The politics of Scotland operate within the constitution of the United Kingdom, of which Scotland is a home nation. Scotland is a democracy, being represented in both the Scottish Parliament and the Parliament of the United Kingdom since the Scotland Act 1998. Most executive power is exercised by the Scottish Government, led by the First Minister of Scotland, the head of government in a multi-party system. The judiciary of Scotland, dealing with Scots law, is independent of the legislature and the executive. Scots law is primarily determined by the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government shares some executive powers with the Government of the United Kingdom's Scotland Office, a British government department led by the Secretary of State for Scotland.
William Gallacher was a Scottish trade unionist, activist and communist. He was one of the leading figures of the Shop Stewards' Movement in wartime Glasgow and a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He served two terms in the House of Commons as the last Communist Member of Parliament (MP).
The Communist Party of Scotland was a communist political party based in Scotland. It was established in January 1992 by former members of the Communist Party of Great Britain who disagreed with the CPGB's disbanding and reforming in 1991 as the Democratic Left think-tank. The party was itself dissolved in the late 2010s.
The Highlands and Islands Alliance or Càirdeas was a minor Scottish electoral alliance that was active in the late 1990s. Founded in the autumn of 1998 by non-partisan politicians local to the Highlands and Islands, it only contested the inaugural Scottish Parliament election of 1999, where it collected a negligible 1.3% of the regional vote and despite a reasonably publicised campaign, failed to elect any of its candidates. Led by anti-nuclear activist Lorraine Mann, the Alliance was established to better represent marginalised communities in rural Scotland, who they felt had been ignored by government in favour of those in the more densely populated Central Belt. Its policies were near exclusively centred on localism and rural issues, only contesting Scotland's regional additional member system so that electors could vote on nationwide matters through their constituency ballot. After the election, the group remained politically inactive until it was quietly disestablished in August 2004.
Patricia Marwick is a Scottish politician who served as Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament from 2011 to 2016. She was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) from 1999 to 2016. Elected as a member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), she suspended her membership in 2011 upon her election as presiding officer, following the tradition of the presiding officer being nonpartisan.
The Fife Socialist League (FSL) was a minor left-wing political party which existed in Fife, Scotland from 1957 until 1964. It was associated politically with the British New Left and the journal New Reasoner, an antecedent of the present-day New Left Review. From 1960-1962, it published a monthly journal called The Socialist.
The Scottish Liberal Democrats is a liberal, federalist political party in Scotland, a part of the United Kingdom Liberal Democrats. The party currently holds 4 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament and 4 of the 59 Scottish seats in the House of Commons.
William Cowan Rennie, commonly known as Willie Rennie, is a Scottish politician who served as the Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats from 2011 to 2021. He has served as the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for North East Fife since 2016, and previously as a list MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife and as Member of Parliament (MP) for Dunfermline and West Fife.
Lawrence Daly was a coal miner, trade unionist and political activist.
The British left is a range of political parties and movements in the United Kingdom. These can take the position of either centre-left, left-wing, or far-left.
The 2008 Glenrothes by-election was a by-election held in Scotland on 6 November 2008 to elect a new Member of Parliament (MP) for the House of Commons constituency of Glenrothes in Fife, Scotland.
The Liberal Democrats are a liberal political party in the United Kingdom. Since the 1992 general election, with the exception of the 2015 general election, they have been the third-largest UK political party by the number of votes cast. They have 14 Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, 83 members of the House of Lords, four Members of the Scottish Parliament and one member in the Welsh Senedd. The party has over 2,500 local council seats. The party holds a twice-per-year Liberal Democrat Conference, at which party policy is formulated. In contrast to its main opponents' conferences, the Lib Dems grant all party members attending its Conference, either in-person or online, the right to vote on party policy, under a one member, one vote system. The party served as the junior party in a coalition government with the Conservative Party between 2010 and 2015; with Scottish Labour in the Scottish Executive from 1999 to 2007, and with Welsh Labour in the Welsh Government from 2000 to 2003 and from 2016 to 2021.
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is a socialist electoral alliance launched in Britain for the 2010 general election.
The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) is a communist party in Great Britain which emerged from a dispute between Eurocommunists and Marxist-Leninists in the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1988. It follows Marxist-Leninist theory and supports what it regards as existing socialist states, and has fraternal relationships with the ruling parties in Cuba, China, Laos, and Vietnam. It is affiliated nationally to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. It is a member of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, together with 117 other political parties. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the party was one of two original British signatories to the Pyongyang Declaration.
The Shipley by-election was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Shipley on 6 November 1930.
Abraham Moffat was a Scottish trade unionist and communist activist. He was elected repeatedly to high office in the trade unions and represented the union on government coal boards. He held major union offices: President of the National Union of Scottish Mine Workers; member of the executive committee of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain; Vice-chairman Scottish Regional Coal Board; and member National Coal Board. He served as president of the union from 1942 to his retirement in 1961, when he was succeeded by his younger brother Alex Moffat, also an activist.
Alexander B. Moffat was a Scottish trade unionist and communist activist who was President of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the Scottish Mineworkers Union.
The Renew Party was a minor centrist political party in the United Kingdom. It was set up in 2017 to provide an alternative for moderate voters in the wake of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. The party described itself as wanting to reform existing political structures and did not identify with either left-wing or right-wing ideologies. It welcomed candidates and members from non-political backgrounds.
