Ties

A tie is a band of decorative fabric worn around the neck, under the collar, and tied in front to hang down the front of a shirt. Ties are possibly the only common item of clothing which has a solely decorative function. Ties are a required element of male business attire, and male MPs must therefore be wearing one in the Chamber if they wish to be called by the Speaker. This affords them an opportunity to express their party allegiance and personal fashion sense (or lack of it).

Party Colours

As the British political parties all have an associated colour scheme, ties present politicians with an opportunity to either fly their party colours or subtly signal an alternative allegiance.

In theory, Tories are blue:

Labour are red:

And the Lib Dems are yellow.

In practice, people spend a lot of time trying to hide their true colours. It's almost impossible to catch Nick Clegg in yellow these days and the Labour frontbench prefer purple or magenta to advertise their centrism, although with the advent of Ukip this choice has become more and more questionable.

Not-so-red-Eds

At important events politicians tend to try and coordinate colours, although the Conservatives are generally far better at this than Labour.

Fabulous Ties

Some MPs choose flamboyant ties to express their personalities and make Parliament more fun for us to watch. This is a source of prestige for MPs in the fandom.

Well known wearers of fabulous ties include John Bercow, Chris Bryant, Stephen Gilbert and Rob Halfon. In the hack world, Question Time chair and election anchor David Dimbleby is famous for his vibrant and elaborately patterned ties.

A mediocre tie can be spruced up with a clashing shirt pattern, as modeled here by fashion maestro Alun Cairns:

A classic tattersall shirt/spotted tie combo

Aposematic Colouration

Some MPs wear retina-scarring neon ties. Possibly this is a strategy to catch the Speaker's eye, but given that the worst offenders are Simon Hughes and Tony Baldry it seems more likely that the reverse is true. Their ties serves the same function as the aposematic colouration on poisonous animals, warning the Speaker not to call on them because they are incredibly boring.

A poison dart frog showing aposematic colouration

Tony Baldry wearing an aposematic tie

Simon Hughes wearing an aposematic tie

Knotting

The tightness of the knot on a politician's tie has been a source of interest since one lolitician drew our attention to this:

There's a general rule that the tighter a businessman ties his tie, the more likely it is he wants to be bent over and dominated.

Nick likes to wear his knots a bit tighter than DCam, but they appear to swap roles from time to time. More unexpectedly, the Ballster is often seen with extremely tight knots and Andy leaves his quite loose. Ties provide the fandom with a great insight into the inner workings of many a political relationship.

It's worth noting here that the person with the tightest tie knot in the history of British politics is probably Militant leader Derek Hatton. What was he really after from Margaret Thatcher with that rate capping rebellion?

Shipping

Ties are frequently used in fic for things other than adorning the necks of MPs (though sometimes that as well...).

They are also a prominent feature of some ships, very obviously so in the case of Brycow.