Political party membership in the UK 2019

In 2019 the Labour Party was estimated to have over half a million members, by far the most of any political party in the United Kingdom. The following three largest parties in terms of members were the Conservatives, the Scottish National Party, and the Liberal Democrats, which all had membership numbers that numbered over 100 thousand. Smaller parties such as the Green Party had 49 thousand members, with UKIP and Plaid Cymru on 29 thousand, and 10 thousand members.

More members but fewer voters

While the Labour Party had more party members than the Conservative Party, it has also not been in power since 2010 and has struggled to oust successive Tory governments. In the 2019 general election, Labour suffered its worst result since the 1930s, winning just 203 seats , 59 fewer than in 2017, and as a share of the vote, a drop of 7.8 percent. As of early 2022, however, the Labour Party is polling higher than the Conservative party in a potential general election, likely due to continued public anger regarding the ongoing 'Partygate' scandal concerning the breaking of lockdown rules at Downing Street in 2020.

Labour's solid social media prescence

Despite poor recent election results, the Labour Party has an undeniably large following on social media. As of January 2022, they had over 1 million likes on Facebook and over 917 thousand followers on Twitter, making them the most popular UK political party on both platforms. The current Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has a long way to go to catch up with the social media profiles of Boris Johnsson and the leader of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon, on both Facebook and Twitter.