education for people from working class backgrounds, said Milazzo.

"In parallel with this, in 1997, we saw Tony Blair moving Labor to the center, which breaks the ties between Labor's traditional foundation and their traditional class background, which they intentionally did," said Milazzo.

"All of this -- the fundamental changing nature of society, the fact that the parties have moved to the ideological center -- has created a much more flexible party space."

The Green Party and the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) have roots that reach over decades, but the Greens now enjoy a higher national profile than ever before, and attract about seven percent of the national vote in polls.

Nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, including the Scottish National Party (SNP)and Plaid Cymru, have both benefited from the creation of regional parliaments to have a higher profile.

UKIP was founded by an academic in the 1990s and remained a fringe party, but over the past five years it has become the third party in politics, knocking the centrist Liberal Democrats, the party of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, into fourth place.

The result is that the two main parties can no longer be sure they can win enough support for a majority in the House of Commons, leading to the likelihood of coalitions, like the Cameron-led government of 2010 to 2015, or minority rule.

For Milazzo, these changes in politics are permanent.

"With all parties struggling to gain a majority, the influence of coalitions is going to have an effect and the main parties have to deal with this," she said.

"It will pull them in different directions as they attempt to lure back the voters who have been attracted by the right-wing message of UKIP that is going to pull them to the right and perhaps the same on the left in the future for Labor. It is going to have a huge influence on mainstream politics," said Milazzo.

Foreign policy and Britain's place in the international community have largely been ignored in the general election campaign, except for the relationship with the European Union (EU). If the Conservative Party wins, the party promises a referendum on continued membership.

Politicians had not campaigned on foreign policy, said Milazzo, because the public was uninterested.

"They talk about the issues the public cares about, and if you look at surveys of the public, foreign policy does not register. Politicians are taking their cue from the public." Endit