Smaller parties have a surprisingly big impact on British politics

Technology sometimes reminds you that the unpredictable is actually all too predictable. At its last extraordinary general meeting, the national executive for the Women’s Equality party finalised a snap general election strategy. Now I was emailing for the fifth time in as many months to request yet another EGM – the word extraordinary was beginning to lose all meaning. I began typing apprehensively, “I’m afraid it looks as though we are headed for …” – only for Gmail’s autocomplete function to suggest, without pause or irony, “another election”.

Don’t get me wrong: the WE desperately wants to fight the European elections. And we will. The resurgence of far-right politics across Europe threatens women and minorities in ways the political establishment cannot begin to understand. The two largest political parties are tying themselves in knots in their attempts to take back control – of their own backbenches. Both the government and opposition will be asking voters to send their candidates to Europe in order to ensure that we leave.

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But as a small party, with a team of only 12 staff and comparatively tiny resources, this is also, quite frankly, a nightmare. The other small parties may be putting on a good show, but the endless elections are killing them too, and with them our democracy. Since WE came into being in 2015 there has been a national referendum, a snap general election, Welsh assembly and Scottish parliament elections, eight regional mayoral elections and 13 parliamentary byelections, on top of the local council elections. Each of these are expensive enterprises, each diminishes our resources. It is well established in sport that too many contests increase the chance of injury – in politics, it is beginning to feel like that is the whole point.

Small parties are the backbone of our democracy. They force the mainstream to do more and to do it better, whether that’s a green new deal, shared parental rights or the chance to remain in Europe. One of the most damaging effects of Brexit would be to remove the only England-wide election that uses proportional voting to give space to new ideas. That will make it easier for the two main parties to dominate, even as their popularity plummets. Wherever small parties don’t run, we all lose.

Scottish Liberal Democrats in Edinburgh: ‘Whenever small parties don’t run, we all lose.’Photograph: Ken Jack/Getty Images

This is one of the most important periods in the Women’s Equality party’s short history. We are on track to win our first seats on the London assembly and in councils across the UK, from where we can help bring down austerity and lift up the poorest women. Also next year, and for the first time, we will be contesting the police and crime commissioner elections in answer to #MeToo – because if we can fundamentally change the criminal justice system then we can help to end violence against women and girls. My job is to make sure nothing distracts us from these goals. And another unexpected election can sometimes feel like just that.

But the European elections are not a distraction from these goals – rather, they are our single biggest opportunity to achieve them. So we must find a way to stand, whatever the costs. Because women’s voices were ignored in the referendum and without the Women’s Equality party they will be overlooked in this election too. While the other parties hope to turn yet another election into an in-out referendum, the Women’s Equality party will be pushing not just to “remain” but to advance – engaging with the EU in the urgent work of opening up its institutions and building an economy and a society that in seeing and valuing women and minorities benefits us all.

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We also recognise opportunity in the current political turbulence. Catherine Mayer and Sandi Toksvig founded the Women’s Equality party in 2015 because they clearly saw that old party politics were no longer working. The big parties, instead of vigorously pushing back against Ukip’s dangerous messaging, were embracing it. We understood that the political system is stacked against smaller parties and spotted in Ukip’s success a chance to game that system. Ukip never directly won more than a single Westminster seat because of that system, but its successes in other contests, including the European elections, transformed the political landscape precisely because the Conservatives and Labour moved to neutralise it by becoming more like it.

In an entirely more progressive way, this has been the impact of the Women’s Equality party. We may not have an MP, but as soon as we ran our first elections in 2016, garnering more than 350,000 votes, the other parties moved to be more like us. We’re happy about that. Just last month, Labour mayor Steve Rotheram launched the first long-term strategy in Liverpool City Region to end violence against women and girls. In his announcement, he explained that he did this because our mayoral candidate made it a priority. Tabitha Morton, who grew up on a council estate in Netherton on Merseyside and left school with no qualifications, had never before stood for office – but in so doing managed to improve the lives of thousands of women. Wherever we run, whatever the result of the election, we win.

That is why the Women’s Equality party will be approaching the European elections differently and running our candidates from across the country on a single London list, where we can have the biggest impact. Rather than spread our limited funds over the whole of the country, causing our message to be diluted, we will be standing aside in the rest of the UK to give ourselves and other small parties the biggest chance to make their case, not just for remain, but for everything else they stand for. Pluralism is the antidote to our broken political system and voting for it in this election is our only chance to make progress, whatever the old parties tell you.

• Hannah Peaker is chief of staff for the Women’s Equality party

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