From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the
British
political party. For the similarly named parties in other countries, see
Liberalism
.
The
Liberal Democrats
, often shortened to
Lib Dems
, is a
centrist
political party
in the
United Kingdom
that promotes
liberal
policies. It was started on 2 March 1988 by joining the
Liberal Party
, which had been a powerful political party in Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the
Social Democratic Party
, which had been formed from the
Labour Party
in 1981. The two parties had already been working together for seven years.
The Liberal Democrats are strong supporters of the
European Union
, as well as
environmentalism
and they are in favour of creating a new British House of Commons which is elected using
proportional representation
. They also disagree with Britain being a part of conflicts like the
Iraq War
.
The party has 15
[21]
out of 650 seats in the
House of Commons
, 84
[22]
out of 783 seats in the
House of Lords
, 16 out of 73 British seats in the
European Parliament
, 5 out of 129 seats in the
Scottish Parliament
and 1 out of 60 seats in the
Welsh Assembly
. The party was in a
coalition
government with the
Conservative Party
and the former party leader
Nick Clegg
was the Deputy Prime Minister until the May 2015 general election.
In elections, the party usually gets the most votes in places like northern
Scotland
, south-west
London
, south-west
England
and mid-
Wales
. Members of the party are mostly more middle-class people that went to university.
Most
Liberal Democrats believe in the following things:
Asterisk (*) means that this person was an interim leader, meaning he was just standing in as leader because the previous leader resigned.