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How well can you understand and analyse political cartoons? Check it out!

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How well can you understand and analyse political cartoons? Check it out!

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You may display your article while you are presenting.

And please note that news report marks will be sent on demand at the end of the semester.

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You can use the questions page 6 of the brochure to guide your study.

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Martin Rowson is a cartoonist and author. A collection of his work in the coalition years, the Coalition Book, can be ordered at the Guardian bookshop

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Ella Baron on the Tory rebellion against the Rwanda bill - cartoon

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Chris Riddell on a disastrous few days for the prime minister

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Johnson says UK trying to cut ‘ludicrous’ Northern Ireland checks

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Johnson says UK trying to cut ‘ludicrous’ Northern Ireland checks_ANSWERS_padlet

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As the effects of Covid fade, it’s becoming easier to assess the impact of leaving the EU.

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A must-read by Sarah Pickard!!

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Also follow the guidelines page 4 of the brochure!

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Also follow the guidelines page 4 of the brochure!

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Pick a date and specify your article at least 3 days before the day you present. Your article must not be more than 7 days old!

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Pick a date and specify your article at least 3 days before the day you present. Your article must not be more than 7 days old!

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Pick a date and specify your article at least 3 days before the day you present. Your article must not be more than 7 days old!

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Britain has been part of a club of countries called the European Union, or EU, since 1973.
In a referendum, held on 23 June 2016, the majority of adult Britons voted to leave the EU.

On 29 March 2017 the countdown to the UK formally leaving the EU, also known as Brexit, began.

Here's a timeline of the key events leading up to the EU referendum and what happened next.

The European Economic Community (EEC) is set up by six countries; Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The EEC would later become the EU.

Did you know?

The EU is a political and economic union of 28 countries that trade with each other and allow citizens to move easily between the countries to live and work. It started out as the EEC with just six countries.

Britain finally joins the EEC, having been rejected twice previously by the then French President, Charles de Gaulle.

The new Labour government holds a referendum on whether to stay in the European communities, the result is to remain.

Did you know?

In 1983 the Labour Party's election manifesto called for complete withdrawal from the EU.

David Cameron promises a referendum if the Conservatives win the election.

The Conservatives win the election.

23 June 2016: The UK votes to leave the EU

24 June 2016: David Cameron resigns

13 July 2016: Theresa May is Prime Minister

Did you know?

Brexit is short for "British exit" - and is the word people use to talk about the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union (EU).

8 June 2017: General election

Mrs May loses her majority in Parliament.

Northern Ireland's DUP - led by Arlene Foster - makes a deal with the Conservatives and its votes allow Mrs May to stay in power.

Formal negotiations on withdrawal begin between the UK and the EU.

Rebel Tory MPs side with the Opposition (the Labour Party) forcing the government to guarantee a vote by MPs on the final Brexit deal, when it has been struck with Brussels.

British and EU negotiators reach a draft agreement on withdrawal. EU leaders approve this on 25 November.

In the first parliament vote on the deal MPs vote 432 to 202 against it - the biggest government defeat in British parliamentary history.

The next day the government narrowly survives a vote of no confidence, which could have triggered a general election.

The House of Commons rejects the deal again 391 to 242. On March 27, May promises to resign if her Brexit deal is adopted.

The EU agrees to delay Brexit until October 31.
The delay means Britain is obliged to organise European Parliament elections on May 23, which are won by the anti-EU Brexit Party..

June 2019: Theresa May resigns

23 July 2019: Boris Johnson made PM

Boris Johnson is voted in by Conservatives as their new leader, becoming prime minister the next day. He promises to take Britain out of the EU on October 31 - with or without a deal.

Did you know?

A no-deal Brexit means means the UK would leave the European Union (EU) and there would be no agreements in place about what the relationship between the UK and the EU will be like in future.
What is a no-deal Brexit?

Queen Elizabeth II gives her approval to a law that would force the government to delay Brexit if it is not able to strike a withdrawal deal with Brussels.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson publishes his "final" Brexit proposals, which are rejected by the EU.

The prime minister and his Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar say they see a "pathway" to a deal after talks over the main sticking point - how to keep open the border, for trade and travel, between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, a member of the EU.

The Irish Backstop: Did you know?

The backstop is meant to be a last resort to keep an open border in Ireland - whatever happens in the Brexit negotiations.

It would mean that Northern Ireland, but not the rest of the UK, would still follow some EU rules on things such as food products.

The European Union and Britain announce their agreement on a new draft Brexit agreement.

It is then supported at a key EU summit by the other 27 EU members, but also needs approval by the British and European parliaments.

The British parliament sits on a Saturday for the first time in 37 years, but MPs vote to delay a decision on the draft deal, arguing they need more time to study its contents before the October 31 deadline.

It means Johnson has to seek another Brexit delay from the EU which is accepted on 28 October.

29 October 2019 - General Election Called

Parliament approves a general election on 12 December.

The second Brexit deadline passes without a deal being done

5 December 2019 - Boris Johnson wins General Election

The UK's EU Withdrawal bill becomes law, after a smooth passage through Parliament compared to the earlier difficulties.

The UK officially leaves the EU at 11:00pm UK time (midnight European time).

An 11-month transition phase begins, running to 31 December 2020.

Most of the pre-Brexit arrangements will remain the same while both sides work out what the future EU-UK relationship will look like.

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Brexit: A brief history of Britain and the EU

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From Britain joining the European communities back in 1973 to the decision to leave and beyond - here's a brief timeline of Brexit.

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Britain now has a four-party system_Text

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Britain now has a four-party system_questions

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Britain now has a four-party system_answers

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Improve your pronunciation for your news report!

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Improve your pronunciation for your news report!

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Use column n°3.

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Confused by Brexit jargon? Reality Check unpacks the basics.

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Brexit: Seven things changing on 1 January

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What will be different about the UK’s relationship with the EU from 1 January 2021?

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The UK-EU trade agreement, which contains new rules for living, working and trading together, takes effect from 23:00 GMT on 31 December.

The full complicated agreement is more than 1,200 pages long, but here are some of the key points.

There will be no taxes on goods (tariffs) or limits on the amount that can be traded (quotas) between the UK and the EU from 1 January

Some new checks will be introduced at borders, such as safety checks and customs declarations.

There are some new restrictions on certain UK animal food products. For example, uncooked meats like sausages and burgers can't enter the EU unless they are frozen to -18C.

Having a deal in place means that the fear that some goods could become more expensive has been avoided.

However, businesses will still need to prepare for new procedures at ports, and if new paperwork is incomplete, it could lead to disruption.

SERVICES AND QUALIFICATIONS

Businesses offering services, such as banking, architecture and accounting, will lose their automatic right of access to EU markets and will face some restrictions.

There will no longer be automatic recognition of professional qualifications for people such as doctors, chefs and architects.

Rather than following one set of rules for the whole of the EU, UK businesses will need to comply with the regulations in each individual country.

It will be harder for people with qualifications gained in the UK to sell their services in the EU. Individuals will need to check each country's rules to make sure their qualification is still recognised.

However, the UK and EU have pledged to keep talking to try to improve access for the service sector in the future.

The UK government says EHIC will be replaced with a new UK Global Health Insurance Card, but full details have not been released yet.

Pets will still be allowed in the EU, but it will be a more complicated process as owners will need to obtain an animal health certificate for each trip they make.

UK mobile operators will be able to charge for roaming, so people should check with their mobile phone company before travelling.

Fishing was the hardest and last issue to be resolved in the negotiation, and some UK fishermen are unhappy with the arrangement. The Scottish Fishermen's Federation, for example, says the deal does not give the UK enough control of its waters.

Starting in 2026, the UK and the EU will hold regular talks on fishing access. So there could be more heated arguments ahead.

EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE AND OTHER DISPUTES

There will be no role in the UK for the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which is the highest court in the EU.

Disputes that cannot be resolved between the UK and the EU will be referred to an independent tribunal instead.

Ending the role of the ECJ was a key UK demand as Brexit supporters said it would allow the UK to "take back control" of its laws.

The ECJ could still have a role in Northern Ireland because it continues to follow some EU trade rules.

If either side moves too far away from the current rules around product standards, tariffs (charges on imports) could be imposed on some goods in the future.

SECURITY AND DATA

The UK will no longer have automatic access to key security databases, but should be able to gain access upon request.

The UK will not be a member of the EU's law enforcement agency, Europol, but it will have a presence at its headquarters.

The UK is no longer obliged to comply with EU standards of data protection, but data will continue to be exchanged in the same way for at least four months as long as the UK doesn't change its data protection rules.

The UK's arrangement with Europol will be similar to the one the US currently has.

Many of the rules about storing and processing data still need be decided.

The UK will no longer participate in the Erasmus exchange programme, an EU scheme that helps students study in other countries.

Students at universities in Northern Ireland will continue to participate in Erasmus, as part of an arrangement with the Irish government.

Students that have already started courses in the EU will continue to receive support for fees.

A new scheme named after the mathematician Alan Turing will begin in September 2021. The government says it will be similar to Erasmus but will include countries across the world.

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Brexit: What are the key points of the deal?

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These are the most important aspects of the UK-EU deal, and what they mean for people's lives and businesses.

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robert.sainte-luce@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr

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BBC correspondents on the background, jargon, (and some of the) questions and answers as the UK prepares to leave the EU.

These short films aired on BBC News in 2017 and 2018 and reflect the situation at that time.

Find out more about Brexit issues on our special index

Two sides of Theresa May's deal in 96 seconds

Round-up of the day PM faced confidence vote

Brexit deal: Does this mean everything is decided?

The Brexit agreement summarised in two minutes

What do all these Brexit terms mean?

Brexit basics: The backstop

Brexit basics: The transition

The customs union explained in 45 seconds

Is the EU really united over Brexit?

What are the options available for the UK?

What will happen to trade?

Brexit and the economy

Brexit and the Irish border issue

Birmingham's Brexit concerns

Brexit and immigration

What will Brexit mean for the union?

What is Brexit?

Don't be bamboozled by Brexit jargon

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Brexit video explainers: What is it all about?

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BBC correspondents on the background, jargon, (and some of the) questions and answers as the UK prepares to leave the EU. These short films aired on BBC News in 2017 and 2018 and reflect the situation at that time. Find out more about Brexit issues on our special index

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Both sides say there a still significant areas of disagreement - for example, on EU proposals for a so-called "level playing field", which would see the UK and EU maintain similar minimum standards on things like workers' rights and environmental protection.

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Both sides say there a still significant areas of disagreement - for example, on EU proposals for a so-called "level playing field", which would see the UK and EU maintain similar minimum standards on things like workers' rights and environmental protection.

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After months of negotiations, the UK and European Union finally agreed a deal that will define their future relationship, which comes into effect at 23.00GMT on 31 December.

It has. The UK voted to leave the EU in 2016 and officially left the trading bloc - its nearest and biggest trading partner - on 31 January 2020.

However, both sides agreed to keep many things the same until 31 December 2020, to allow enough time to agree to the terms of a new trade deal.

It was a complex, sometimes bitter negotiation, but they finally agreed a deal on 24 December.

The deal contains new rules for how the UK and EU will live, work and trade together.

While the UK was in the EU, companies could buy and sell goods across EU borders without paying taxes and there were no limits on the amount of things which could be traded.

Under the terms of the deal, that won't change on 1 January, but to be sure that neither side has an unfair advantage, both sides had to agree to some shared rules and standards on workers' rights, as well as many social and environmental regulations. You can read more detail on other aspects of the deal, including more on travel, fishing, and financial services, here.

Freedom to work and live between the UK and the EU also comes to an end, and in 2021, UK nationals will need a visa if they want to stay in the EU more than 90 days in a 180-day period.

Northern Ireland will continue to follow many of the EU's rules in order to avoid a hardening of its border with the Republic of Ireland. This will mean however that new checks will be introduced on goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

Now that it's no longer in the EU, the UK is free to set its own trade policy and can negotiate deals with other countries. Talks are being held with the US, Australia and New Zealand - countries that currently don't have free trade deals with the EU.

There may not be new taxes to pay at the border, but there will be new paperwork, and the potential for it to cause delays is a serious concern.

"This is the biggest imposition of red tape that businesses have had to deal with in 50 years," according to William Bain from the British Retail Consortium.

The UK says it will delay making most checks for six months, to allow people to get used to the new system, but the EU will be checking paperwork and carrying out checks from day one. So if businesses are not prepared, or do not fill in the new paperwork correctly, it could cause delays and backlogs at ports like Dover.

The government has known about this for years, and has made plans to divert trade to other ports around the country and has built lorry parks in Kent, to avoid gridlock on the roads.

It's difficult to predict what the scale of any disruption might be, but government minister Michael Gove has said that UK businesses should prepare for some "bumpy moments".

Sadly, no. Decisions are still to be made on data sharing and on financial services, and the agreement on fishing only lasts five years.

Also while the UK and EU have agreed to some identical rules now, they don't have to be identical in the future, and if one side takes exception to the changes, they can trigger a dispute, which could ultimately lead to tariffs (charges on imports) being imposed on some goods in the future.

Expect the threat of disputes to be a new constant in UK-EU relations.

What Brexit words mean

The last few years have seen many words and phrases enter our lives. We haven't used them here, but politicians do use them. Here's what some of them mean:

Transition period: The 11-month period following the UK's exit from the EU (finishing at the end of 2020), during which time the UK has followed EU rules, to allow leaders to make a deal.

Free trade: Trade between two countries, where neither side charges taxes or duties on goods crossing borders.

Level playing field: A set of rules to ensure that one country, or group of countries, doesn't have an unfair advantage over another. This can involve areas such as workers' rights and environmental standards. Free trade agreements like the Brexit deal often include level playing field measures.

Tariff: A tax or duty to be paid on goods crossing borders.

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Brexit: What you need to know about the UK leaving the EU

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The UK and EU begin a new relationship on 1 January 2021.

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Brexit explained: what happens when the UK leaves the EU?

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Where did Brexit come from? | CNBC Explains

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Brexit Britain: The inside story of how the Leave campaign won - BBC Newsnight

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Brexit explained: What is the problem with the Irish border?

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BRIT POLITICS - All About British Politics and History

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Facts, quotes, speeches, news and analysis about British politics and history. For all ages, students and free to use.

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A guide to the party political system in Britain

About-Britain.com - A discovery of Britain, the country and its life

Britain's political parties in chaos

4th September 2019. Conservative party in crisis. When Boris Johnson took over as Conservative leader, he had a small majority in the House of commons. As from today he runs a minority government. Two Conservative MPs have defected to the Lib-Dems, and in the House of Commons on 3rd September 21 Conservative MPs, including several former ministers, voted against their own government in order to allow Parliament to try to pass legislation to stop Boris Johnson from taking the UK out of the European Union on 31st October without a deal.

23rd July 2019. Boris Johnson has been chosen by the Conservative Party as their new leader, and therefore as the new Prime Minister of the UK. Boris received 66% of the vote, which was open to the 159,000 members of the Conservative Party.
A highly controversial politician, Boris Johnson is going to find it very hard to govern. He is likely to have a majority of just one seat in the House of Commons (the Lib-Dems are expected to win back a seat from the Conservatives in a by-election on August 1st), and a number of leading members of the Conservative Party have said that they will not serve in his government.
Boris Johnson lead the campaign to take Britain out of the European Union, and has promised to do so by 31st October, "deal or no deal"; however Parliament has already voted against a "no-deal Brexit", and there is likely to be a strong majority in the House of Commons ready to block "no-deal" if Johnson should appear to be moving in that direction.

European parliamentary election results for the UK
18th July 2019. Parliament votes to prevent the next Prime Minister taking the UK out of the EU without a deal, after Boris Johnson (who is expected to be chosen by the Conservative Party as their new leader) says that he will deliver Brexit by 31st October' with or without a deal
27 May 2019.
Results: The anti-EU Brexit Party took the largest share of the vote
31.6%
The Liberal Democrats came second, with 20.3%
Labour clung on to third place with 14.1%, closely followed by
The Green Party with 12.7%
The Conservatives could only take fifth place, with just 9.1%
The remaining votes went to smaller or regional parties, including the Scottish nationalists

Theresa May resigns as Prime Minister

Theresa May has announced that she will resign as Prime Minister on 7th June. She will stay on after that for as long as is needed for the Conservative Party to find a replacement. The current favourite is Boris Johnson.
May is resigning because she has been unable to find a solution to the Brexit crisis.
That is not surprising, given that Britain, the Conservative government, the Cabinet and Parliament are all deeply divided over the question of Brexit. At all levels, there are some who are strongly in favour of Brexit, and others who are vehemently against it.
And with a third strongly in favour of Brexit, a third strongly against it, and a third undecided, finding a compromise that will please everyone is an impossible task. May tried and failed; and failed repeatedly.
Her successor is not likely to have any more success.
There is no satisfactory solution to this crisis. May tried for consensus, a middle-of-the-road soft Brexit that might unite people from both sides. In the end it united nobody except the middle third of "undecided". It displeased two thirds of her party, of Parliament, and of the people; for those in favour of Brexit it was too little, and for those opposed to it it was too much.
Her successor may go for a "hard Brexit"... but that too will displease two thirds of people in Britain and in Parliament. Parliament has already voted against a hard Brexit. And Parliament will reject it again, as long as Parliament is consulted.
Alternatively May's successor may decide to cancel Brexit. That will certainly displease a third of the people and may be displease up to two thirds of the people.
Brexit has done immense damage to the UK, to politics in general, and to the European Union. The next British Prime Minister, whoever he/she is, will not be able to solve the problem any more satisfactorily than Theresa May.
There remain two solutions that will be less damaging than the others. They are for the next Prime Minister to revoke Article 50, and thus cancel Brexit; or to wash his/her hands of the problem, and give the fate of Brexit back to the people, i.e. call a second referendum.
A change of prime-ministers will not make the problem go away. It will not lead to a satisfactory solution to this intractable problem.

4 May 2019. In local elections, the Conservative party lost over 1300 councillors and the Labour party lost 84 councillors.
The winners were the Liberal Democrats, campaigning on a clear stop-Brexit platform, who gained 704 councillors, and the Greens, also campaigning against Brexit, who gained 198 seats. There were also big gains for independent candidates

March 2019 : Brexit is posponed. The British parliament cannot agree on any type of Brexit. Theresa May's "Deal" with the EU has been rejected by parliament three times. For Brexit hardliners, it is too soft; for those opposed to Brexit, it is too pointless.
It is clear that there the idea of finding any sort of acceptable "consensus" on Brexit among British voters and in the British parliament is fantasy.
There can be no consensus on Brexit, as opinions are too divided.

Early March 2019. A new centrist anti-Brexit party, called ChangeUK, has been set up by 7 MPs who have defected from the Labour Party, and three from the Conservative party and one independent.

Latest: 16th January 2019. Conservative Party split as 118 MPs rebel and vote against Theresa May's Brexit bill.
For more on this see Brexit timeline

Latest: 12th December 2018. Theresa May wins a vote of no confidence as leader of the Conservative Party.
This "no-confidence" vote was an internal vote just involving Conservative Members of Parliament. Right-wing members of the party tried to remove her from office, but failed. Out of 317 Conservative MPs, 200 expressed their confidence in Mrs. May, while 117 expressed no confidence in their leader.
Mrs. May is now safe for at least a year (unless Parliament as a whole, not just the Conservative MPs, votes no confidence in her. For the time being, this seems improbable.) But with 117 members of her own party ready to rebel against her, she is not in a very strong position.
Some moderate Conservative MPs seem to be hoping that the Party will actually split, and that the right-wing Eurosceptics will leave to form their own hard-right party, perhaps by allying with what remains of UKIP. But this seems unlikely.
While they have shown, by the no-confidence vote, that they are in a minority in the party, the right-wing hard-Brexit-supporting MPs are liable to believe that they will get nowhere by dividing the party and setting up a new one; better for them to remain in the party where they can hope one day to take control In Britain, many ordinary people are calling for a complete realignment of parties, with a big new centre party including moderates from both Left and Right... which would achieve more or less the same result, by leaving the far-right to take control of a much reduced Conservative party. But few if any Conservative or Labour party members and MPs have shown any interest in this.

July 2018 - The Conservative Party - long divided between the free-marketing neo-liberals on the far right, and consensual "one nation" pro-European Conservatives in the centre, is in chaos, following the resignation of two leading Brexiteer ministers from Theresa May's cabinet. Chief Brexit negotiator David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson resigned from the government today in protest against the "soft Brexit" agreement reached by the Government last Friday. The future of Brexit is very much in the balance.
More details here : Is Brexit inevitable?
British general election 2017
The Conservatives lost their majority, but remain the largest party in the House of Commons; Theresa May has vowed to continue as prime minister, but how long can she remain in power? And what happens next ?

The British electoral system

Britain uses a historic "first-past-the-post" electoral system. There is just one round of voting, and the candidate with the most votes wins. That's it. Thus, if there are ten candidates standing for a seat, candidates A to J, and candidates B to J each get 9.95 % of the vote, 0.4% of the votes are invalid, and candidate A gets 10% of the vote, candidate A is elected. There is no runoff.
Though 10% of the vote is a small minority, it is more than any other candidate, and is thus described as a relative majority , or as a "plurality" in American English.

British political parties from their origins to today

A short history of political parties in Britain

England has the oldest parliament in the world. The English parliament met for the first time at the Palace of Westminster in the year 1265, but it took more than four centuries before the concept of "political parties" gave a new dimension to political life in Britain.
Before the birth of political parties in the seventeenth century, the English parliament consisted of aristocrats and wealthy men who formed alliances and majorities based on specific factors or loyalties. It was not until after the English Civil War, and parliamentary upheavals during the Republican years of the Commonwealth and Protectorate (1649-1660), that the first English political parties began to take shape. During the years from 1678 to 1681, and the constitutional crisis known as the Exclusion Crisis, most members of the English parliament formed into two "parties", named Whigs and Tories. The descendants of these two original parties are the two parties that formed the coalition government under Prime Minister David Cameron from 2010 to 2015.

Until the early 20th century, alone or in coalition with other groups, these two political parties in turn formed successive British governments, based on the results of parliamentary elections.
Initially, the Whigs were the party of the liberal and reforming aristocracy. In contrast to the Tories, the Whig Party attracted people more favorable to constitutional reforms, and in 1832 led the most significant modernization of the British Parliament, the Reform Act, which rebalanced parliamentary constituencies, and greatly expanded the electoral base to the middle classes. In the 1850's, the Whig Party became the most important element of a union of Whigs and Radicals who took the name " Liberal Party". This centrist party continued until 1988, when it merged with the new but smaller Social Democratic Party to form today's Liberal Democrats
. The word Tory designated early supporters of strong royal power; Tories were monarchists and traditionalists, especially at the time of the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. During the eighteenth century, the Whigs dominated British politics, and the Tory party played a relatively small role in the political life of the United Kingdom.
This changed in the last three decades of the eighteenth century, when the rise of reformism and radicalism in Europe, which was to lead notably to the French Revolution (1789), gave a new impetus to defenders of the status quo and conservatism. The Tories re-emerged as a major force in British politics in 1770 - but this time as a modern party in favor of maintaining the best traditions of Britain, but at the same time strongly supporting the new opportunities created by the industrial revolution and imperial and commercial expansion. During the 19th century - as today - the Tory party, which became the Conservative Party in 1834, was torn between its traditionalists and its reformers. Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative prime minister from 1874 to 1880, was one of the great reformers of the 19th century.

After the First World War, a new party came to power in the British Parliament, the Labour Party. The first Labour MPs had been elected in 1900 as representatives of the Independent Labour Party. The Labour Party formed a minority government in 1924, but it did not last. Labour first formed a majority government in 1929. The rise of the Labour Party came however at the expense of the other non-Conservative party, the Liberals, and Labour replaced the Liberals as the main alternative to the Conservatives.
From 1929 to 2010, power alternated between the Conservatives and the Labour Party.
Following the general election of 2010, no single party emerged with an absolute majority of MPs; so for the first time in living memory, a coalition government was formed, with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats sharing power.

Former stability of the political landscape

British prime ministers of recent years. Left to Right Gordon Brown and Tony Blair (Labour), John Major (Conservative), Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat, deputy PM) and David Cameron (Conservative, PM in 2014)

As this historical overview shows, the British political landscape in general has until very recently been characterized by a remarkable stability. The British electoral system, a system of "relative majority" (known as the " first past the post" system) ¹, has not changed for more than four centuries, and is favorable to large parties and stable governments. It tends to prevent parties fragmenting into smaller factions or clans, and encourages consensus positions around strong party leaders.
In a referendum in 2011, British voters reaffirmed their commitment to this historic electoral system, rejecting a new system that would have introduced an element of proportional representation.
Britain's three major parties are all now more than a century old, and the system makes it very hard for new parties to get a foot on the ladder. The rise of the Labour Party in the early 20th century was the result of major changes in society. Since then, no new party has succeeded in establishing itself in England, and new parties that are created remain marginal in terms of representation, or merge with larger ones. The situation is different in other parts of the United Kingdom, where nationalist parties have broken into the political landscape, even to the point of becoming the principal political party in Scotland.
However, the result of the European elections held in May 2019 show that an earthquake has hit the formerly stable political landcape. In the European elections,the traditional "main" parties, the Conservatives and Labour, took just 25% of the vote between them, with the Conservatives taking their lowest share of the vote since the nineteenth century... less than 10%. Over 66% of the votes were taken by other parties, notably the new Brexit Party (31%) , the Liberal Democrats (20%) and the Greens (12%).

The Political landscape in Britain today

2016 - 2019 - Parties in turmoil

In the May 2019 European Union parliamentary election, the ruling Conservative Party fell to a historic low of under 10% of the vote. The far right, in the shape of Nigel Farage's "Brexit party", took over 31.6%, while the three main anti-Brexit parties, the Lib Dems (20.3%) the Greens (12.1%) and ChangeUK (3.4%) took a combined share of 35.8%. Labour, the main opposition party, saw its share of the vote fall to 14.1%

The "Brexit" referendum has plunged the main British political parties into turmoil, with both main parties Conservative and Labour being (irreparably?) divided about Britain's relationship with the European Union.
The Conservative party has been split down the middle by opposition between pro- and anti-Europeans; but with a few exceptions, most of the Conservative MP's who formerly campaigned against Brexit have fallen silent since the election of Mrs. May.
The Labour Party is riven by dissention between a militant party membership, and the party's generally moderate MPs. Labour MPs overwhelmingly passed a vote of no confidence in leader Jeremy Corbyn, who nevertheless refused to stand down as he was elected overwhelmingly by party members.
Of the three main traditional parties, only the Liberal-Democrat party has emerged intact from the chaos: the Lib-Dems always have been, and remain, firmly pro-European.
The Labour Party remains torn between a hard-left Eurosceptic party membership, and a largely social-democrat Parliamentary party (its MPs). Internally fractured, Labour was seen, since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader, as being unable to present itself as a credible challenge to the Conservative government. By April 2017 opinion polls showed that support for Labour had fallen to a historic low (around 25%), prompting Mrs. May to call another general election. However, thanks to an excellent campaign, Labour seriously narrowed the gap, and though they did not beat the Conservatives in the June 2017 election, they increased their representation in parliament, depriving the Conservatives of the absolute majority they had enjoyed since 2015.
Since then Labour has been plagued by issues of anti-semitism and criticism that the party under Corbyn is an ineffectual opposition that is not standing up to Mrs. May's Brexit dealing. Although latest opinion polls (December 2018) show that a majority of Labour supporters want a second referendum on Brexit, and many Labour MPs want this too, Jeremy Corbyn has refused to give official party backing to the call for a second referendum.

Main British parties (excluding regionalist parties / nationalsts )

Right-wing or conservative parties

The Conservative Party

The Boris Johnson era

The Conservative party has been taken over by the hard right. Boris Johnson has filled his Cabinet (government) with men and women who campaigned for Brexit, and has appointed arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg to the position of Leader of the House of Commons. The Leader of the House is the member of the Government who is in charge of organising the business of the House.
The centrist Conservatives who were prominent in all of Theresa May's cabinets - men such as Philip Hammond, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Rory Stewart or David Gauke, former Justice Secretary - have either refused to work with Boris Johnson, or have been dropped from the government.
Under Johnson, the Conservative Party has become the party of Hard Brexit - forcing traditional moderate Conservatives to question their party loyalty. Many supporters and a fair number of former party members have abandoned the party, some of them becoming independents, others (even including former Conservative deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine) joining or supporting the Lib Dems. Others will follow, as Johnson plans to expel "rebels" from the party.
On September 3rd, one more MP defected from the Conservative Party to join the Lib Dems, while 21 "rebels" sided with the Opposition parties in the House of Commons, to take control of the Parliamentary timetable out of the government's hands, and let Parliament determine its own agenda.

Johnson is a highly controversial and highly ambitious politician who was previously sacked twice from ministerial posts and was once sacked from his job as a journalist for the Times newspaper, for making up facts. Yet he is a charismatic populist who has a strong following among older Conservative voters, precisely the group that make up the majority of members of today's Conservative party

The Theresa May government

The May government, the government in charge of negotiating Britain's exit from the European Union ( Brexit) was a strange mix of right-wing nationalism and centrist "compassionate Conservatism". In her speech to the Tory Party conference in Autumn 2016, Theresa May sounded almost like a leader of the Labour Party in her promises to help the "Jams" (those who are Just-About-Managing to get by in life) ; yet on Brexit, her rhetoric has been that of strident nationalism. In a move to appease the hard-liners in her party, and much to the alarm of the Conservative centre, she pledged not only to take the UK out of the EU, but also out of the Single European Market, the free trade area that extends beyond the EU.
As from June 9th 2017, May had to depend for support on an agreement (not a coalition) with "friends and allies" in the right-wing protestant Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, to form a government. This was a marriage of convenience which failed to give May the success she was hoping for. She resigned in 2019 after her Brexit agreement, carefully negotiated with the EU, was rejected three times in the House of Commons.

This is the British party of the right, including a broad range of traditional conservatives and royalists, neo-liberals and social conservatives. For the last forty years, the party has been deeply divided over issues of sovereignty and the role of Britain in the European Union. A majority of party members are in favour of a revision of the terms of Britain's membership of the European Union, and the holding of a referendum on withdrawal. But other Conservatives, including industrial and business leaders, are strongly pro-European. Recent leaders have been beset by problems trying to reconcile the strongly opposing views of party members on this issue.
In 2016, the divisions were sharply amplified during the campaign for the Brexit referendum; two thirds of the Party's MPs - essentially the centre-right moderate wing of the party - were in favour of remaining in the EU; one third, the Conservative sovereignist hard-liners and the neo-conservative faction, were in favour of leaving. However, grass-roots Conservative party activists are on the whole further to the right than their MPs.
Since the resignation of David Cameron, the Party has moved to the right, as pro-Brexit and sovereignist MPs have taken up key positions in Mrs. May's cabinet.

The Conservative Party is made up of local Associations which play a major role in the selection of candidates and the appointment of the party leader. The importance of this local structure reflects the very old tradition of territorial representation in British politics, a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. However, "Central Office" often imposes candidates on local associations to enable up-and-coming stars to enter parliament, as was the case with Margaret Thatcher.
In her short speech to the press, on taking up her job as Prime Minister, Theresa May positioned herself very clearly as a "one-nation" moderate Conservative, keen to build a new Britain for ordinary people, not just for the wealthy. It was a speech that could equally well have been made by David Cameron, or most of the recent leaders of the Labour Party.

New - 2019. The Brexit Party
Nigel Farage, who founded UKIP, has now quit UKIP and founded a new anti-EU party called simply the "Brexit party". With no policies other than to call for a 'hard" Brexit, the BP has nevertheless immediately become the UKs most popular political party in terms of voting intentions for the forthcoming European Elections.
The BP has attracted most of the voters who previously supported UKIP, plus those Conservative voters who believe in Brexit. As a result, recent EU election voting intention polls put the Brexit Party on about 27%, with the Conservatives on just 12%.

UKIP - The UK Independence Party
A sovereignist party that wants Britain to withdraw from the European Union. The party has little in the way of policies, apart from Europe-bashing, but is surprisingly popular with voters disgruntled with the perceived failures of the main parties . In the 2015 election, UKIP obtained just one member of Parliament, a sitting MP who had moved over from the conservatives. UKIP has several members in the European Parliament.
In 2016, UKIP provided the foot-soldiers of the campaign to take Britain out of the European Union; but the non-UKIP part of the Leave campaign has sought to distance itself from UKIP since the referendum, worried at the damage that UKIP's xenophobic campaigning has done to Britain.

BNP - British National Party
An extreme right-wing party , with nationalistic and xenophobic views. No members of parliament

Parties of the centre

The Liberal Democrat party - the Liberal Democrats , or Lib Dems

A party of the centre, formed in 1988 by the merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) , the latter being made up of dissidents from the Labour party. The Lib Dems are thus a mixture of social conservatives and social democrats. The party is the most pro-European of the major British parties, and until 2015 shared power with the Conservative Party in the coalition government.
Many of those who voted Lib-Dem in 2010 were furious when the party chose to go into colaition with the Conservatives, and in the 2015 election, the Lib Dems lost most of their MPs. However, following the election of left-winger Jeremy Corbyn to the head of the Labour party in September 2015, and the subequent internal divisions in the Labour party, support for the Lib-Dems has begun to rise again
In 2016, expectations have been raised further since the Brexit referendum vote. The Liberal-Democrats are starting to appear as the only credible party at the Centre of British politics, as the Conservative party moves to the right, and the Labour Party moves increasingly to the left. In December 2016, an unknown Lib-Dem candidate achieved a dramatic success by beating the Conservatives, with a swing of 21% away from the Conservatives, in a parliamentary by-election fought almost entirely on the issue of Brexit.

In the June 2017 election, the Lib-Dems increased their number of MPs from 8 to 11, taking seats from the Conservatives and the Scottish Nationalists. However they did not emerge as the new party of opposition, and as well as gaining seats, they lost some. . In spite of being the only one of the three major parties that is committed to opposing Brexit, and in spite of gaining 60,000 new members in 2018 the Lib-Dems continue to show very poorly in opinion polls compared to Conservatives or Labour.
. As the only party that has been clearly and consistently opposed to Brexit, the Liberal Democrats are staging a remarkable comeback. In the European Parliamentary Elections, they came second, beating both the Conservatives and Labour. They are expected to increase their representation in Parliament in August by retaking the Brecon and Randnorshire seat from the Conservatives in a by-election. The party has also been buoyed by the election of its youngest and first female leader, Jo Swinson, aged 39.

The Greens - The Green Party

A centre-left party, in many ways rather middle-class, committed to the promotion of environmental issues. One Member of Parliament (since 2010)

The parties of the Left

The Labour Party

The Labour party covers virtually the whole spectrum of left wing politics in Britain, and includes a smaller party known as the Co-operative party. Until 2010, since the time of Tony Blair, it had been dominated by the social-liberal centre-left (initially known as New Labour): the collectivist "Old Labour" views were very much in a minority . From 2010 to 2015, under the leadership of Ed Miliband, it remained essentially a centre-left party; but in September 2015, with the election to the leadership of a left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party has moved into a new period in its history. (see below)
The party is supported and funded by the British trade unions, but it is not controlled or significantly influenced by them, and this influence was further reduced in 2015. Very weak following the recession of the 1970s, the party was largely reformed later by Tony Blair, who transformed it into a modern social democratic party.
The Labour Party is made up of local parties (Constituency Labour Parties), most British trade unions and other associations. These structures send delegates to party conferences, depending on the number of their members. Party Conferences define the general lines of party policy, but conference decisions are not binding on the parliamentary party . Until 2014 Labour party leaders were elected by three electoral colleges, individual members , Labour MPs, and trade unions, each college representing a third of the final result. The last leader, Ed Miliband, was elected by the weight of union vote, even though both Labour MPs and individual members preferred his brother David Miliband. After his election, and to reassure not only the country but also a large number of his constituents , Ed Miliband sought to emphasize his total independence from the unions. In 2014, he announced plans to reduce the role of the unions even further in the election of the party leader. A new electoral process was introduced, whereby the leader is elected by paid up members of the party and anyone else who signs up and pays to vote in the electoral process.
Following the party's defeat in the 2015 General Election, Miliband stepped down as leader of the Labour Party. In September however, Party members and other electors chose as the new leader of the labour Party a radical left-winger, Jeremy Corbyn - the most left-wing leader the party has ever had. Corbyn's election has sparked a serious rift in the party, and within hours of his election, eight members of the shadow cabinet had announced that they would not be part of Corbyn's team. Others are expected to follow.
For Corbyn's supporters, his election marks a return by the Labour party to its core socialist values; for his opponents, it has simply made the Labour Party unelectable for at least ten years.... if not longer. Opinion polls persistently show that while Labour party militants may favour a strong left-wing agenda, British voters as a whole do not.
In 2016, during the Brexit referendum campaign, Jeremy Corbyn was repeatedly accused of showing only half-hearted support for his party's official position, which is in favour of Britain remaining in the European Union. In the days following the vote, eleven members of his Shadow cabinet either resigned or were sacked, and a motion has been tabled calling on Corbyn to step down, on the grounds that he does not show the leadership qualities that the party needs if it wants to have any hope of winning another General Election.
However, in September, Corbyn was reelected as leader of the Labour Party, with an increased majority, thanks to a surge in membership

In April 2017, polls showed the Labour party to be at a historic low level of around 25% - with many traditional Labour voters moving towards the Conservatives on account their support for Brexit and their rhetoric on immigration.
When Theresa May called the surprise general election, it was expected that Labour would lose a lot of seats as more and more traditional voters in working-class areas moved over to the Conservatives. However thanks to poor campaigning by the Conservatives and very good campaigning by Jeremy Corbyn, Labour instead gained 29 seats and the Conservatives lost 12, and lost their absolute majority in Parliament.
In January 2019, in spite of the Conservative government's huge unpopularity, Labour has not surged ahead in the opinion polls, as normally happens when a government is very unpopular. Polls suggest that this is essentially due to Jeremy Corbyn who has refused to take any clear personal position on Brexit. Corbyn continues to say that he is in favour of a "better" Brexit, while opinion polls show that a big majority of Labour voters, specially the young, are against Brexit.

Respect

The party of a populist left-wing Labour party dissident, George Galloway, who was its sole MP until 2015.

The Communist Party of Great Britain

Very marginal, the party has only ever had two elected MPs. It was never a mass party, not even when at its peak in the 1940's.

Main regional and nationalist parties

England does not have any serious regional parties, however, regional or nationalist parties are now very important in the political landscape of other countries that make up the United Kingdom.

SNP - Scottish Nationalist Party

Currently the most important political party in Scotland, and the party in power in the Scottish Parliament . A left-of-centre nationalist party, that organized a referendum on Scottish independence in autumn 2014. In the referendum, Scots voted to remain part of the United Kingdom.
In 2016, following the result of the Brexit referendum vote in which Scotland overwhelmingly voted to remain in the European Union, party leader Nicola Sturgeon is currently looking at the possibility of holding a second Scottish independence referendum before the UK actually leaves the European Union (if that should actually happen, which for the time being, remains a possibility).

In the 2017 General Election, the SNP lost 19 of its 50 seats in the UK parliament, as many Scots turned away from the issue of Scottish nationalism towards parties in favour of remaining in the UK. However the SNP still holds an absolute majority of Scottish seats in the UK parliament.

Plaid Cymru - Welsh nationalist party

Major Welsh party, which did control the Welsh Assembly, but is now on a par with the Labour Party, which is also very well established in this part of the United Kingdom. In 2017 Plaid Cymru (pronounced Plied Coomry) has three MPs in the UK parliament.

Democratic Unionist Party ²

The DUP, the conservative Protestant majority party in Northern Ireland (Ulster), is very favorable to the maintenance of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, but not to Britain remaining in the European Union. They are in favour of Brexit, and reject the idea that Northern Ireland could have special status in the UK after Brexit; however they want Britain - or at least Northern Ireland - to retain full access to the European market (in the framework of a "Comprehensive free trade and customs agreement with the European Union") , positions that may be hard to reconcile.
The DUP was first formed in 1971 as a hard-line Protestant break-away party, dissatisfied with the direction taken by the official Ulster Unionist party, which was closely allied with the Conservatives.

In June 2017, the DUP agreed to support the Conservatives in the Westminster Parliament, allowing Theresa May to form a new government in spite of losing her absolute majority in the House of Commons. The DUP has 10 MPs. Without their support, Theresa May would have a minority government.

The majority party among the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, in favour of the withdrawal of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, and the reunification of Ireland.

SDLP

Social Democratic Party and Labour Party of Northern Ireland, a non-sectarian social democratic party made up of both Catholics and Protestants.

Notes:
1. The system of relative majority; The winner of any election is the person who gets the greatest number of votes, even if this is not an absolute majority of the votes cast.
2. The Northern Ireland Assembly is currently in the hands of a coalition between DUP and Sinn Fein , once bitter enemies of each other. However the Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended in 2016 following the failure of the DUP and Sinn Fein to continue working together.

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Political parties in Britain - a short guide

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About-Britain.com - A discovery of Britain, the country and its life 4th September 2019. Conservative party in crisis. When Boris Johnson took over as Conservative leader, he had a small majority in the House of commons. As from today he runs a minority government.

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A quick guide to the British Political System

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A quick guide to the British Political System

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A SHORT GUIDE TO THE
BRITISH POLITICAL SYSTEM

Contents

A VERY, VERY SHORT HISTORY

To understand fully any country's political system, one needs to understand something of its history. This is especially true of the United Kingdom because its history has been very different from most other nations and, as a result, its political system is very different from most other nations too.

Like its (unwritten) constitution, the British state evolved over time. We probably need to start in 1066 when William the Conqueror from Normandy invaded what we now call England, defeated the Anglo-Saxon King Harold and established a Norman dynasty. The Normans were not satisfied with conquering England and, over the next few centuries, tried to conquer Ireland, Wales and Scotland. They succeeded with the first two and failed with the last despite several wars over the centuries.

By one of those ironical twists of history, when Queen Elizabeth of England died in 1603, she was succeeded by her cousin James VI, King of Scots who promptly decamped from Edinburgh and settled in London as King James I of England while keeping his Scots title and running Scotland by remote control. Regal pickings were more lucrative in his southern capital.

A century later the Scottish economic and political elite bankrupted themselves on the Darien Scheme and agreed to a scheme of Union between England and Scotland to make themselves solvent again and so Great Britain with one Parliament based in London came into being. The Irish parliament was abolished in 1801 with Ireland returning members to Westminster and the new political entity was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The southern (Catholic) Irish never reconciled themselves to being ruled by the English and rebelled in 1916 and gained independence in 1922. The northern (Protestant) Irish did not want independence and so the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland arrived. Not a snappy name.

Meanwhile, although the Normans were the last to mount a successful invasion of the country, there were plenty of other plans to conquer the nation, notably the Spanish under King Philip II in 1588, the French under Napoleon in 1803-1805, and the Germans under Hitler in 1940. None succeeeded.

Furthermore, in recent centuries, Britain has not had a revolution of the kind experienced by so many other countries. Some might argue that the English Civil War (1642-1651) was the nation's revolution and - athough it was three and a half centuries ago - it did bring about a major shift in power, but the main constitutional consequence - the abolition of the monarchy - only lasted 11 years and the Restoration of the Monarchy has so far lasted 350 years (although it is now, of course, a very different monarchy). There was a time in British history which we call the Glorious Revolution (1688) but it was a very English revolution, in the sense that nobody died, if a rather Dutch revolution in that it saw William of Orange take the throne.

So the British have never had anything equivalent to the American Revolution or the French Revolution, they have not been colonised in a millennium but rather been the greatest colonisers in history, and in neither of the two world wars were they invaded or occupied.

HOW HISTORY HAS SHAPED THE POLITICAL SYSTEM

The single most important fact in understanding the nature of the British political system is the fundamental continuity of that system. For almost 1,000 years, Britain has not been invaded or occupied for any length of time or over any substantial territory as the last successful invasion of England was in 1066 by the Normans. Is this true of any other country in the world? I can only think of Sweden.

This explains why:

almost uniquely in the world, Britain has no written constitution (the only other such nations are Israel, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia)

the political system is not neat or logical or always fully democratic or particularly efficient

change has been very gradual and pragmatic and built on consensus

British attitudes towards the rest of Europe have been insular, not just geographically but culturally, which was a major factor behind the Brexit decision of 23 June 2016.

To simplify British political history very much, it has essentially been a struggle to shift political power and accountability from the all-powerful king - who claimed that he obtained his right to rule from God - to a national parliament that was increasingly representative of ordinary people and accountable to ordinary people. There have been many milestones along this long and troubled road to full democracy.
A key date in this evolution was 1215 when King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta which involved him sharing power with the barons. This is regarded as the first statement of citizen rights in the world - although Hungarians are proud of the Golden Bull of just seven years later.

The so-called Model Parliament was summoned by King Edward I in 1295 and is regarded as the first representative assembly. Unlike the absolute monarchs of other parts of Europe, the King of England required the approval of Parliament to tax his subjects and so, then as now, central to the exercise of power was the ability to raise funds.

The bicameral nature of the British Parliament - Commons and Lords - emerged in 1341 and the two-chamber model of the legislature has served as a template in very many other parliamentary systems.

The Bill of Rights of 1689 - which is still in effect - lays down limits on the powers of the crown and sets out the rights of Parliament and rules for freedom of speech in Parliament, the requirement for regular elections to Parliament, and the right to petition the monarch without fear of retribution.

It was the 19th century before the franchise was seriously extended and each extension was the subject of conflict and opposition. The great Reform Act of 1832 abolished 60 'rotten', or largely unpopulated, boroughs and extended the vote from 400,000 citizens to 600,000, but this legislation - promoted by the Whigs (forerunners of the Liberals) - was only carried after being opposed three times by the Tories (forerunners of the Conservatives). Further Reform Acts followed in 1867 and 1884. It was 1918 before the country achieved a near universal franchise and 1970 before the last extension of the franchise (to 18-21 year olds).

Another important feature of British political history is that three parts of the United Kingdom - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - have a special status and have local administrations with a wide range of responsibilities. However, England - which represents about 84% of the total UK population of around 65 million - does not have a clear and strong sense of regionalism. So the British political system does not have anything equivalent to the federal system of the 50 states in the USA. The nature of this (dis)United Kingdom took on a new form in the General Election of May 2015 when the Scottish National Party won 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland.

The final important part of British political history is that, since 1973, the UK has been a member of what is now called the European Union (EU). This now has 28 Member States covering most of the continent of Europe. Therefore the UK Government and Parliament are limited in some respects by what they can do because certain areas of policy or decision-making are a matter for the EU which operates through a European Commission appointed by the member governments and a European Parliament elected by the citizens of the member states [for a guide to the working of the EU click here]. However, in a referendum held on 23 June 2016, the British people narrowly voted that the country should leave the European Union (a decision dubbed Brexit), a process that was activated in March 2017 but will take two years and be very complex.

The year 2015 was a special year for the British Parliament as it was the 750th anniversary of the de Montfort Parliament (the first gathering in England that can be called a parliament in the dictionary sense of the word), along with the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the document that set the scene for the later 1265 de Montfort Parliament.

However, the period since the Brexit referendum of mid 2016 has exhibited a febrile and frenetic state of politics in Britain in which the unwritten constitutrion has come under unprecedented strain.

Traditionally Britain has seen no need for the legalistic idea of writing down its constitution in one place. Instead it has relied on the notion that its politicians know where the unwritten lines of the constitution lie and do not cross them. As expressed by academic and historian Professor Peter Hennessey: "The British constitution is a state of mind. It requires a sense of restraint all round to make it work." Rather quaintly, he calls this "the good chap theory of government".

THREE ARMS OF THE STATE

The British political system is headed by a monarchy but essentially the powers of the monarch as head of state - currently Queen Elizabeth II - are ceremonial. The most important practical power is the choice of the Member of Parliament to form a government, but the monarch follows the convention that this opportunity is granted to the leader of the political party with the most seats in the House of Commons or who stands the best chance of commanding a majority in a vote of confidence in the Commons.

Although any remaining powers of the monarchy are largely ceremonial, the Royal Family does have some subtle and hidden influence on the legislative process because of a little-known provision that senior royals - notably the Queen and her eldest son the Prince of Wales - have to be consulted about legislation that might affect their private interests and given the opportunity to have such legislation amended.

Traditionally the choice of monarch has been determined on the hereditary and primogeniture principles which means that the oldest male child of a monarch was the next in line to the throne. Under the terms of the Act of Settlement of 1701, the monarch and the monarch's spouse could not be Catholics because the UK monarch is also the Head of the Church of England. In 2015, the primogeniture principle was abolished, so that the next in line can now be a female eldest child, and the monarch can marry a Catholic but not himself or herself be one.

In classical political theory, there are three arms of the state:

1. The executive - the Ministers who run the country and propose new laws

2. The legislature - the elected body that passes new laws

3. The judiciary - the judges and the courts who ensure that everyone obeys the laws.

In the political system of the United States, the constitution provides that there must be a strict division of powers of these three arms of the state, so that no individual can be a member of more than one. So, for example, the President is not and cannot be a member of the Congress. This concept is called 'separation of powers', a term coined by the French political, enlightenment thinker Montesquieu. This is not the case in the UK where all Ministers in the government are members of the legislature and one individual, the Lord Chancellor, is actually a member of all three arms.
THE U.K. PARLIAMENT

The British Parliament - like that of most larger countries - is bicameral, that is there are two houses or chambers. One tends to find unicameral legislatures in smaller nations such as Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Israel and New Zealand, although China and Iran are two larger nations with a single legislative chamber (but neither of these countries is a democracy).

The British Parliament is often called Westminster because it is housed in a distinguished building in central London called the Palace of Westminster which stands out because of the clock tower at the south end (this is the Elizabeth Tower and it houses Big Ben) and the tower with a flag at the other end (this is the Victoria Tower). Although this is a grand building, it is in an appalling state of repair and it is planned that in 2025 Parliament will move out of the building for a £3.5 billion refurbishment programme lasting an estinated six years. The House of Commons will move to Richmond House and the House of Lords will relocate to the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre.

The House of Commons

This is the lower chamber but the one with the most authority. I worked there as a Research Assistant to Merlyn Rees MP, then Labour's Opposition spokesperson on Northern Ireland, from 1972-1974.

The House of Commons sits each week day for about half of the weeks of the year. The precise hours of sitting are:

Monday 2.30 - 10.30 pm

Tuesday 2.30 - 10.30 pm

Wednesday 11.30 am - 7.30 pm

Thursday 10.30 am - 6.30 pm

Friday 9.30 am - 3 pm

The Commons is chaired by the Speaker. Unlike the Speaker in the US House of Representatives, the post is non-political and indeed, by convention, the political parties do not contest the Parliamentary constituency held by the Speaker.

The House of Commons currently comprises 650 Members of Parliament or MPs (the number varies slightly from time to time to reflect population change). This is a large legislature by international standards. For instance, the House of Representatives in the USA has 435 seats but, of course, each of the 50 US states has its own legislature. Before the General Election of 2010, the Conservative Party said that it wished to reduce the number of Commons seats by around 10% (65 seats) and the Liberal Democrats said that the Commons should be reduced by 150 MPs. The Coalition Government of 2010-2015 passed legislation to reduce the number from 650 to 600, as part of a wider change to the number and size of constituencies, but Parliament blocked the process of redrawing boundaries that is necessary before an General Election can be held with fewer seats.

Rather oddly (but deliberately), there is insufficient seating capacity in the chamber of the House of Commons for all the MPs. Members do not sit at desks (like most legislatures) but on long, green-covered benches and there is only seating capacity for 437 MPs out of the total of 650. The origin of this strange arrangement is that the Commons first home was the medieval St Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster which could only fit around 400 Members.

Equally odd is that Members vote (votes are called 'divisions') by physically walking through one of the two lobbies which run along the side of the Commons chamber. These lobbies are the 'aye' lobby and the 'nay' lobby. This archaic procedure means that votes take a long time to conduct and it is not unknown for a member accidentally to walk into the wrong lobby. The votes are counted by 'tellers' who then return to the chamber to announce the numbers to the Speaker.

Each member in the House of Commons represents a geographical constituency. Typically a constituency would have around 60,000-80,000 voters, depending mainly on whether it is an urban or rural constituency. The largest constituency in the country is the Isle of Wight with around 110,000 electors, while the smallest is Na h-Eileanan an Iar (formerly known as the Western Isles) with an electorate of only arouind 22,000. The Coalition Government of 2010-2015 intended to make the size of constituencies more equal in terms of electors, but so far the legislation has not been implemented.

Every citizen aged 18 or over can vote once in the constituency in which they live. Voting is not compulsory (as it is in Australia). In the last General Election of May 2015, 66.1% of the electorate actually voted. Most democratic countries use a method of election called proportional representation (PR) which means that there is a reasonable correlation between the percentage of votes cast for a particular political party and the number of seats or representatives won by that party. However, much of the Anglo-Saxon world - the USA, Canada, and the UK but not Australia or New Zealand - uses a method of election called the simple majority system or 'first past the post' (FPTP). In this system, the country is divided into a number of constituencies each with a single member and the party that wins the largest number of votes in each constituency wins that constituency regardless of the proportion of the vote secured. The simple majority system of election tends to under-represent less successful political parties and to maximise the chance of the most popular political party winning a majority of seats nationwide even if it does not win a majority of the votes nationwide.

Until recently, in the UK (unlike many countries), there was not fixed term parliaments. A General Election - that is, a nationwide election for all 650 seats - was held when the Prime Minister called it, but the election could not be more than five years after the last one and it was usually around four years after the last one. I fought the General Elections of February 1974 and October 1974 as the Labour candidate for the north-east London constituency of Wanstead & Woodford. The Coalition Government of 2010-2015 passed legislation to provide for fixed five-year parliaments which meant that the next General Election was scheduled for May 2020. However, the Prime Minister Theresa May was able to call a snap General Election for 8 June 2017 by winning a Commons vote of more than two-thirds to activate provision for an early election in the Fixed Term Parliaments Act.

The result of the last General Election was as follows:

Conservative Party: 318 seats (down 13) with 42.45% of the vote

Labour Party: 262 seats (up 32) with 39.99% of the vote

Scottish National Party: 35 seats (down 19) with 3.04% of the vote

Liberal Democrat Party: 12 seats (up 4) with 7.4% of the vote

Other parties: 22 seats (down 1) with 7.1% of the vote

Total turnout nationwide was 69% - the highest since the election of 1997

Note 1: In practice, the Speaker is not counted against any political party because he or she is required to be neutral and therefore traditionally he or she is not opposed by other parties in the election.
Note 2: In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein - which won 7 constituencies in 2017 - does not take its seats.

Links:
House of Commons site click here
BBC live broadcasting of Commons proceedings click here

The House of Lords

This is the upper chamber but the one with less authority. Its main roles are to revise legislation and keep a check on government by scrutinising its activities. Since 1911, its power to block "money bills" is limited to one month and its power to block other bills is limited to one session, so ultimately it cannot block the will of the House of Commons. Furthermore, since 1945, there has been the Salisbury Convention that the House of Lords will not oppose a measure that was specifically mentioned in the last election manifesto of the political party forming the Government.

The House of Lords is an utterly bizarre institution that has no parallel anywhere in the democratic world. The explanation for the unusual nature of the Lords goes back to the beginning of this essay: the British political system has evolved very slowly and peacefully and it is not totally logical or democratic.

There is no fixed number of members in the House of Lords and the number fluctuates because of deaths, retirements and new appointments, but currently there are almost 800 members - many more than in the House of Commons, more than the combined houses of the American Congress or the Indian Parliament (although both of these nations have a federal system), and the second biggest legislative body in the world (after the Chinese National People's Congress which is effectively a rubber-stamping body). The number was actually halved to 666 in the reforms of 1999 but, since then, succesive Prime Ministers (especially David Cameron) have been adding new life peers much faster than members are dying. Indeed the last (Coalition) Government added over 100. Ironically the size of the House of Lords continues to rise at the same time as the House of Commons has legislated to reduce its size (although the legislation has not been implemented).

Historically most members of the House of Lords have been what we called hereditary peers. This meant that years ago a king or queen nominated a member of the aristocracy to be a member of the House and, since then, the right to sit in the House has passed through the family from generation to generation. Clearly this is totally undemocratic and the last Labour Government abolished the right of all but 92 of these hereditary peers to sit in the House.

Almost all the other members of today's House of Lords are what we call life peers. This means that they have been chosen by the Queen, on the advice of the Government, to sit in the House for as long as they live, but afterwards no member of their family has the right to sit in the House. Almost 200 are former Members of Parliament. Others are distinguished figures in fields such as education, health and social policy.

A small number of other members - 26 - are archbishops and bishops of the Church of England. The archbishops of Canterbury and York and the bishops of London, Durham and Winchester automatically take seats in the Lords, while the further 21 seats are allocated on the basis of length of service. Iran is the only other country in the world that provides automatic seats for senior religious figures in its legislature.

There is no retirement age for peers and the average age is an incredible 69.

Since the House of Lords is composed in a totally different manner from the House of Commons, the Government of the day - which usually has a majority in the Commons does not have a majority in the Lords. So, currently there is a Conservative Government in power, but only around 250 of the 800 members of the Lords (most appointed but some hereditary) take the Conservative whip. There are approaching 200 Labour Lords and about 100 Liberal Democrats.

There is nowhere near sufficient seating capacity in the chamber of the House of Lords for all the peers. Members do not sit at desks (like most legislatures) but on long, red-covered benches and there is only seating capacity for 230 peers out of the total of Aroind 800. Even on a 'whipped' vote, a couple of hundred peers will not turn up.

House of Lords reform is unfinished business. The Parliament Act of 1911 first raised the prospect of an elected upper house but it has still not happened. There is a cross-party consensus that it should become a mainly elected body, although there is as yet no agreement on the details of the next stage of reform.

Links:
House of Lords site click here
BBC live broadcasting of Lords proceedings click here

Some distinguishing features of the British Parliamentary system

Much of the work of Parliament is done in Committees rather than on the floor of the chamber. The House of Commons has two types of committee:

Select Committees are appointed for the lifetime of a Parliament, 'shadow' the work of a particular Government Department, conduct investigations, receive written and oral evidence, and issue reports. Membership is made up only of backbenchers and reflects proportionately the balance of the parties in the Commons.

General Committees (previously known as Standing Committees) are temporary bodies, most of them Public Bill Committees formed to examine the detail of a particular piece of proposed legislation and consider amendments to the Bill. Membership includes Government and Opposition spokepersons on the subject matter of the Bill and overall membership reflects proportionately the balance of the parties in the Commons.

The House of Lords only has Select Committees (it does not need Standing Committees because the details of Bills are considered on the floor of the chamber).

Finally there are some Joint Committees of the Commons and the Lords.

Discussion and debate involve quite a gladiatorial or confrontational approach. This is reflected in the physical shape of the chambers. Whereas most legislatures are semi-circular, both the House of Commons and the House of Lords are rectangular with the Government party sitting on one side and the Opposition parties sitting on the other side. The House of Lords alone has cross-benches for independent peers. It is quite normal for speakers in debates to be interrupted by other members, especially of another party, and, in the Commons, cheering and jeering is a regular occurrence.

In the Commons, there is a Prime Minister's Question (PMQ) Time for 30 minutes at 12 noon every Wednesday. Questions can be asked on any subject. This is frequently a heated affair with the Leader of the Opposition trying to embarrass the Prime Minister and it is the one part of the week's proceedings guaranteed to attract the interest of the media. In his book "A Journey", former Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote: "PMQs was the most nerve-wracking, discombobulating, nail-biting, bowel-moving, terror-inspiring, courage-draining experience in my prime ministerial life, without question."

The Government is normally assured of a majority in the House of Commons for any measure or vote. This is mainly because in the Commons there is a strong 'whipping' system in which political parties tell their members how to vote on every significant division though a weekly set of instructions. The importance of actually being present to vote in the manner instructed depends on whether the 'whip' is one-line, two-line or - the most serious - three-line. Even when there is a rebellion by members of the majority party, the Government usually obtains its wish because all Ministers and their Parliamentary Private Secretaries (PPSs) are required to vote for the Government or resign their Ministerial or PPS position. This is called 'the payroll vote' (although PPS are not actually paid to be a PPS) and currently around 120 MPs or 22% of the Commons make up this block vote.

The official record of the proceedings of the Commons and the Lords is called Hansard. The press and broadcasters are present all the time and live audio and visual broadcasting can take place at any time.

THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS

In the British political system, almost all legislation is proposed by the Government and much of it comes from promises made in the manifesto of the relevant political party at the last election. At the beginning of each annual session of the Parliament, the main Bills to be considered are announced by the Queen in a speech opening that year's session of Parliament.

All legislation has to be approved by both Houses of Parliament.

In each House of Parliament, a proposed piece of legislation - called a Bill - goes through the following stages:

First Reading - the Bill is introduced with simply a reading by a Minister of the long title of the Bill

Second Reading - the general principles of the Bill are debated by all the members of the House and a formal vote is taken

Committee Stage - each clause and schedule of the Bill, plus amendments to them and any new clauses or schedules, is examined in detail, in the Commons by a small, specially chosen group of members meeting as Public Bill Committee or in the Lords by the members as a whole on the floor of the House

Report Stage - the changes made to the Bill in the Committee are reported to and debated by the whole House which is invited to consider the Bill as a whole, approve the changes by the Committee, and consider any further proposed changes that might be suggested

Third Reading - the final version of the Bill is considered by the whole House in a short debate (in the Commons without the facility for further amendments)

Royal Assent - the Crown gives assent to the Bill which then becomes an Act, the provisions becoming law either immediately or at a date specified in the Act or at a date specified by what is called a Commencement Order

Several points are worth noting about the legislative process:

Under normal circumstances, all these stages must be completed in both Houses in one session of Parliament; otherwise the process must begin all over again.

Debates on most Bills are timetabled through a programme motion (when Government and Opposition agree) or an allocation of time motion which is popularly known as a 'guillotine' motion (when Government and Opposition do not agree).

As well as almost all legislation coming from the Government, almost all successful amendments originate from the Government.

Ultimately, exactly the same text of a Bill must be approved by both Houses of Parliament. If the House of Lords approves an amendment to a Bill from the House of Commons, then the Bill returns to the Commons for further consideration. Usually the Lords amendment is not accepted by the Commons which is, after all, the elected chamber with the the democratic mandate. If the Lords insists on passing the amendment - or something like it - again, then the process of the Bill passing back and forth between the two Houses is known colloquially as "ping-pong".

The House of Lords has much more limited legislative powers than the House of Commons. Money Bills can only be initiated in the Commons and the Lords can only reject legislation from the Commons for one year. Furthermore there is a convention - called the Salisbury Convention - that the Lords does not block legislation in fulfillment of the election manifesto of the elected Government.

This process of enacting legislation applies to what is called primary legislation which starts as a Bill and finally become an Act. Another type of legislation is called secondary (or delegated) legislation which is usually more detailed. The power to make specific pieces of secondary legislation comes from specific pieces of primary legislation. A piece of secondary legislation - formally called an Order-in-Council - is not even debated unless it is particularly controversial and then it cannot be amended but simply approved or opposed. In practice, the last time Parliament rejected a piece of secondary legislation was in 1979.
In recent years, the number of Bills passed by Parliament has remained broadly constant at around 50 a year. However, these Bills have become longer and, in the past few years, about 3,000 pages of primary legislation, as well as around 13,000 pages of secondary legislation, have been processed by Parliament. The reality, therefore, is that Parliament provides increasingly less scrutiny of a lot of legislation. This situation could become even worse as Parliament attempts to deal with all the legislation needed to take the UK out of the European Union (Brexit).

Link: Bill stages click here

POLITICAL PARTIES

The idea of political parties first took form in Britain and the Conservative Party claims to be the oldest political party in the world. Political parties began to form during the English civil wars of the 1640s and 1650s. First, there were Royalists and Parliamentarians; then Tories and Whigs. Whereas the Whigs wanted to curtail the power of the monarch, the Tories - today the Conservatives - were seen as the patriotic party.

Today there are four major political parties in the British parliamentary system. These are - with representation as a result of the General Election of 12 December 2019 - as follows:

The Conservative Party (frequently called the Tories) - the centre-Right party, currently led by Boris Johnson, which since 2010 has been in Government either in coalition (2010-2015) or alone (since 2015). The Conservatives won 365 seats (with 43.6% of the vote) - a gain of 47 seats and the party's best result since 1987. This gives the party an overall majority of 80 in the Housae of Commons.

The Labour Party - the centre-Left party, (temorarily) led by Jeremy Corbyn, which was last in Government from 1997 to 2010. Labour won 203 seats (with 32.2% of the votes) - a loss of 43 seats and the party's worst result since 1935.

The Scottish National Party - the party supporting Scottish independence, which is led by Nicola Sturgeon. The SNP won 48 seats (with 3.9% of the vote) - a gain of 13 seats out of a total contested of 59.

The Liberal Democrat Party (known as the Lib Dems) - the centrist, libertarian party, (temporarily) led by Jo Swinson, which was the junior member of the Coalition Government of 2010-2015. The Lib Dems won 11 seats (with 11.5% of the votes) - one seat down on 2017 and with the loss of the seat of its leader Jo Swinson.

In recent years, Britain has seen the rise and fall of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Brexit Party, both led by Nigel Farage. In the last General Election, it did not contest seats held by the Conservative Party and failed to win any of the seats which it did contest.
In addition to these parties, there are some much smaller UK parties (notably the Green Party) and some parties which operate specifically in Wales (Plaid Cymru) or Northern Ireland (such as the Democratic Unionist Party for the loyalistsand Sinn Fein for the nationalists).

Each political party chooses its leader in a different way, but all involve all the Members of Parliament of the party and all the individual members of that party. By convention, the leader of the political party with the largest number of members in the House of Commons becomes the Prime Minster (formally at the invitation of the Queen).

Political parties are an all-important feature of the British political system because:

The three main UK political parties in the UK have existed for a century or more and have a strong and stable 'brand image'.

It is virtually impossible for someone to be elected to the House of Commons without being a member of an established political party.

All political parties strongly 'whip' their elected members which means that, on the vast majority of issues, Members of Parliament of the same party vote as a 'block'.

Having said this, at least until the 2017 and 2019 general elections, the influence of the three main UK political parties has not been as dominant as it was in the 1940s and 1950s because:

The three parties have smaller memberships than they did, since voters are much less inclined to join a political party.

The three parties secure a lower overall percentage of the total vote, since smaller parties between them now take a growing share of the vote.

Voters are much less 'tribal', not supporting the same party at every election, and much more likely to 'float', voting for different parties at successive elections.

The ideological differences between the parties are less than they were, with the parties adopting more 'pragmatic' positions on many issues.

For decades, therefore, the combined share of the vote taken by Conservatives and Labour diminished as the two-party model fractured. The 2017 election dramatically reversed this trend as the two main parties took 82.4% of the votes. In the 2019 election, that figure dipped to 75.8%. The Liberal Democrats, the Greens and especially the Brexit Party all did poorly and now only have a mere 12 seats between them.
In the past, class was a major determinant of voting intention in British politics, with most working class electors voting Labour and most middle class electors voting Conservative. These days, class is much less important because:

Working class numbers have shrunk and now represent only 43% of the electorate.

Except at the extremes of wealth, lifestyles are more similar.

Class does not determine voting intention so much as values, trust, competence as wekk as (in Scotland) nationalism and (in 2019 in England & Wales) Brexit.

In the British political system, there is a broad consensus between the major parties on:

the rule of law

the free market economy

the National Health Service (NHS)

membership of NATO and possession of a nuclear deterrent

The main differences between the political parties concern:

how to tackle poverty and inequality

the levels and forms of taxation

the extent of state intervention in the economy

the balance between collective rights and individual rights

the terms of the UK's departure from the European Union

THE U.K. GOVERNMENT

All Government Ministers have to be a member of either the House of Commons (most of them) or the House of Lords (the remainder of them) and every Government Department will have at least one Minister in the Lords, so that the Department can speak in either House as necessary. The number of Ministers varies from administration to administration, but typically there will be around 120, the 20 or so most senior being Cabinet Ministers. The Ministerial and Other Salaries Act, passed in 1975, limits prime ministers to 109 ministerial salaries being paid at any one time with a maximum of 95 ministers in the House of Commons. All Ministers are subject to the Ministerial Code which sets out they should behave in fulfilment of their duties.

Historically most British governments have been composed of ministers from a single political party which had an overall majority of seats in the House of Commons and the 'first-past-the-post' (FPTP) electoral system greatly facilitates and indeed promotes this outcome. However, occasionally there have been minority governments or coalition governments, especially in recent years.

There was a minority Labour Government from February-October 1974 (when I was a Special Adviser in the Northern Ireland Office and fought the two General Elections of that year). Then there was Liberal-Labour (Lib-Lab) Pact of 1977-1978 (when I was a Special Adviser in the Home Office) during which time the Labour Government lost its majority but had the general support of the Liberals who did not actually join the government.

For five years, the UK had its first coalition government in 65 years when, in May 2010, the Conservatives went into coalition with the Liberal Democrats because in the General Election they did not secure a majority of the seats. In this coalition, the Lib Dems had 17 ministers led by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

Then, at the General Election of May 2015, the Conservative Party won an overall majority and the normal arrangement resumed of all Ministers coming from the same party. However, at the General Election of June 2017, the Conservatives failed to win an overall majority resulting in what is called a 'hung parliament' and so the party is governing with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland. This is not a formal coalition but a 'confidence and supply' agreement in which the DUP has undertaken - in return for a comprehensive package of measures and funding - to support the government on key votes.

Link: text of agreement between Conservative Government and the DUP click here

The Prime Minister

The UK does not have a President. Constitutionally the head of state is the monarch who is a hereditary member of the Royal Family. However, the monarch has very few formal powers and stays above party politics. He or she receives a weekly oral report from the Prime Minister, a tradition which began with King George I in 1714 because this German had struggled to follow the English deliberations of his Cabinet.

Therefore, in practice, the most important person in the British political system is the Prime Minister. The first modern Prime Minister was Sir Robert Walpole who served from 1721-1742, so the current PM Boris Johnson is the 55th.

In theory, the Prime Minister simply choses the ministers who run Government departments and chairs the Cabinet - the collection of the most senior of those Ministers. In practice, however, the Prime Minister is a very powerful figure and increasingly has been behaving much like a president in other political systems, especially in the area of foreign policy.

I have personally met four British Prime Ministers: Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The official residence of the Prime Minister is at 10 Downing Street in central London - a location I have visited about a dozen times - and the country residence of the Prime Minister is at Chequers in Buckinghamshire.

One British Prime Minister has been assassinated: Spencer Perceval was shot dead in the House of Commons in 1812.

Link: Prime Minister click here

Government Departments

The most important political departments are called:

The Treasury - In most countries, this would be called the Ministry of Finance. It is responsible for the raising of all taxes and the control of all government expenditure plus the general management of the economy. The head of the Treasury is called the Chancellor of the Exchequer and is currently Sajid Javid.
Link: Treasury site click here

The Home Office - In most countries, this would be called the Ministry of the Interior. It is responsible for criminal matters, policing, and immigration. The Head of the Home Office is called the Home Secretary and is currently Priti Patel.
Link: Home Office site click here

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office - In most countries, this would be called the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is responsible for all international relationships, especially membership of the European Union. The head of the Foreign Office is called the Foreign Secretary and is currently Dominic Raab.
Link: Foreign Office site click here

Many other UK Government Departments are similar to those in other countries and cover subjects such as education, health, transport, industry, and justice. However, there are also small departments for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and overseas aid.

When talking about the British Government, the media will often use the term Whitehall because a number of Government Departments are located along a central London street very close to Parliament called Whitehall.

Government Ministers

All Government Departments are run by Ministers who are either Members of the House of Commons or Members of the House of Lords. There are three classes of Minister:

Secretary of State - This is usually the head of a Department.

Minister of State - This is a middle-ranking minister.

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State - This is the most junior class of minister.

The Prime Minster and all the Secretaries of State together comprise an executive body of government called the Cabinet. The Cabinet meets usually once a week on Tuesday morning. Cabinet meetings are confidential and all members are bound by any decision that it takes in a practice called collective responsibility. An extensive system of Cabinet Committees considers matters either before they go to Cabinet or (more usually) instead of them going to Cabinet.

Although all Ministers are appointed by the Prime Minster and report to him, ultimately all Ministers are accountable to Parliament:

About once a month, they have to face questions in the House of Commons about the work of the Department.

Each government department has a special committee of the House of Commons which watches the work of that Department.

Any government initiative or important statement concerning a Department must be the subject of an appearance in the House of Commons by a minister from that Department.

The Cabinet Committee System

The business of modern government is complex and multi-dimensional, so most Governmental decisions are made by a system of Cabinet Committees which bring together (typically) around ten Ministers from all the Departments relevant to that policy area who meet (again typically) every few weeks. Only the most important decisions go before the full Cabinet which meets weekly.

In cases of emergency, a body with an ad hoc membership, (usually) chaired by the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary, is convened in the Cabinet Office in a location which is equivalent to the Situation Room in the White House. It has the exciting acronym COBRA but this simpy stands for Cabinet Office Board Room A.

The civil service

Each Secretary of State is able to appoint a couple of political advisers –- formally known as Special Advisers (or SpAds) - – to serve him or her. I was a Special Adviser to Merlyn Rees in the Northern Ireland Office from 1974-1976 and in the Home Office from 1976-1978, while my son Richard was a Special Adviser to Ruth Kelly in the Department for Education & Skills in 2005 and a Special Adviser to Douglas Alexander at the Department for International Development in 2009-2010. But Special Advisers are simply advisers. They have no line management responsibilities in respect of the staff of the Department.

Besides these tiny number of Special Advisers, Government Departments are run by civil servants who are recruited in a totally open manner and serve governments of any political party. The independence and professionalism of the British civil service are fundamental features of the British political system. My son Richard once worked as a civil servant in what was then the Department of Trade & Industry and my half-brother Chris was an official in the Treasury for five years.

At the time that Margaret Thatcher became Conservative Prime Minister in 1979, the British civil service numbered almost 800,000, but successive governments have cut the service and it is now 427,000 which is 1.3% of the country's workforce. All civil servants are subject to the Civil Service Code, which states how they should behave, and have to sign the Official Secrets Act, which requires them to keep information confidential.

DEVOLVED GOVERNMENT

The UK has a devolved system of government, but this is categorically not a system of federal government such as in the United States [ click here] or Australia [ click here], partly because less than a fifth of the citizens of the UK are covered by the three bodies in question and partly because the three bodies themselves have different or asymmetrical powers from one another.

The three devolved administrations are:

The Scottish Parliament

This came into operation in May 1999 and covers the 5.3 million citizens of Scotland. It has 129 members elected by a system of proportional representation known as the mixed member system. As a result, 73 members represent individual geographical constituencies elected by the 'first past the post' (FPTP) system, with a further 56 members returned from eight additional member regions, each electing seven members. All members are elected for four-year terms.

The Scottish Parliament meets in Holyrood, Edinburgh. It has legislative powers over those matters not reserved to the UK Parliament and it has limited tax-raising powers.

In the election of May 2011, for the first time a single political party gained an overall majority of the seats in the Scottish Parliament. That party was the Scottish National Party and its victory enabled it to require the UK Government to permit the holding of a referendum on Scottish independence.

The referendum was held on 18 September 2014 and, on an astonishing turnout of 85%, the 'no' vote won a decisive victory by 55% to 45%. However, in the final week of the two-year referendum campaign, the three major parties in the UK Parliament agreed that, if the Scots voted 'no', there would be an early transfer of substantial extra powers to the Scottish Parliament. This is now the subject of fierce political debate because of the implications for the other nations in the UK and for the UK Parliament itself.

Links:
Scottish Parliament click here
BBC live broadcasting of Scottish Parliament proceedings click here

The Welsh Assembly

This came into operation in May 1999 and covers the 3 million citizens of Wales. It has 60 members elected by a system of proportional representation known as the mixed member system. As a result, 40 members represent individual geographical constituencies elected by the 'first past the post' (FPTP) system, with a further 20 members returned from five additional member regions, each electing four members. All members are elected for four-year terms.

It meets in the Senedd, Cardiff. When first created, the Assembly had no powers to initiate primary legislation. However, since 2006, the Assembly has powers to legislate in some areas, though still subject to the veto of the Westminster Parliament. The Assembly has no tax-varying powers. The Welsh Assembly, therefore, has less power than either the Scottish Parliament or the Northern Ireland Assembly because - unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland - Wales does not have a separate legal system from England.

Links:
Welsh Assembly click here
BBC live broadcasting of Welsh Assembly proceedings click here

The Northern Ireland Assembly

The present version of the Assembly came into operation in May 2007 and covers the 1.8 million citizens of Northern Ireland. It has 90 members - five from each of the 18 Westminster constituencies - elected by a system of proportional representation known as the single transferable vote (STV).

It meets in the Parliament Building, Belfast. It has legislative powers over those matters not reserved to the UK Parliament, but it has no tax-raising powers.

A First Minister and a Deputy First Minister are elected to lead the Executive Committee of Ministers. As a result of the sectarian division in Northern Ireland, the two must stand for election jointly and to be elected they must have cross-community support by the parallel consent formula, which means that a majority of both the Members who have designated themselves Nationalists and those who have designated themselves Unionists and a majority of the whole Assembly, must vote in favour. The First Minister and Deputy First Minister head the Executive Committee of Ministers and, acting jointly, determine the total number of Ministers in the Executive.

Following the collapse of agreement between the political parties, Northern Ireland has not had a local administration since January 2017.

Links:
Northern Ireland Assembly click here
BBC live broadcasting of Northern Ireland Assembly proceedings click here

THE U.K. JUDICIARY

The British judicial branch is extremely complex. Unlike most countries which operate a single system of law, the UK operates three separate legal systems: one for England and Wales, one for Scotland, and one for Northern Ireland. Currently Wales is slowly developing a fourth jurisdiction. Although bound by similar principles, these systems differ in form and the manner of operation.

The Lord Chancellor's office - which for 1,400 years maintained the judiciary - has now been replaced by the Ministry for Justice which administers the court system. A Judical Appointments Commission advises the head of the MoJ on the appointment of new judges. The Commission has 15 members, 12 lay members and three appointed by the judiciary.

The head of the judiciary is the Lord Chief Justice.

The Appellate Committee of the House of Lords - previously the highest court in the land - was, by way of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, replaced by the Supreme Court in October 2009 to allow the judiciary to operate in total independence from the Government. It consists of 12 Justices (currently three of them - including the President- female) and new appointments are recommended by an independent selection commission set up when vacancies arise. The court sits in the Middlesex Guildhall in Parliament Square opposite Parliament.

The Supreme Court hears civil cases from all parts of the UK and criminal cases from England, Wales and Northern Ireland, so it is the ultimate court of appeal in all legal matters other than criminal cases in Scotland. The court also hears 'devolution' issues: matters which raise questions of constitutional importance about the exercise of devolved powers by the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

In most cases, there is no automatic right of appeal to the Supreme Court. Generally cases are appealed from a lower court where there is sufficient uncertainty about how the law should be applied and what precedent the lower courts should follow in future.

Each case is usually heard by a panel of five Justices, selected by the President and Deputy President of the court. This can be increased to seven or nine Justices depending on the importance or complexity of the case. Most exceptionally, in September 2019, the case concerning the constitutionality of an extended prorogation of Parliament was heard by 11 Justices. The court always has an an odd number sitting to ensure that a majority decision can be reached. Currently the Supreme Court is the only court in the UK where the proceedings are routinely filmed and available to watch live online.

Link: Supreme Court click here

The Supreme Court shares its building and administrative functions with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The Judicial Committee is the highest court of appeal for civil and criminal cases for about 30 Commonwealth countries (such as Jamaica) and British overseas territories, the crown dependencies, and military sovereign base areas.

The UK does not have its own Bill of Rights. However, since 1951 it has been a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights (part of the Council of Europe) and since 1966 it has allowed its citizens the right of individual petition enabling them to take the government to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. The last Labour Government incorporated the provisions of the European Convention into UK domestic law in 2000, so that citizens can now seek to have the provisions enforced in domestic courts.

Finally, so long as the UK remains a members of the European Union, in respect of the application of European Union law in the UK, matters are subject to appeal to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which is located in Luxembourg.

CIVIL SOCIETY

One cannot explain a liberal democracy such as the United Kingdom simply by talking about the formal political and governmental institutions, any more than one can understand fish without talking about water.

Democratic government cannot operate without a strong civil society to support it and hold political and governmental bodies to account. The special history of the UK - involving gradual changes over long periods - has created a subtle but effective civil society that outsiders often find a little difficult to understand. So it is useful to list some of the more important elements of such a civil society:

Bill of Rights - Although Britain does not have a written constitution, it does have a Bill of Rights because it is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights which was drawn up by a body called the Council of Europe. The European Convention is part of the domestic law so that it can be enforced in the domestic courts as well as in the European Court of Human Rights.

Independent judiciary - British judges are appointed through an independent process and operate totally independently of government. They can find that a Government Minister has acted against a law of the UK Parliament or a Directive of the European Union or against the European Convention and require the Minister to change his or her actions.

A free media - As long as they are not being libelous, newspapers, radio and television can say what they want about the Parliament, the Government and politicians. An important new development is the Internet. Web sites and blogs can say what they want about politicians and political issues. I have a web site and a blog and I often write about political issues. There is no need in the UK to register a newspaper or web site or to obtain permission to run it.

Freedom of information legislation - Britain has a Freedom of Information Act which is a piece of legislation that obliges national government, local government and most public bodies to provide any information requested by an citizen. The only exceptions are things like information which concern national security, commercial confidentiality, or the private matters of citizens.

Trade unions - About a quarter of workers in Britain are members of trade unions representing different occupational groups or industries. These trade unions are totally independent of government and employers. I was a national trade union official for 24 years and believe strongly in independent trade unions.

Pressure groups - Britain has lots and lots of organisations that campaign publicly on political issues such as poverty, pensions, and the environment. They perform an invaluable role in putting forward ideas and holding politicians to account.

Charities and voluntary groups - Similarly we have lots and lots of organisations that do some of the things that government does as well such as running schools and hospitals, looking after the poor and old, and cleaning up the environment.

CONSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL REFORM

Compared to many other democracies, institutional and procedural reform in the British political system has been very slow, gradual and piecemeal. However, there has been a growing movement for more reform, starting with the actual running of the House of Commons:

Since the election of (Conservative MP) John Bercow as Speaker of the House of Commons, there have been many more occasions of the use of the Urgent Question (UQ). This is a device which allows any Member of Parliament on any sitting day to petition the Speaker to demand that a Government Department supplies a Minister to make a statement on some issue or matter that has arisen very suddenly.

Eight weeks before the May 2010 General Election, the House of Commons embraced the election of the Deputy Speakers, the whole House election of Select Committee Chairs, the whole party caucus election of Select Committee members, and the creation of a House Backbench Business Committee.

In November 2013, the Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow announced the formation of a novel type of inquiry, a Speaker's Commission, to examine the whole issie of Digital Democracy. This exercise started in early 2014 and reported in early 2015.

The appetite for constitutional change became much stronger in the aftermath of the May 2009 scandal over the expenses of Members of Parliament. Then the formation in May 2010 of a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government opened up new possibilities for change with a number of specific measures set out in the agreement between the parties establishing the new government. However, actual progress has been limited.
The changes on the agenda of the previous Coalition Government were as follows:

Fixed term parliaments - In the past, elections to the House of Commons had to be held within five years of the previous General Election but the Prime Minister had complete discretion over the actual date which was often the subject of considerable speculation and frequently a year or more before an election was legally necessary. The coalition parties agreed to the establishment of five year fixed-term parliaments and the necessary legislation was enacted in the Fixed Term Parliament Act of 2011. Therefore, subject to either a vote of no confidence in the Government (following which there is 14 days to attempt to form a government that does have the confidence of the House) or a two-thirds majority vote (which effectively means both major parties supporting the motion), each General Election will now be held on the first Thursday of May five years after the previous election.

A new electoral system for the House of Commons - Britain is unusual in Europe in having an electoral system which is 'first-past-the-post' (FPTP) and there are advocates for a system of proportional representation (PR), versions of which are already used for elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly and for British elections to the European Parliament. As a vital component of the coalition agreement, legislation was carried to enable a referendum to be held on an electoral system called the alternative vote (AV) which enables the voter to number candidates in order of preference and requires a winning candidate to secure more than 50% of the votes which, if not achieved on the first count, is achieved through successive withdrawal of the lowest-polling candidate and redistribution of that candidate's preferences. The referendum - only the second UK-wide referendum in its history - was held on 5 May 2011, but the current electoral system was supported by a margin of more than two to one (I voted for a move to AV).

Fewer and more equal sized constituencies - Currently the House of Commons has 650 seats; the Coalition Government intended to cut this to 600. Currently the number of electors in each Parliamentary constituency varies quite considerably; the Coalition Government legislated that no constituency should be more than 5% either larger or smaller than a national average of around 76,000 electors (which could eliminate some 40 Labour-held seats). The Government included these measures in the Referendum Bill on electoral reform and it was intended that the new constituencies would come into effect at the General Election in 2015. However, although the Bill is now on the statute book, the new constituencies did not become operative at the General Election following a Commons vote of 334 to 292 against early implementation when the Liberal Democrats joined with Labour to block implementation in retaliation for Conservative MPs failing to support the reform of the House of Lords strongly favoured by the Lib Dems. Then, following the General Election of 2017, the advent of a minority Conservative Government means that this change is now unlikely to be implemented.

Election of the House of Lords - At present, no member of the upper house is actually elected; most are appointed on the nomination of party leaders with a small number remaining from the originally much larger group of hereditary peers. The Queen's Speech of May 2012 announced that there would be a Bill on Lords reform in that session of Parliament. The latest proposal for reform comes from a Joint Committee of the two houses which recommended a 450-seat chamber with peers elected for 15 years in elections to be held every five years. Of these, 80% would be elected by a form of proportional representation with 20% appointed by an independent body. In fact, neither the Commons (especially the Conservative Party) nor the Lords is keen on reform for very different reasons (MPs do not want the Lords to gain more legitimacy and nominated peers do not want to be replaced by elected representatives). In the summer of 2012, the Prime Minister announced that he could not deliver Conservative support for a reform measure which was therefore withdrawn to the intense anger of the Liberal Democrats who very much support reform.

Reduction in size of the House of Lords - While any moves to create an elected Lords are deadlocked, it is possible that change could be made to the size of the Lords, while retaining the current method of appointment. In late 2017, a cross-party committee of the Lords proposed a reduction from the present 800 or so members (excluding bishops) to no more than 600 with new peers limited to a term of 15 years. The mechanism for achieving this would be a "two out, one in" policy followed by all parties and the timetable for achieving this would be 2027. The committee also recommended a fairer distribution of members with new members shared between parties based on an average of the vote share at the last general election and the total number of Commons seats won at that election.

More power to backbench Members of Parliament - In the British political system, the party in Government has considerably more power in the legislature than the Opposition parties and in all the political parties the whips have considerable power over backbenchers. Ordinary MPs could be given more influence by measures such as more independent and stronger all-party Select Committees, more unwhipped votes (especially during the Committee Stage of Bills), more support for Private Members' Bills (those initiated by backbenchers rather than Ministers), more power to scrutinise Government spending, and a new power to subject ministers to confirmation hearings.

The power to force a by-election - In the past, a by-election occurred only when an MP died or resigned or was sentenced to more than one year in prison. Under the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition, it was made easier to recall an errant MP. The new Act requires that, if an MP is convicted of an offence and sentenced to a custodial sentence of 12 months or less or if the Commons orders the MP's suspension for at least 28 sitting days (or 28 calendar days), then the MP's constituents will have the opportunity to sign a recall petition calling for a by-election. This petition must be signed by at least 10% of constituents for a by-election to be held. The process was successfully instituted for the first time in 2019 in respect of the Labour MP for Peterborough Fiona Onasanya who had been found guilty of lying to avoid a speeding ticket.

More devolution nationally and locally - The Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly all have devolved powers and all of them want more, while many local authorities feel that, over past decades, their powers have been eroded by the national parliament. Some believe that a revitalisation of the British political system requires more devolution of power. The main political parties in the UK Parliament had already agreed to the implementation of the Calman Commission proposals on further Scottish devolution and the offer of a referendum on further Welsh devolution. However, in the final week of the Scottish independence referendum campaign, the three major parties in the UK Parliament agreed that, if the Scots voted 'no' (as they did), there would be an early transfer of substantial extra powers to the Scottish Parliament. This is now the subject of fierce political debate because of the implications for the other nations, regions and cities in the UK and for the UK Parliament itself. Meanwhile the planned exit of the UK from the European Union has further complicated the devolution debate, since there is fierce argument about whether the powers to be repatriated from the EU to the UK should be held by the government at Westminster or devolved to the administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Use of e-petitions - Citizens are encouraged to use the Government web site to create electronic petitions to promote specific political reforms. It might be that the most popular petition will be drafted as a Bill and presented to Parliament, while those petitions that reach a certain level of support - probably 100,000 signatures - will be guaranteed a debate in the House of Commons.

Funding and lobbying - All political parties find it difficult to raise the funding necessary to promote their messages and run their election campaigns and, in practice, the Labour Party receives much of its funding from a small number of trade unions and the Conservative Party is backed mainly by large companies. It has been argued that democracy would be better served and parties could be more independent if there was public funding of political parties with the actual level of funding depending of some combination of candidates and votes. The parties have agreed to pursue a detailed agreement on limiting donations and reforming party funding in order to remove 'big money' from politics. Also the parties intend to tackle lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists.

Candidates for further change would include the following proposals:

A wider franchise - At present, every citizen over 18 can vote but it has been suggested that the voting age should be lowered to 16. In the Coalition Government, the Liberal Democrats supported such an extension to the franchise but the Conservatives opposed it. Meanwhile the Scottish Nationalist Government allowed 16 and 17 year olds to vote in the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence.

A wider process for selecting Parliamentary candidates - Today candidates are selected by meetings of members of the political party that the candidate will represent in a future election, but it has been proposed that the process could be opened up to anyone in the relevant constituency who has declared themselves a supporter of that party, a process something like the primaries in the United States.

A more modern culture for the Commons - Many of the traditions and much of the language of the Commons date back centuries and reformers argue that it is time for change to make the proceedings more accessible and acceptable to the public and electorate. The sort of changes mooted are no ceremonial dress for Commons staff, reform of terms such as "My right honourable friend", and a less gladiatorial version of Prime Minister's Questions.

Limits on the Royal Prerogative - At the moment, the Prime Minister alone can exercise powers which once used to belong to the monarch, such as the right to apppoint certain judges and bishops, the signing of international treaties, and the declaring of war, but this could be changed so that Parliament has to decide such matters.

A domestic Bill of Rights - The UK has a Bill of Rights but it is the European Convention on Human Rights which, since 2000, has been part of the domestic law and therefore enforcable in national courts as well as the European Court. Some people believe that Britain should draft its own specific Bill of Rights. A Bill of Rights Commission, chaired by Sir Leigh Lewis, met for 18 months to consider this matter and reported in December 2012 when it was utterly unable to reach any sort of consensus. The current Conservative Government would like to remove the European Convention from the UK's domestic law and substitute it with a British Bill of Rights, but has let it be known that they consider that no progress on this can be made until the UK has left the European Union following the Brexit referendum decision.

Disestablishment of the Church of England - It is argued that the UK population is no longer largely devoted to the Anglican faith and that, in multicultural Britain, it is wrong for one religious denomination to be privileged over others with automatic seats in the House of Lords for instance. Therefore church and state should be totally separated. Note: the opposite position is called "antidisestablishmentarianism' which is one of the longest non-scientific words in the English language.

A written constitution - For historical reasons, the UK is one of only four countries in the world not to have a written constitution (the others are Israel, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia). The most radical proposal for constitutional change - supported especially by the Liberal Democrat Party - is that the country should now have a formal written constitution, presumably following some sort of constitutional convention and possibly a referendum.

So, at the time of the General Election of May 2010, the scene seemed set for more change than for many decades but, in reality, most of the measures discussed at the time of the Coalition Agreement floundered. Nevertheless, as a consequence of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, there is now a more fundamental debate about the British constitution than at any other time in living memory. Furthermore the decision in the referendum of June 2016 that Britain should leave the European Union will have profound constitutional implications for the United Kingdom and the attempt to give effect to that decision has since bedevilled British politics.
ROGER DARLINGTON

Last modified on 14 December 2019

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Back to home page click here A SHORT GUIDE TO THE BRITISH POLITICAL SYSTEM Contents A VERY, VERY SHORT HISTORY To understand fully any country's political system, one needs to understand something of its history.

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British Politics

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British Politics - History Learning Site