Application to register a new party
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According to this (scroll down), the Electoral Quango has received an application to register a new party to be called “The Independent Socialist Party GB”:
No idea who they are but, if the quango sticks to its criteria for registering names, they should reject it as the name conflicts with that of an already registered party, i.e., us, especially as one of the registered variants of our name is “The Socialist Party (GB)”, which in fact the name we have been using most often. But you never know with the Electoral Quango. Consistency has never been its strong point. They have always been better at bureaucratic interference.
There is an opportunity to comment on applications. The election committee has already asked what the deadline for doing this is.
Doesn’t addition of the word ‘independent’ make it a distinct name? In 1916 members of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany who were against the war broke away to form a new party called the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany (or the Independents for short).
There was an Independent Socialist Party in the 1930s. It was a split from the Independent Labour Party.
Doesn’t addition of the word ‘independent’ make it a distinct name?
Yes and no.
It does for everyday purposes but not for UK electoral law where the issue is what name can be put on the ballot paper.
The UK Electoral Commission is pretty strict on party names and variants of them so as to avoid confusing voters. For instance, they refused to allow the Trotskyist “Socialist Party of England and Wakes” (SPEW) to register under that name as they held that would confuse voters with us. The SPEWers are however free to use that name on their election literature but on the ballot paper they appear under their registered name of “Socialist Alternative”. Just as the new ISPGB would be free to.
On the other hand, the Commission has just given us notice that they intend to strike off one of the registered variants of our name — The World Socialist Party (UK) — on the grounds that this doesn’t identify who we are to voters. We have appealed and are awaiting their final decision.
Incidentally, there is a suggestion that this new party might be a rightwing outfit rather than yet another “socialist” party. See the discussion here.
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