The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform,progressive taxation,wealth taxation,environmentalism, human rights laws,cultural liberalism,banking reform and civil liberties.

The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. The two parties had formed the electoral SDP–Liberal Alliance for seven years before then, since the SDP's formation. The Liberals had been in existence for 129 years and in power under leaders such as Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George.

Nick Clegg was elected Leader in 2007. At the 2010 general election, Liberal Democrats won 23% of the vote and 57 of the 650 seats, making them the third-largest party in the House of Commons, behind the Conservatives with 307 and Labour with 258. No party having an overall majority; the Liberal Democrats became the junior partners in a coalition government with the Conservatives, with Clegg becoming Deputy Prime Minister and other Liberal Democrats taking up ministerial positions.

Sir Walter Menzies "Ming" Campbell, CBE, QC, MP ( /ˈmɪŋɨs/ MING-iss; born 22 May 1941) is a British Liberal Democrat politician and advocate, and a retired sprinter. He is the Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Fife, and was the Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2 March 2006 until 15 October 2007.

Campbell held the British record for the 100 metres sprint from 1967 to 1974, having run the distance in 10.2 s. He captained the Great Britain athletics team in 1965 and 1966. He is currently the Chancellor of the University of St Andrews.

"Menzies" is a Scottish name, originally written Minȝies, the "z" being a graphic approximation of the (Middle English) yogh (ȝ), originally found in the name. Born in Glasgow, Campbell was educated at Hillhead High School and the University of Glasgow, graduating with an MA and an LLB.^{[citation needed]} He was elected President of the Glasgow University Liberal Club in 1962, and of the Glasgow University Union for 1964–65. He was involved in debating at the Union and with the Glasgow University Dialectic Society, where his contemporaries included Derry Irvine, Donald Dewar and John Smith, who attempted to recruit him for the Labour Party. He later received a scholarship study at Stanford University in California.

John Marwood Cleese (/ˈkliːz/; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s he became a member of Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, The Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.

In the mid 1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. He also starred in Clockwise, and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films as R/Q, two Harry Potter films and three Shrek films.

With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films.

Nigel Alexander Dodds, OBE, PC, MP, (born 20 August 1958) is a barrister and Northern Irish unionist politician. He is Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast North, and deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party. He has been Lord Mayor of Belfast twice, and from 1993 has been General Secretary of the DUP. Since June 2008 he has also been Deputy Leader of the DUP. Dodds became North Belfast's MP in the 2001 UK general elections. He has served in the past as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and as Minister of Finance in the Northern Ireland Executive.

Nigel Dodds was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, and was educated at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, County Fermanagh and St John's College, Cambridge (First class law MA) where he won the university scholarship, McMahan studentship and Winfield Prize for Law. Upon graduation, he returned to Northern Ireland and after studying at the Institute of Professional Legal Studies at Queen's University, Belfast (IPLS) was called to the Northern Irish bar . After working as a barrister he worked at the Secretariat of the European Parliament from 1984 to 1996.

Nigel Paul Farage ( /ˈfærɑːʒ/, FARR-ahzh; born 3 April 1964, Farnborough, Kent), is a British politician and is the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a position he also held from September 2006 to November 2009. He is a Member of the European Parliament for South East England and co-chairs the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

Farage is a founding member of the UKIP, having left the Conservative Party in 1992 after they signed the Maastricht Treaty. Having unsuccessfully campaigned in European and Westminster parliamentary elections for UKIP since 1994, he gained a seat as an MEP for South East England in the 1999 European Parliament Election — the first year the regional list system was used — and was re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage describes himself as a libertarian and rejects the notion that he is a conservative.

In September 2006, Farage became the UKIP Leader and led the party through the 2009 European Parliament Election in which it received the second highest share of the popular vote, defeating Labour and the Liberal Democrats with over two million votes. However he stepped down in November 2009 to concentrate on contesting the Speaker John Bercow's seat of Buckingham in the 2010 general election.