Results breakdown of the 2005 United Kingdom general election Party came third in Brighton Pavilion (with Keith Taylor as candidate) behind Labour and the Conservatives, taking 21.9% of the votes cast. Despite this unprecedented high share of the vote Taylor was not selected to contest the seat in the 2010 general election, losing his prospective position to Caroline Lucas. The English Democrats gained their highest percentage of the vote, when former "Sun" newspaper columnist, Gary Bushell stood in Greenwich and Woolwich and gained 3.4% of votes cast. The Independent Working Class Association stood for the first time in a general election, having previously only stood in local council elections.
Green Party of England and Wales 1999; overall, the Party polled 1,033,093 votes. In the 2005 general election the party gained over 1% of the vote for the first time, and polled over 10% in the constituencies of Brighton Pavilion and Lewisham Deptford. This growth has been attributed to the increasing public visibility of the party as well as a general growth in support for smaller parties in the UK. In November 2007, the party held an internal referendum to decide on whether it should replace its use of two "principal speakers", one male and the other female, with the more conventional roles of "leader" and