T-E Political Parties 2039 - a primer

From an outsider's point of view, the political system in Tokyo-Earth looks very strange, to such a degree that there is almost an alien air to it.  In a very real sense, it is an absolute monarchy... except that there is a real, active, and functional legislature.  That legislature has two houses and lots of political parties... except that one of the houses is a no-party zone, enforced by the strictest possible measure.

The Legislative Body - the lower/"commons"/representative house of the legislature - has the most familiar mode of functioning.  There are five major and a few minor parties that operate here and in the district governments.  They get along about as well as most political parties do - which is to say barely.  The din of the political fray seems more muted than in most systems, however, because there is no national executive that is in contention.  Membership in and control of the Body is the highest political goal that can be aimed for within Tokyo-E, so once a politician has gained office here the only further points to score are survival in office and perhaps climbing up the ranks inside his party.

Further, there is a unifying sense of "all of us normals need to stick together".  The House of Ladies is surprisingly opaque (more on that later), and while they usually pass whatever comes out of the Body without comment, every year there are some surprise conflicts between houses which arise.  The Body, which develops legislation through debate and compromise between parties, is often befuddled by the more abstract or principled objections which the House may raise.  There is a common perception amongst Bodymembers that the Ladies are collectively a bunch of idealistic dreamers, and that the Body needs to keep them grounded.

Internally, the Body has the same cultural and philosophical divisions that legislatures everywhere do.  Conservatives clash with liberals, traditionalists clash with technologists, and nationalists clash with internationalists... though the last category of conflict, that of international relations, is one in which the Queen dominates since the money for almost all aspects of it comes out of her pocket.

The major parties in Tokyo-E are:

Liberal Democratic Party:
The LDP is the direct descendant of the Japanese party of the same name - in the chaotic environment of reconstruction in the decade after the Ningyo War, the Tokyo LDP was able to reorganize and put its pro-business, internationalist stamp on the new nation.  For one election cycle (2014-2016) it even managed to hold a majority of Body seats, something no other party has ever done.  Since that high-water mark it has been in a slow decline, but has almost always held the largest voting bloc of any group.  In the current (2038-2040) Body, it has 28% of the seats.

Democratic Party of Japan
Another carryover from Japanese politics, the DJP even still carries its "Japanese" moniker.  This is deliberate - the DJP in Tokyo-Earth stands primarily for the idea of reunification with the greater Japanese nation.  Over the years, they have moderated the specifics of their position somewhat (the current stance is that T-E would come into the Japanese prefecture system with its current internal civic laws and structure mostly intact, and that the Queen would gain a permanent seat in the Diet) but the ultimate goal remains the same.  In the meantime, they are mostly a centrist party, that also works to match T-E civil and criminal law and policy to what is passed in the Japanese Diet.  They have a solid base of support in some districts that were carved out of the southern old-Tokyo burbs, and manage to get a fairly consistent representation in the Body.  As of 2038 they have 11% of the seats in the Body.

Party of Loyal Citizens
The PLC was started in 2018, as reconstruction was beginning to wind down and the new nation could finally take stock of what it had become.  The general consensus was that Tokyo-Earth had turned out very well, and that the Queen was largely responsible for that result.  A small group of independent Bodymembers formed a coalition to support anything and everything the Queen wanted, and it became a formal party in just four years.  It had good success through the 20's, getting 24% of the seats in the 2028-2030 Body, but has faded since then.  Her Majesty very pointedly refuses to work directly with the PLC, leaving them to try to divine her preferences through her public statements.  In general, they tend to be socially liberal and economically moderate to conservative, lining up well with the LDP, as the Queen is perceived to be.  The inherently unstable nature of their platform has caused the collapse of at least four ruling coalitions through the years, since at a word from the Queen the party will change directions abruptly.  The PLC has 16% of the Body seats today.

Tokyo-Earth Communist Party
The TECP is one of the children of the old Japanese Communist Party, which dissolved in the chaos following the destruction of Tokyo.  The JCP was an odd mixture of nationalist/traditionalist radicalism and socialist policy that was already on the decline at the time.  The fragment of it which remained in Tokyo was the more cosmopolitan branch and it quickly dropped the nationalist Japanese sentiments and focussed on the economic policy issues.  The TECP still is socially conservative, and its economic policies are the furthest left of any notable group in T-E, but the "Communist" moniker is truly vestigal, as it does not advocate revolution or the Communist system at all.  They have grown to become the most frequent runner-up in the Body, usually lagging a few percent behind the LDP. For a few years (2030-2034) they were the largest party as they absorbed some disaffected elements of the PLC.  At the moment, the TECP holds 25% of the seats in the Body.

National Tokyo Party
The National Tokyo party is the primary nationalist group in Tokyo-Earth.  Founded just two years after the PLC, they advocate reunification with the rest of Japan, like the DJP, except where the DJP would have Japan ruling Tokyo, the NTP believes that the Queen and Tokyo-Earth should rule Japan, and perhaps even more.  In the interests of furthering that goal, they are strong economic conservatives to the right of even the LDP, since the small nation needs all the financial leverage it can bring to bear.  Socially, they are an odd mixture - they are quite tolerant on lifestyle and questions of individual liberty, but they also have a very hierarchical view of the world and have sponsored legislation to give Ladies more power and enforce greater public respect for them and other groups with authority, like police, armed forces, and Bodymembers.  Support has waxed and waned several times through the years, typically giving them between 8% and 18% of the Body - currently the NTP is on the upswing again with 16% of seats.

Minor parties of note:

Party of Worldly Magic
The PWM is a project of the "True" Church of Worldly Magic, the branching of the CWM that worships MG's.  Part of the reason for the PLC's decline is that its most zealous members have defected to the PWM.  Like the PLC, the PWM will back anything and everything the Queen does, but its legislative focus is more about extending the reach of their church.  On topics that don't affect the church, the PWM is about as purely pragmatic as a political party can be, taking the long-term view on everything.  The TCWM is a small fraction of even Tokyo-E's citizenry, and the PWM holds all of three seats in the Body.

Union of Lady Bodymembers
Not so much a true political party as a support organization for Ladies who are elected to the Representative Body.   As MG's are forbidden membership in political parties, this group handles the managerial and public-relations functions of a party for them, regardless of their political viewpoints.  There are currently three MG's who use the ULB's services; amusingly, two of them are Lords.

Independents
Since Bodymembers are elected as representatives of a district rather than proportionally, it is possible for them to be totally independent of a political party.  Currently there are two Bodymembers who are independent.  Both are dropouts from the PLC, due to their disgust with the instability of the platform.  They line up with the PWM on a lot of issues, but are personally non-religious and refuse to join that organization.