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Jill Sherman

Whitehall Editor

The election of the Green Party’s first MP as dawn broke on May 7, 2010 was one of the highlights of a long, unpredictable night. Caroline Lucas’s breakthrough in Brighton Pavilion was some compensation for an otherwise disappointing result for the minority parties, who failed to exploit the disaffection with mainstream politics. Dr Lucas, leader of the Green Party since 2008, capitalised on her own popularity and activists’ hard work for years in southern England to achieve, finally, a foothold at Westminster.

In the final stages of post-election negotiations between the parties after the inconclusive result, Dr Lucas, an MEP for the South East since 1999, briefly found herself being counted as part of a “progressive alliance” as the arithmetic meant that every additional seat was crucial. The plans fell apart but Dr Lucas turned her suitors down anyway, saying that she was interested in cooperation but not a formal coalition.

The Greens made their biggest push in a general election by fielding 335 candidates and spending £400,000 on their campaign. They had particularly high hopes in three target seats: Brighton Pavilion, Norwich South, and Lewisham Deptford. By early morning the day after the election, however, it became clear that Dr Lucas, a charismatic former CND-protester, was the only victor and the party’s overall share of the vote fell slightly by 0.1 per cent from 2005.

The party argues that the decline was a result of a highly targeted election campaign in which it pooled most of its resources into those key seats, with busloads of Green activists brought in to campaign along the seafront each weekend. In the end, the tactic was vindicated, but it was a close race: despite being favourites to win the seat, after a nail-biting count the Greens eventually won with 1,252 votes.

While disappointing for Adrian Ramsay, the party’s deputy leader, who lost in Norwich South, and Darren Johnson, who failed to make much headway in Lewisham Deptford, the most important thing for the party, was winning its first seat. As Dr Lucas said in an interview with The Times, she hopes she won’t be there on her own for too long.

Most of the minority parties failed to recapture their success in the European elections the previous year. In 2010, squeezed out of the running by the three-horse race of the main parties, the smaller ones retained their 14 Westminster seats but took a smaller overall share of the vote, 11.9 per cent, than the previous year. It was, however, up 1.6 per cent from the general election in 2005, mainly because the parties fielded more candidates. The results were particularly disappointing because many of the smaller parties had looked likely to benefit more from the backlash against the main parties over MPs’ expenses the previous year. The scandal may have stopped people voting for those individuals who had been at the centre of the expenses storm but in the end the minority parties failed to reap what should have been easy pickings.

The UK Independence Party, which had seen its popularity soar during the European elections, in which it took second place and 16.5 per cent of the vote, again failed to win a Commons seat. At one stage it looked as if Nigel Farage, the party’s former leader, could be out of the race altogether when a light aircraft in which he was being flown crashed on the eve of the election. He was fortunate to escape without serious injury but was unable to oust John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, in Buckingham.

The British National Party also failed to make the breakthrough that many had feared after the party’s shock success in 2009 when it won two European seats. It did, however, increase its share of the vote by a whisker, from 1.2 per cent in 2005 to 1.9 per cent. Nick Griffin, the party chairman and an MEP, raised his profile after appearing on Question Time on BBC One in autumn 2009, when he faced a barrage of criticism from other panellists. He was humiliated in the general election in Barking, where he stood against Margaret Hodge, the Labour incumbent, who increased her majority.

The BNP also targeted Stoke-on-Trent, where it had previously won a clutch of council seats, but Simon Darby the party’s deputy chairman, was beaten into fourth place after Tristram Hunt, the Labour candidate parachuted into the constituency, won the seat.

George Galloway, the leader of the anti-war Respect party, also had his comeuppance. The colourful Mr Galloway, who made an embarrassing appearance on Celebrity Big Brother, failed to hang on in Poplar & Limehouse, East London, where he came third behind Labour and the Tories. He did not even turn up for his count. Respect’s national share of the vote halved from 2005 to about 0.1 per cent mainly because the Iraq war was no longer a big central issue in the 2010 election.

The march of the independent MPs also came to a halt. In 2005 a record number stood and total votes cast for them reached 141,903. The betting money was on a further surge this year, with a predicted revolt against duck houses and flipped homes. But in the end it was the independents who were driven off the Commons green benches. Richard Taylor, the retired consultant who took Wyre Forest in 2001 on the back of a single-issue campaign to save his local hospital in Kidderminster, failed to retain his seat in 2010. Dr Taylor, who in his professional life wore a white coat, had taken the place of the white-suited Martin Bell, the former independent MP who seized Tatton on the back of the cash-for-favours scandal in 1997.

Dai Davies, who won a by-election at Blaenau Gwent in 2006 as an independent, was also unable to retain his seat. Even Esther Rantzen failed in her well-publicised bid to oust Labour in Luton South. The former That’s Life presenter stood as an anti-sleaze candidate against Margaret Moran, the Labour MP who claimed £22,500 in Commons allowances to fix dry rot in a second home in Southampton. Ms Moran, however, decided to stand down before the election. Her replacement, Gavin Shuker, a 28-year-old church pastor, won 14,725 votes. Ms Rantzen came fourth with 1,872 and lost her deposit.

Only one MP was left holding the flag for the independents: Lady Sylvia Hermon, a former Ulster Unionist. Lady Hermon stood down from her party in March 2010 after the UUP formed an alliance with the Conservatives. Two months later she romped home to retain her North Down seat as an independent.