Standing in general election

[jollyoli]

How much does it cost for someone to enter the English general election who has et up their own party? I heard that there's a deposit everyone has to pay which is returned if you get enough votes.

[jenstar]

That's correct. The UK is divided up into 659 constituencies, each of which elects one member to the House of Commons. Each prospective member must provide a deposit of �500, which is returned if they recieve at least 5% of the votes in their constituency. Should they fail to reach this threshold, the deposit goes into general treasury funds. This arrangement tends to favour the older, more established parties as not only do they have access to the funds to pay for their members' deposits, but they are also considerably more likely to get their money back afterwards, thus the financial risk is not only greater, but in fact disproportinately so, to smaller parties and independents.