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Politics of the United Kingdom take place in the framework of a parliamentary, representative democratic monarchy, in which the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government. It is a pluriform multi-party system with a partial devolution of power in Scotland, Wales, and sometimes Northern Ireland. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Its system of government (known as the Westminster system) has been adopted by other countries, such as Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Jamaica, countries which made up part of the British Empire The constitution is uncodified, being made up of constitutional conventions, statutes and other elements. Executive The Government performs the Executive functions of the United Kingdom on behalf of the Sovereign, in whom executive power is theoretically and nominally vested. The monarch appoints a Prime Minister, guided by the strict convention that the Prime Minister should be the member of the House of Commons most likely to be able to form a Government with the support of the House. The Prime Minister then selects the other Ministers which make up the Government and act as political heads of the various Government Departments. About twenty of the most senior government ministers make up the Cabinet. As in some other parliamentary systems of government (especially those based upon the Westminster System), the executive (called "the government") is drawn from and is answerable to Parliament - a successful vote of no confidence will force the government either to resign or to seek a parliamentary dissolution and a general election. In practice, members of parliament of all major parties are strictly controlled by whips who try to ensure they vote according to party policy. If the government has a large majority, then they are very unlikely to lose enough votes to be unable to pass legislation. In November 2005, the Blair government suffered its first defeat, on a proposal to extend the period for detaining terrorist suspects to 90 days. Before this, the last bill proposed by a government that was defeated in the House of Commons was the Shop Hours Bill in 1986, one of only three in the 20th century. Governments with a small majority, or coalition governments are much more vulnerable to defeat. They sometimes have to resort to extreme measures, such as "wheeling in" sick MPs, to get the necessary majority. Margaret Thatcher in 1983 and Tony Blair in 1997 were swept into power with such large majorities that even allowing for dissent within their parties, they were assured of winning practically all parliamentary votes, and thus were able to implement radical programmes of legislative reform and innovation. But other Prime Ministers, such as John Major in 1992, who enjoy only slender majorities can easily lose votes if relatively small numbers of their backbench MPs reject the whip and vote against the Government's proposals. As such, Governments with small majorities find it extremely difficult to implement controversial legislation and tend to become bogged down cutting deals with factions within their party or seeking assistance from other political parties. Government departments The Government of the United Kingdom contains a number of ministries known mainly, though not exclusively as departments, e.g. Ministry of Defence. These are politically led by a Government Minister who is often a Secretary of State and member of the Cabinet. He or she may also be supported by a number of junior Ministers. Implementation of the Minister's decisions is carried out by a permanent politically neutral organization known as the civil service. Its constitutional role is to support the Government of the day regardless of which political party is in power. Unlike some other democracies, senior civil servants remain in post upon a change of Government. Administrative management of the Department is led by a head civil servant known in most Departments as a Permanent Secretary. The majority of the civil service staff in fact work in executive agencies, which are separate operational organisations reporting to Departments of State. "Whitehall" is often used as a synonym for the central core of the Civil Service. This is because most Government Departments have headquarters in and around the former Royal Palace of Whitehall. Legislative Parliament is the centre of the political system in the United Kingdom. It is the supreme legislative body (i.e., there is parliamentary sovereignty), and Government is drawn from and answerable to it. Parliament is bicameral, consisting of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. House of Commons The UK is divided into parliamentary constituencies of broadly equal population (decided by the Boundary Commission), each of which elects a Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons. Of the 646 MPs there is currently only one who does not belong to a political party. In modern times, all Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition have been drawn from the Commons, not the Lords. Alec Douglas-Home resigned from his peerages days after becoming Prime Minister in 1963, and the last Prime Minister before him from the Lords left in 1902 (the Marquess of Salisbury). One party usually has a majority in Parliament, because of the use of the First Past the Post electoral system, which has been conducive in creating the current two party system. The monarch normally asks a person commissioned to form a government simply whether it can survive in the House of Commons, something which majority governments are expected to be able to do. In exceptional circumstances the monarch asks someone to 'form a government' with a parliamentary minority which in the event of no party having a majority requires the formation of a coalition government. This option is only ever taken at a time of national emergency, such as war-time. It was given in 1916 to Andrew Bonar Law, and when he declined, to David Lloyd George. It is worth noting that a government is not formed by a vote of the House of Commons, merely a commission from the monarch. The House of Commons gets its first chance to indicate confidence in the new government when it votes on the Speech from the Throne (the legislative programme proposed by the new government). House of Lords The House of Lords was previously a hereditary, aristocratic chamber. Major reform has been partially completed and it is currently a mixture of hereditary members, bishops of the Church of England known as Lords Spiritual and appointed members (life peers, with no hereditary right for their descendants to sit in the House). It currently acts to review legislation formed by the House of Commons, with the power to propose amendments, and exercises a suspensive veto. This allows it to delay legislation it does not approve of for twelve months. However, the use of vetoes is limited by convention and the operation of the Parliament Acts: the Lords may not veto the "money bills" or major manifesto promises (see Salisbury convention). Persistent use of the veto can also be overturned by the Parliament Act by the Commons. Often governments will accept changes in legislation in order to avoid both the time delay, and the negative publicity of being seen to clash with the Lords. The House of Lords is currently also the final court of appeal within the United Kingdom, although in practice only a small subset of the House of Lords, known as the Law Lords, hears judicial cases. However, the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 outlines plans for a Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to replace the role of the Law Lords. Judiciary
Devolved powers In addition to the House of Commons, Scotland now has its own parliament and Wales and Northern Ireland have assemblies. Some members of the devolved bodies are elected by a form of proportional representation. Although the new devolved governments have some legislative and other powers, they do not have the same powers as the UK parliament. As devolved systems of government, they have no constitutional right to exist and can have their powers broadened, narrowed or changed by an Act of the UK Parliament. Thus, the United Kingdom is said to have a unitary state with a devolved system of government. This contrasts with a federal system, in which sub-parliaments or state parliaments and assemblies have a clearly defined constitutional right to exist and a right to exercise certain constitutionally guaranteed and defined functions and cannot be unilaterally abolished by Acts of the central parliament. England The government has no plans to establish an English parliament or assembly although several pressure groups are calling for one. One of their main arguments is that MPs (and thus voters) from different parts of the UK have inconsistent powers. Currently an MP from Scotland can vote on legislation which affects only England but MPs from England (or indeed Scotland) cannot vote on matters devolved to the Scottish parliament. Indeed, current Home Secretary John Reid, who is an MP for a Scottish constituency, runs a department which deals primarily with England and Wales. This anomaly is known as the West Lothian question. The policy of the UK Government in England was to establish elected regional assemblies with no legislative powers. The London Assembly was the first of these, established in 2000, following a referendum in 1998, but further plans were abandoned following rejection of a proposal for an elected assembly in North East England in a referendum in 2004. Unelected regional assemblies remain in place in eight regions of England. Northern Ireland The current government of Northern Ireland was established as a result of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. This created the Northern Ireland Assembly which is currently under suspension. The Assembly is a unicameral body consisting of 108 members elected under the Single Transferable Vote form of proportional representation. The Assembly is based on the principle of power-sharing, in order to ensure that both communities in Northern Ireland, unionist and nationalist, participate in governing the region. When fully operational, it has power to legislate in a wide range of areas and to elect the Northern Ireland Executive (cabinet). It sits at Parliament Buildings at Stormont in Belfast. The Assembly has authority to legislate in a field of competences known as "transferred matters". These matters are not explicitly enumerated in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 but instead include any competence not explicitly retained by the Parliament at Westminster. Powers reserved by Westminster are divided into "excepted matters", which it retains indefinitely, and "reserved matters", which may be transferred to the competence of the Northern Ireland Assembly at a future date. Health and education are "transferred" but criminal law and police are "reserved" and royal succession, defence and international relations are all "excepted". While the Assembly is in suspension, its legislative powers are exercised by the UK government, which effectively has power to legislate by decree. Laws that would normally be within the competence of the Assembly are passed by the UK government in the form of Orders-in-Council rather than legislative acts. Scotland
Wales The National Assembly for Wales is a devolved assembly with power to make legislation in Wales, and is also responsible for most UK government departments in Wales. The Assembly was formed under the Government of Wales Act 1998, by the Labour government, after a referendum in 1997, (also supported by Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats), approved its creation. There is no legal or constitutional separation of the legislative and executive functions of the National Assembly, since it is a single corporate entity. Compared with other parliamentary systems, and other UK devolved countries, this is highly unusual. In reality there is some sort of day to day separation, and the terms "Assembly Government" and "Assembly Parliamentary Service" have been used to distinguish between the two arms. It is proposed to regularise the separation, and it is considered likely that the UK Parliament will pass the necessary legislation. Although the Assembly is a legislature, it currently does not have primary legislative or fiscal powers, as these powers had been reserved by Westminster. However, the position is set to change with the passing of the Government of Wales Bill in 2006. Elections and parties Unlike many European nations, the United Kingdom uses a first-past-the-post system to elect members of Parliament. Therefore, elections and political parties in the United Kingdom are affected by Duverger's Law, which causes the agglomeration of related political ideologies into a few large parties with many small parties rarely winning representation. Historically, the United Kingdom had two major political parties, though currently three parties dominate the political landscape. Originally, the Conservatives and the Liberals dominated British politics, but the Liberal Party collapsed in the early twentieth century and was largely replaced by the Labour Party. In the 1980s, the Liberals merged with the Social Democratic Party and have recently experienced a resurgence as the Liberal Democrats, enough so to again be considered a major party. In addition to the three major parties, many minor parties contest elections. Of these, few except for regional parties such as the Scottish National Party and Democratic Unionist Party win seats in Parliament. In the most recent general election in 2005, the Labour Party won re-election on a reduced majority, with both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats making gains at the expense of Labour. Electoral systems Various electoral systems are used in the UK: In the last few general elections, voter mandates for Westminster in the 40% ranges have been swung into 60% parliamentary majorities. No government has won a majority of the popular vote since the National Government of Stanley Baldwin in 1935. Twice since World War II (in 1951 and February 1974) the party with fewer popular votes actually came out with the larger number of seats. One reason for all the quirks is that Britain has many political parties, making it possible to win individual constituencies on less than 50% of the vote due to the opposition votes being divided. Electoral reform has been considered for general elections many times, but after the Jenkins Commission report in October 1998, which suggested the Alternative vote top-up for general elections was effectively ignored by the government, there have been no further government proposals for reform. It is highly unlikely that electoral reform will happen unless there is a significant change in the balance of power and Labour loses its large majority. Low turnout is a concern, as the percentage of the electorate who voted in the last general election was just 61%. History of political parties
Main political parties Current electoral landscape In the 2005 General Election, the Labour Party consolidated its position in 2001, winning a full third term - a first-time achievement for the Labour Party - under the leadership of Tony Blair, who won Labour the 1997 election too. This led to a crisis of confidence in the Conservative Party, which some would argue had become complacent with its position as the 'natural party of government' after 18 years of power. The party's drift to the right lost it many of its working-class voters, and its ageing membership (average age 65) and vote (third party among the under 45s) meant that avoiding extinction became a higher priority than winning an election. It appeared that Labour's drop in popularity in 2003-2004, coinciding with the Conservatives' appointment of Michael Howard as leader, might make the Conservatives again a serious challenger to the Labour government. However, Tony Blair's party secured a majority for the third time in May 2005, albeit with a greatly reduced majority. After Labour’s third victory in the general election in 2005 the Conservative Party, under Michael Howard knew that to regain power it must change both itself and perhaps more importantly its image. Michael Howard tendered his resignation, but said that he would not resign with immediate effect, as is the norm. Instead there was to be a long leadership campaign in which there would be time to find the correct direction for the party. After this leadership campaign David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party. The Conservatives under David Cameron have seen their popularity grow, as is shown by their success at the Local Elections in May 2006 and the recent newspaper opinion polls which sometimes put them ahead of Labour, a position that they have not been since the early 1990’s. During the same time as the Conservative Party was finding its feet again the Labour administration has been suffering from internal power-struggles as to when Tony Blair will step down as Prime Minister and sleaze, as is evidenced by the “cash for peerages”, Regional Casino bid affair and the failures of the Home Office to monitor immigration. Major issues in current British national politics, in descending order of voter concern (as of MORI poll April 2004), are: There are also specific regional issues, not listed above. Small parties The Respect party, a left-wing group that came out of the anti-war movement has one MP, George Galloway, and a small number of seats on local councils across the country. Non-Parliamentary political parties Two parties have no seats in Parliament, but multiple seats in the European Parliament and a number of seats on local councils. The Greens also have two seats in the London Assembly; UKIP elected two members to the London Assembly, but they subsequently quit the party and now sit as One London members. Veritas has one Member of the European Parliament (MEP), its founder and former leader Robert Kilroy Silk, though he was elected for UKIP (which he later left). The Scottish National Party and Scottish Socialist Party have seats in the Scottish Parliament, and Plaid Cymru have seats in the Welsh Assembly, as well as each having a number of council seats. A number of other parties have local councillors including the British National Party (BNP), the Liberal Party (in Kidderminster), Mebyon Kernow (Cornish nationalist party) in Cornwall, and the Communist Left Alliance (in Fife). Regional parties Other political parties contest elections in constituent parts of the United Kingdom, seeking autonomy or independence, for example: The SNP and Plaid Cymru work as a single parliamentary group in the UK and European parliaments. Several local parties contest only within a specific area, a single county, borough or district. Examples include the Better Bedford Independent Party, one of the dominant parties in Bedford Borough Council, led by Bedford's current Mayor, Frank Branston. The most notable local party is Health Concern, which controls a single seat in the UK Parliament. The fringe parties Other political parties exist, but generally do not succeed in returning MPs to Parliament. There is a tendency on the far left and right for a proliferation of tiny groups (also known by the French term 'groupuscules'), sometimes characterized by extremely rigid ideologies and built around personalities, that are constantly splitting to create new groups. Among them is the British National Party, a successor party to the National Front. Independents There are also a few independent politicians with no party allegiance. This normally occurs only when an MP decides to break with his party in mid-session. Since 1950 only two MPs have been elected as genuine independents, though others have been elected after breaking away from their party: Local Government The UK is divided into a variety of different types of Local Authorities, with different functions and responsibillities, which are further subdivided in rural areas and some urban areas into parishes. Local Authorities are responsible for such matters as administering education, public transport, and the management of public spaces. Local authorities are often engaged in community politics. Parishes have councils too and some are known as city or town councils. These councils are either made up of elected parish councillors, or in very small parishes, they use direct democracy. There are two common systems of local government in the UK: the old-style two-tier and newer single-tier system. The older (and far more complex) two-tier system consists of District Councils and County Councils. The District Councils are responsible for rubbish collection, granting planning permission and council housing. County Councils are responsible for education, social services, some public transport and other local functions. Unitary Authorities, which are in use throughout the whole of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and in some areas in England, have a single tier of local government, and combine District and County Council functions into one body. In Greater London, a unique two-tier system exists, with power shared between the London borough councils, and the Greater London Authority which is headed by an elected mayor. Unitary authorities often share common public safety authorities with other neighbouring councils. For example, Luton shares services with Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire and Milton Keynes (borough) shares services with Buckinghamshire. European Union The United Kingdom is a member of the European Union (EU). As such, UK citizens elect Members of the European Parliament to represent them in the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. The UK elects 78 MEPs. In recent years, there have been divisions in both major parties as to whether the UK should form greater ties within the EU, leave things as they are, or reduce the EU's supranational powers. Opponents of greater European integration are known as Eurosceptics, supporters Pro-Europeans. Divisions over Europe run deep in both major parties, and though the Conservative Party was seen to split over this issue whilst in Government up to 1997, it is the Labour Party which now faces conflicting views within Cabinet over UK involvement in the Euro and the new European Constitution. British nationalists have long campaigned against EU integration. The strong showing of the eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2004 European Parliament elections has shifted the debate over UK relations with the EU. International organization participation See also Notes | |||||||||||||
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