The
politics of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland takes place in the framework of a
constitutional monarchy, in
which the Monarch is head of state and the Prime Minister of the
United
Kingdom
is the head of
government. Executive
power is exercised by the UK government, the devolved governments of Scotland and Wales, and the Executive of
Northern
Ireland
. Legislative
power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of
Parliament, the House of Commons
and the House of Lords
, as well as in the Scottish parliament
and Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies.
The
judiciary is independent of the
executive and the legislature, though
several
senior judges are still members of the House of Lords.
In October
2009 the judicial role of the House of Lords was removed and given
to a new Supreme Court
under the Constitutional Reform Act
2005.
The UK is a
multi-party system
and since the 1920s, the two largest political parties have been
the
Conservative Party and
the
Labour Party. Though coalition
and minority governments have been an occasional feature of
parliamentary politics, the
first-past-the-post electoral
system used for
general
elections tends to maintain the dominance of these two parties,
though each has in the past century relied upon a third party to
deliver a working majority in Parliament.
The
Liberal Democrats, a
party formed by the merger of the former
Liberal Party and
Social Democratic Party in
1988, is the third largest party in the British parliament. It
seeks a reform of the electoral system to address the
disproportionate dominance of the two main parties that results
from the current system.
Growing support for 'Nationalist' parties in Scotland and Wales led
to proposals for
devolution in the 1970s
though only in the 1990s did devolution actually happen. Today,
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each possess a legislature and
government alongside that of the United Kingdom, responsible for
devolved matters. However, it is a matter of dispute as to whether
increased
autonomy and devolution
of executive and legislative powers has contributed to a reduction
in support for full independence. The principal pro-independence
party, the
Scottish National
Party, won 20 extra MSPs at the 2007 Scottish parliament
elections and now forms the
Scottish
Government as a minority administration, with plans to hold a
referendum on negotiating for independence, before 2011.
In Wales,
the nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, is
the junior coalition partner in the Welsh Assembly Government although
unlike the Scottish National
Party it does not officially advocate complete secession from the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland, the largest
Pro-
Belfast Agreement party, Sinn
Féin, not only advocates Northern Ireland's unification with the
Republic of Ireland, but also abstains from taking their elected
seats in the Westminister government, as this would entail taking a
pledge of allegiance to the British monarch.
The
constitution
is uncodified, being made up of
constitutional
convention,
statutes and other
elements.
This
system of government, known as the Westminster system, has been adopted
by other countries as well, such as Canada
, India
, Australia, New Zealand
, Singapore
, Malaysia
and Jamaica
, countries
that made up part of the British
Empire.
Monarch
The
head of state,
theoretical and nominal source of
executive,
judicial and
legislative power in the UK is the
British monarch, currently
Queen
Elizabeth
II. However, sovereignty in the UK no longer rests with the
monarch, since the
English Bill of
Rights in 1689, which established the principle of
Parliamentary sovereignty.
Nonetheless, the monarch is still known as the sovereign.
The
British sovereign possesses many powers, including the right to
choose any British citizen to be her Prime Minister and the
right to call and dissolve Parliament
whenever she wishes. However, in accordance
with the current uncodified constitution, the Prime Minister is the
leader of the largest party in the House of
Commons, and Parliament is dissolved at
the time suggested by the PM. For a
bill to become law the monarch has to
grant
Royal Assent.
Queen Anne was the last monarch who
withheld Assent: on 11 March 1708 to a bill "for the settling of
Militia in Scotland
". Other royal powers called
royal prerogative, such as patronage to
appoint ministers and the ability to declare war, are exercised by
the Prime Minister and the
Cabinet, with the formal
consent of the Queen.
Historically, the British monarch directly exercised all executive
authority in the UK government. However, in the early 18th century,
the role of Prime Minister (literally meaning the
chief or
senior minister in the Cabinet) emerged as a de facto
executive authority, by directly implementing executive powers and
collectively consulting with other members of his/her
Cabinet.
Today the sovereign has an essentially
ceremonial role restricted in exercise of power
by
convention and
public opinion. However the monarch does
continue to exercise three essential rights: the
right to be
consulted, the right to advise and the right to warn. As a
consequence of these ideals, Prime Ministers hold weekly
confidential meetings with the monarch in which the sovereign holds
the right to express her opinions.
In formal terms, the
Crown in Parliament is sovereign even
though in practical terms the political head of the UK is the
Prime Minister
(
Gordon Brown since 27 June 2007).
However, the real powers of position of the monarch in the British
Constitution should not be downplayed. The monarch does indeed
retain some power, but it has to be used with discretion. She
fulfills the necessary constitutional role as head of state, and
with the absence of a distinct separation of powers as in the
American model and a strong second chamber, acts as a final check
on executive power. If a time came to pass, for instance, when a
law threatened the freedom or security of her
subjects and citizens, the Queen could
decline royal assent, free as she is from the eddies of party
politics. Furthermore, armed removal of her by Parliament or
Government would be difficult, as the monarch remains
commander-in-chief of the armed forces,
who swear an
oath of allegiance
to her.
Executive
Executive power in the United
Kingdom is exercised on behalf of the Sovereign, in whom executive
power is nominally vested, by the
UK government and the
Scottish Government, the
Welsh Assembly Government and the
Northern Ireland
Executive.
The United Kingdom Government
The monarch appoints a
Prime Minister as the
head of
Her Majesty's
Government, guided by the strict convention that the Prime
Minister should be the member of the House of Commons most likely
to be able to form a Government with the support of that House. In
practice, this means that the leader of the
political party with an absolute majority of
seats in the House of Commons is chosen to be the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister then selects the other
Ministers which make up the Government
and act as political heads of the various
Government Departments.
About twenty of the most senior government ministers make up the
Cabinet and
approximately 100 ministers in total comprise the government.
In
accordance with constitutional
convention, all ministers within the government are either
Members of Parliament or
peers in the House of Lords.
As in some other
parliamentary
systems of government (especially those based upon the
Westminster System), the executive
(called "the government") is drawn from and is answerable to
Parliament - a successful
vote
of no confidence will force the government either to resign or
to seek a
parliamentary
dissolution and a
general election. In
practice, members of parliament of all major parties are strictly
controlled by
whips who try to
ensure they vote according to party policy. If the government has a
large majority, then they are very unlikely to lose enough votes to
be unable to pass legislation.
The Prime Minister and the Cabinet
The Prime Minister, as the label suggests, is the prime or senior
minister in the Cabinet. She/he is responsible for chairing Cabinet
meetings, selecting Cabinet ministers (and all other positions in
Her Majesty's government), and formulating governmental policy. The
Prime Minister is the de facto source of executive authority in the
UK government, since s/he exercises executive functions that are
nominally vested in the sovereign (by way of the Royal
Prerogatives). Historically, the British monarch was the sole
source of executive powers in the government. However, following
the rule of the Hanoverian monarchs, an arrangement of a "Prime
Minister" chairing and leading the Cabinet began to emerge. Over
time, this arrangement became the effective executive branch of
government, as it assumed the day-to-day functioning of the British
government away from the sovereign.
Theoretically, the Prime Minister is
primus inter pares
(,i.e. Latin for "first among equals") among his/her Cabinet
colleagues. While the Prime Minister is the senior Cabinet
Minister, s/he is theoretically bound to make executive decisions
in a collective fashion with the other Cabinet ministers. The
Cabinet, along with the PM, consists of Secretaries of State from
the various government departments. Cabinet meetings are typically
held weekly, while Parliament is in session.
Government Departments and the Civil Service
The Government of the United Kingdom contains a number of
ministries known mainly,
though not exclusively as departments, e.g.
Ministry of Defence.
These are politically led by a
Government Minister who is often a
Secretary of
State and member of the
Cabinet. He or she may also be
supported by a number of junior Ministers. In practice, several
government departments and Ministers have responsibilities that
cover England alone, with devolved bodies having responsibility for
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, (for example - the
Department of Health),
or responsibilities that mainly focus on England (such as the
Department
for Children, Schools and Families).
Implementation of the Minister's decisions is carried out by a
permanent politically neutral organization known as the
civil service. Its
constitutional role is to support the Government of the day
regardless of which political party is in power. Unlike some other
democracies, senior civil servants remain in post upon a change of
Government. Administrative management of the Department is led by a
head civil servant known in most Departments as a
Permanent Secretary. The majority of the
civil service staff in fact work in
executive agencies, which are separate
operational organizations reporting to Departments of State.
"Whitehall" is often used as a synonym for the central core of the
Civil Service.
This is because most Government Departments
have headquarters in and around the former Royal Palace Whitehall
.
Devolved national administrations
Scottish Government
The
Scottish Government is responsible for all issues that are not
explicitly reserved to the United
Kingdom Parliament
at Westminster
, by the Scotland Act;
including NHS Scotland, education, justice, rural affairs, and transport. It manages an annual
budget of more than
£30 billion. The
government is led by the
First Minister, assisted by
various Ministers with individual
portfolio and remits.
The
Scottish
Parliament
nominates a Member to be appointed as First
Minister by the Queen. The First
Minister then appoints his Ministers (now known as Cabinet
Secretaries) and junior Ministers, subject to approval by the
Parliament. The First Minister, the Ministers (but not
junior ministers), the
Lord Advocate and
Solicitor General are the
Members of the 'Scottish Executive', as set out in the Scotland Act
1998. They are collectively known as "the Scottish Ministers".
Welsh Assembly Government
The
Welsh Assembly
Government and the
National Assembly for Wales have
more limited powers than those devolved to Scotland, although
following the passing of the
Government of Wales Act 2006,
the Assembly can now legislate in some areas through
Assembly Measures
passed within clearly defined areas based upon,
Legislative Competence Orders
which can be granted on a case by case basis. The current
Welsh Assembly Government was
formed several weeks after the
2007 elections,
following a brief period of minority administration, when
Plaid Cymru joined
Labour in a coalition
government
under the continuing leadership of First Minister
Rhodri Morgan.
Northern Ireland Executive
The
Northern Ireland
Executive and
Assembly
have powers closer to those already devolved to Scotland. The
Northern Ireland
Executive is led by a
diarchy, currently
First
Minister Peter
Robinson (
Democratic
Unionist Party) and
deputy First
Minister Martin McGuinness
(
Sinn Féin).
Legislatures
The
UK
Parliament is the supreme legislative body in the United
Kingdom (i.e., there is parliamentary sovereignty), and
Government is drawn from and answerable to it. Parliament is
bicameral, consisting of the House of
Commons and the House of Lords. There is also a devolved Scottish
Parliament and devolved Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland,
with varying degrees of legislative authority.
UK Parliament
House of Commons
The
Countries of the
United Kingdom are divided into parliamentary
constituencies of broadly equal population by
the four
Boundary
Commissions. Each constituency elects a
Member of Parliament (MP) to the House
of Commons at General Elections and, if required, at by-elections.
The number of constituencies will increase from the current 646 to
650 at the
next
general election. Of the current 646 MPs, all but one belong to
a
political party. In modern times,
all Prime Ministers and
Leaders of the
Opposition have been drawn from the Commons, not the Lords.
Alec Douglas-Home resigned from
his peerages days after becoming Prime Minister in 1963, and the
last Prime Minister before him from the Lords left in 1902 (the
Marquess of
Salisbury).
One party usually has a majority in Parliament, because of the use
of the
First Past
the Post electoral system, which has been conducive in creating
the current
two party system. The
monarch normally asks a person commissioned to form a government
simply whether it can
survive in the House of Commons,
something which majority governments are expected to be able to do.
In exceptional circumstances the monarch asks someone to 'form a
government'
with a parliamentary minority which in the
event of no party having a majority requires the formation of a
coalition government. This
option is only ever taken at a time of national emergency, such as
war-time. It was given in 1916 to
Andrew Bonar Law, and when he declined, to
David Lloyd George and in 1940 to
Winston Churchill. It is worth
noting that a government is not formed by a vote of the House of
Commons, merely a commission from the monarch. The House of Commons
gets its first chance to indicate confidence in the new government
when it votes on the
Speech from
the Throne (the legislative programme proposed by the new
government).
House of Lords
The
House of
Lords was previously a largely hereditary aristocratic chamber, although including
life peers,and Lords Spiritual. It is currently
mid-way through extensive reforms, the most recent of these being
enacted in the
House of Lords
Act 1999. The house still currently consists of two very
different types of member, the
Lords
Temporal and
Lords Spiritual.
Lords Temporal include appointed members (life peers with no
hereditary right for their descendants to sit in the house) and
ninety-two remaining hereditary peers, elected from among, and by,
the holders of titles which previously gave a seat in the House of
Lords. The
Lords Spiritual represent
the established
Church of England
and number 26, the Five Ancient Sees (Canterbury, York, London,
Winchester and Durham) and the 21 next-most senior bishops.
The House of Lords currently acts to review legislation initiated
by the House of Commons, with the power to propose amendments, and
can exercise a
suspensive veto. This
allows it to delay legislation if it does not approve it for twelve
months. However, the use of vetoes is limited by convention and by
the operation of the
Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949:
the Lords may not veto the "money bills" or major manifesto
promises (see
Salisbury
convention). Persistent use of the veto can also be overturned
by the Commons, under a provision of the
Parliament Act 1911. Often governments
will accept changes in legislation in order to avoid both the time
delay, and the negative publicity of being seen to clash with the
Lords. However the Lords still retain a full veto in acts which
would extend the life of Parliament beyond the 5 year term limit
introduced by the
Parliament Act
1911.
The House
of Lords is currently also the final court of appeal on civil cases
within the United
Kingdom, although in practice only a small subset of the
House of Lords, known as the Law Lords,
hears judicial cases. In accordance with the legal doctrine
of
stare decisis, the House of Lords
supersedes all civil and criminal courts in England & Wales.
(The
House of Lords has no role in criminal case appeals in Scotland.)
The Constitutional Reform
Act 2005 outlines plans for a Supreme Court
of the United Kingdom to replace the role of the Law Lords.
Devolved national legislatures
Though
the UK parliament remains the sovereign parliament, Scotland has a parliament and Wales
and Northern
Ireland have assemblies. De
jure, each could have its powers broadened, narrowed or changed
by an Act of the UK Parliament. However, Scotland has a tradition
of popular sovereignty as opposed to parliamentary sovereignty and
the fact that the Scottish parliament was established following a
referendum would make it politically difficult to significantly
alter its powers without popular consent. The UK is therefore a
unitary state with a devolved system
of government. This contrasts with a
federal system, in which sub-parliaments or
state parliaments and assemblies have a clearly defined
constitutional
right to exist and a
right to
exercise certain constitutionally guaranteed and defined functions
and cannot be unilaterally abolished by Acts of the central
parliament.
All three devolved institutions are elected by
proportional representation: the
Additional Member System is
used in Scotland and Wales, and
Single Transferable Vote is used in
Northern Ireland.
England
, therefore, is the only country in the UK not to
have a devolved English
parliament. However, senior politicians of all main
parties have voiced concerns in regard to the
West Lothian Question, which is raised
where certain policies for England are set by MPs from all four
constituent nations whereas similar policies for Scotland or Wales
might be decided in the devolved assemblies by legislators from
those countries alone.
Alternative proposals for English regional government have stalled, following
a poorly received referendum on devolved government for the
North East of England, which had
hitherto been considered the region most in favour of the idea,
with the exception of Cornwall
, where there is widespread support for a Cornish Assembly, including all five
Cornish MPs. England is therefore governed according to the
balance of parties across the whole of the United Kingdom.
The government has no plans to establish an English parliament or
assembly although several pressure groups are calling for one. One
of their main arguments is that MPs (and thus voters) from
different parts of the UK have inconsistent powers. Currently an MP
from Scotland can vote on legislation which affects only England
but MPs from England (or indeed Scotland) cannot vote on matters
devolved to the Scottish parliament. Indeed, the current
Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, who is an MP for a Scottish constituency, introduces
some laws that only affect England and not his own constituency.
This anomaly is known as the
West
Lothian question.
The policy of the UK Government in England was to establish elected
regional assemblies
with no legislative powers. The
London
Assembly was the first of these, established in 2000, following
a
referendum in 1998, but
further plans were abandoned following rejection of a proposal for
an elected assembly in
North East
England in a
referendum in 2004.
Unelected regional assemblies remain in place in eight
regions of England.
Scottish Parliament
The
Scottish
Parliament is the national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in the Holyrood area of the capital Edinburgh
. The Parliament, informally referred to as
"
Holyrood" (cf.
"Westminster"), is a democratically
elected body comprising 129 members who are known as Members of the Scottish
Parliament, or MSPs. Members are elected for four-year
terms under the
mixed member
proportional representation system. As a result, 73 MSPs
represent individual geographical
constituencies
elected by the
plurality
("first past the post") system, with a further 56 returned from
eight
additional member
regions, each electing seven MSPs.
The
current Scottish
Parliament was established by the Scotland Act 1998 and its first meeting as
a devolved legislature was on 12 May
1999. The parliament has the power to pass laws and has
limited tax-varying capability. Another of its jobs is to hold the
Scottish Government to account.
The "devolved matters" over which it has responsibility include
education,
health, agriculture, and
justice.
A degree of domestic authority, and all
foreign policy, remains with the UK Parliament in Westminster.
The public take part in Parliament in a way that is not the case at
Westminster through Cross Party Groups on policy topics which the
interested public join and attend meetings of alongside
Members of the Scottish
Parliament (MSPs).
The resurgence in
Celtic language and
identity, as well as 'regional' politics and development, has
contributed to forces pulling against the unity of the state. This
was clearly demonstrated when- although some argue it was
influenced by general public dillusionment with Labour- the
Scottish National Party
became the largest party in the Scottish Parliament by one seat.
Alex Salmond (leader of SNP) has since made history by becoming the
first First Minister of Scotland from a party other than Labour.
The SNP rule as a minority government at Holyrood. Nevertheless,
recent opinion polls have suggested that nationalism (i.e. a desire
to break up the UK) is rising within Scotland and England. However,
the polls have been known to be inaccurate in the past (for
example, in the run up to the
1992 General
Election). Moreover, polls carried out in the 1970s and the
1990s showed similar results, only to be debunked at elections.
While support for breaking up the UK was strongest in Scotland,
there was still a clear lead for unionism over nationalism.
However, an opinion poll in April 2008 suggested the result of any
referendum on Scottish independence could be close as support for
independence had reached 41% with just 40% supporting retention of
the Union.
Welsh Assembly
The
National Assembly for
Wales is a devolved assembly with power to make legislation in
Wales, and is also responsible for Welsh Assembly Government
departments in Wales. The Assembly was formed under the
Government of Wales Act
1998, by the
Labour
government, after a
referendum
in 1997 (also supported by
Plaid Cymru
and the
Liberal Democrats)
approved its creation.
There is now a legal separation of the legislative and executive
functions of the National Assembly, since the passing of the
Government of Wales Act
2006. The Act created a separate executive called the "
Welsh Assembly Government" which
performs the day to day running of government affairs and contains
members of the highest elected party of the Assembly chamber. The
act also made the National Assembly for Wales a separate entity
from the Welsh Assembly Government, and this entity scrutinizes the
government in power. The "
Assembly
Commission" was also created to ensure the smooth running of
resources and gathering of accurate facts for the Assembly to deal
with.
As of the passing of the
Government of Wales Act 2006,
the National Assembly for Wales now has its own legislative powers
known as
Assembly Measures.
Each
Assembly Measure derives its power from a Legislative Competency Order
which has to be passed by the Assembly and two Houses of
Parliament
. Before the 2006 Act, the Assembly did not
have such legislative power and only had the right to develop
Subordinate legislation off primary legislation made by the UK
Parliament.
Northern Ireland assembly
The current government of Northern Ireland was established as a
result of the 1998
Good Friday
Agreement. This created the
Northern Ireland Assembly. The
Assembly is a
unicameral body consisting
of 108 members elected under the
Single Transferable Vote form of
proportional
representation. The Assembly is based on the principle of
power-sharing, in order to ensure that both communities in Northern
Ireland,
unionist and
nationalist, participate in governing the
region. It has power to legislate in a wide range of areas and to
elect the
Northern Ireland
Executive (cabinet).
It sits at Parliament Buildings
at Stormont in Belfast
.
The Assembly has authority to legislate in a field of competences
known as "transferred matters". These matters are not explicitly
enumerated in the
Northern
Ireland Act 1998 but instead include any competence not
explicitly retained by the Parliament at Westminster. Powers
reserved by Westminster are divided into "excepted matters", which
it retains indefinitely, and "reserved matters", which may be
transferred to the competence of the Northern Ireland Assembly at a
future date. Health and education are "transferred" but criminal
law and police are "reserved" and royal relations are all
"excepted".
While the Assembly was in suspension, due to issues involving the
main parties and the
Provisional Irish Republican
Army (IRA), its legislative powers were exercised by the UK
government, which effectively had power to legislate by decree.
Laws that would normally be within the competence of the Assembly
were passed by the UK government in the form of
Orders-in-Council rather than legislative
acts.
There has been a significant decrease in violence over the last
twenty years, though the situation remains tense, with the more
hard-line parties such as
Sinn Féin
and the
Democratic Unionists now
holding the most parliamentary seats (see
Demographics and
politics of Northern Ireland).
Judiciary
The United Kingdom does not have a single legal system due to it
being created by the political union of previously independent
countries with the terms of the
Treaty
of Union guaranteeing the continued existence of Scotland's
separate legal system. Today the UK has three distinct
systems of law:
English law,
Northern Ireland law and
Scots law.
Recent constitutional changes will see a new
Supreme Court of the United
Kingdom come into being in October 2009 that will take on
the appeal functions of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. The Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council
, comprising the same members as the Appellate
Committee of the House of
Lords, is the highest court of appeal for several
independent Commonwealth countries, the UK overseas territories,
and the British crown dependencies.
England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Both
English law, which applies in
England and Wales, and
Northern Ireland law are based on
common-law principles. The essence of
common-law is that law is made by
judges
sitting in
courts, applying their common sense
and knowledge of
legal precedent
(
stare decisis) to the facts
before them.
The Courts of England and Wales are
headed by the Supreme Court of Judicature of England and Wales,
consisting of the Court of Appeal
, the High Court of Justice
(for civil cases) and the Crown Court (for criminal cases).
The
Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (usually just referred to, as "The House of Lords")
is presently the highest court in the land for both criminal and
civil cases in England, Wales, and
Northern
Ireland and any decision it makes is binding on every other
court in the hierarchy.
Scotland
Scots law, a hybrid system based on both
common-law and civil-law
principles, applies in Scotland. The chief courts are the Court of
Session
, for civil cases, and the High Court
of Justiciary
, for criminal cases. The Appellate
Committee of the House of
Lords (usually just referred to as "The House of Lords")
presently serves as the highest court of appeal for civil cases
under Scots law but only if the Court of Session grants leave to
appeal or the initial judgement was by a majority decision.
Sheriff courts deal with most civil
and criminal cases including conducting criminal
trials with a jury, known as Sheriff solemn Court, or
with a Sheriff and no jury, known as (Sheriff summary Court). The
Sheriff courts provide a local court
service with 49 Sheriff courts organised across six
Sheriffdoms.
Electoral systems
Various electoral systems are used in the UK:
Unlike many
European nations, the United
Kingdom uses a
first-past-the-post system to elect
members of Parliament. Therefore, elections and political parties
in the United Kingdom are affected by
Duverger's Law, which causes the
agglomeration of related political ideologies into a few large
parties with many small parties rarely winning
representation.
In the last few general elections, voter mandates for Westminster
in the 40% ranges have been swung into 60% parliamentary
majorities. No government has won a majority of the popular vote
since the
National Government
of
Stanley Baldwin in
1935. Twice since
World War II (in
1951 and
February
1974) the party with fewer popular votes actually came out with
the larger number of seats. One reason for all the quirks is that
Britain has many political parties, making it possible to win
individual constituencies on less than 50% of the vote due to the
opposition votes being divided.
Electoral reform has been
considered for
general
elections many times, but after the
Jenkins Commission report in October
1998, which suggested the
Alternative vote top-up for
general elections was
effectively ignored by the government, there have been no further
government proposals for reform. It is highly unlikely that
electoral reform will happen unless there is a significant change
in the balance of power and
Labour
loses its large majority, or if the
Liberal Democrats, which have long
campaigned for the introduction of Proportional representation,
provide the keystone of a hung parliament. The broad-based
Make Votes Count Coalition
continues to campaign for reform.
Low turnout is a concern, as the percentage of the electorate who
voted in the
last
general election was just 61%.
Political parties
2005 election results by age group:
voters for Conservative (blue), Labour (red), Lib Dem (yellow),
other parties (green); and those not voting (grey).
Historically, the United Kingdom had two major political parties,
though currently three parties dominate the political landscape.
Originally, the
Conservatives and the
Liberals dominated British politics, but
the Liberal Party collapsed in the early twentieth century and was
largely replaced by the
Labour
Party. In the 1980s, the Liberals merged with the
Social Democratic Party and, as
the
Liberal Democrats, are viewed
as the third major party. Other parties, often called minor parties
(in UK terms at least) contest elections but few except those which
are based in single countries of the United Kingdom win seats in
Parliament. The
Scottish
National Party has had MPs continuously since 1967, and
Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalists, has
had MPs continuously since 1974. All 18 MPs elected from Northern
Ireland are from parties that just contest elections in Northern
Ireland (or in the case of Sinn Féin, the island of Ireland.)
In the most recent
general election in
2005, the Labour Party won re-election on a reduced majority,
with both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats making
gains.
Labour
The Labour Party won the majority of seats in the House of Commons
at the 2005 general election, with 356 MPs
The history of the Labour party goes back to 1900 when a
Labour Representation
Committee was established which changed its name to
The
Labour Party in 1906. After the
First World War, this led to the demise of the
Liberal Party as the main reformist force in British politics. The
existence of the Labour Party on the left of British politics led
to a slow waning of energy from the Liberal Party, which has
consequently assumed third place in national politics. After
performing poorly in the elections of 1922, 1923 and 1924, the
Liberal Party was superseded by the Labour Party as the party of
the left.
Following two brief spells in minority governments in 1924 and
1929–1931, the Labour Party had its first true victory after
World War II in the 1945 "
khaki election".
Throughout the rest of the twentieth century, Labour governments
alternated with Conservative governments. The Conservatives were in
power for most of the time, with the Labour Party suffering the
"wilderness years" of 1951-1964 (three straight General Election
defeats) and 1979-1997 (four straight General Election
defeats).
During this second period,
Margaret
Thatcher, who became leader of the Conservative party in 1975,
made a fundamental change to Conservative policies, turning the
Conservative Party into an
economic
neoliberal party. In the
General Election of
1979 she defeated
James
Callaghan's troubled Labour government after the
winter of discontent.
For most of the 1980s and the 1990s, Conservative governments under
Thatcher and her successor
John Major
pursued policies of
privatization,
anti-
trade-union, and, for a time,
Monetarism, now known collectively as
Thatcherism.
The Labour Party elected left-winger
Michael Foot as their leader after their 1979
election defeat, and he responded to dissatisfaction with the
Labour Party by pursuing a number of radical policies developed by
its grass-roots members. In 1981 several right-wing Labour MPs
formed a breakaway group called the
Social Democratic Party (SDP),
a move which split Labour and is widely believed to have made
Labour unelectable for a decade. The SDP formed an alliance with
the Liberal Party which contested the
1983 and
1987 general elections
as a centrist alternative to Labour and the Conservatives. After
some initial success, the SDP did not prosper (partly due to its
unfavourable distribution of votes in the FPTP electoral system),
and was accused by some of splitting the anti-Conservative
vote.
The SDP eventually merged with the Liberal Party to form the
Liberal Democrats in 1988. Support for the new party has increased
since then, and the Liberal Democrats (often referred to as
LibDems) in 1997 and 2001 gained an increased number of seats in
the House of Commons.
The Labour Party was badly defeated in the Conservative landslide
of the
1983
general election, and Michael Foot was replaced shortly
thereafter by
Neil Kinnock as leader.
Kinnock expelled the
far left Militant tendency group (now called the
Socialist Party of
England and Wales) and moderated many of the party's policies.
Yet he was in turn replaced by
John Smith after Labour defeats
in the
1987
and
1992
general elections.
Tony Blair became leader of the Labour
party after John Smith's sudden death from a heart attack in 1994.
He continued to move the Labour Party back towards the 'centre' by
loosening links with the
union and
embracing many of Margaret Thatcher's liberal economic policies.
This, coupled with the
professionalising
of the party machine's approach to the media, helped Labour win a
historic landslide in the
1997 General Election,
after 18 years of Conservative government. Some observers say the
Labour Party had by then morphed from a
democratic socialist party to a
social democratic party, a process
which delivered three general election victories but alienated some
of its core base.
Conservatives (Tories)
The Conservative Party won the second largest number of seats
(still under 200) at the 2005 general election and remained the
official opposition, a position they have held continuously since
they lost power at the 1997 general election. The crushing defeat
of the 1997 election saw them lose over half their seats from 1992
and saw the party re-align with public perceptions of them.
The Conservative party can trace its origin back to 1662, with the
Court Party and the Country Party being formed in the aftermath of
the
English Civil War.
The Court Party soon became known as the
Tories, a name that has stuck despite the official name
being 'Conservative'. The term "Tory" originates from the Exclusion
Bill crisis of 1678-1681 - the Whigs were those who supported the
exclusion of the Roman Catholic
Duke
of York from the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland, and
the Tories were those who opposed it. Both names were originally
insults: a "
whiggamore" was a horse
drover (See
Whiggamore Raid), and a
"tory" (
Tóraidhe) was an
Irish term for an outlaw, later
applied to
Irish Confederate and
Irish
Royalists, during the
Wars of the Three Kingdoms.Oxford
English Dictionary (Second Edition 1989). Whig n.2, whiggamore, and
tory 1. a.
Generally, the Tories were associated with lesser gentry and the
Church of England, while Whigs were more associated with trade,
money, larger land holders (or "land magnates"), expansion and
tolerance.
The Rochdale
Radicals were a group of
more extreme reformists who were also heavily involved in the
cooperative movement. They
sought to bring about a more equal society, and are considered by
modern standards to be left-wing.
After becoming associated with repression of popular discontent in
the years after 1815, the Tories underwent a fundamental
transformation under the influence of
Robert
Peel, himself an industrialist rather than a landowner, who in
his 1834 "
Tamworth Manifesto"
outlined a new "Conservative" philosophy of reforming ills while
conserving the good.
Though Peel's supporters subsequently split from their colleagues
over the issue of free trade in 1846, ultimately joining the Whigs
and the
Radicals to form what
would become the
Liberal Party,
Peel's version of the party's underlying outlook was retained by
the remaining Tories, who adopted his label of Conservative as the
official name of their party.
In 2008, the Conservative Party formed a pact with the Ulster
Unionist Party to select joint candidates for European and House of
Commons elections, this angered the DUP as by splitting the
Unionist vote, republican parties will be elected in some
areas.
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats won the third largest number of seats at the
2005 general election, winning 62.
The Liberal Democrats were formed in 1988 by a merger of the
Liberal Party with the Social Democratic Party, but can trace their
origin back to the Whigs and the Rochdale Radicals who evolved into
the Liberal Party. The term '
Liberal
Party' was first used officially in 1868, though it had been in
use colloquially for decades beforehand. The Liberal Party formed a
government in 1868 and then alternated with the Conservative Party
as the party of government throughout the late 19th century and
early 20th century.
Scottish and Welsh Nationalists
Members of the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru work
together as a single parliamentary group following a formal pact
signed in 1986. This group currently has 10 MPs.
The Scottish National Party has enjoyed parliamentary
representation continuously since 1967 and had 6 MPs elected at the
2005 election. It has since added to this number following its
by-election win in
Glasgow East. Following the
2007 Scottish parliament elections, the SNP emerged as the largest
party with 47 MSPs and formed a
minority government with
Alex Salmond the
First Minister.
Plaid Cymru has enjoyed parliamentary representation continuously
since 1974 and had 3 MPs elected at the 2005 election. Following
the 2007 Welsh Assembly elections, they joined Labour as the junior
partner in a coalition government.
Northern Ireland parties
The
Democratic Unionist
Party had 9 MPs elected at the 2005 election.
Founded in 1971 by
Ian Paisley, it has grown to become the
larger of the two main unionist
political parties in Northern
Ireland. Other Northern Ireland parties represented at Westminster include the
Social Democratic and
Labour Party (3 MPs), the Ulster Unionist Party (1 MP) and
Sinn Féin (5 MPs), though the Sinn
Féin MPs are barred from taking their seats as they refuse to swear
the oath to the Queen.
Other parliamentary parties
The
Respect
party, a
left-wing group that came out of
the
anti-war movement has one MP,
George Galloway, and a small number
of seats on local councils across the country.
United Kingdom
Independence Party has as of yet not won a single House of
Commons seat at an election, but on 22 April 2008 welcomed the
defection of
Bob Spink MP for Castle
Point, to date its only MP. However, Bob Spink later claimed to
have never joined UKIP and does not sit as a UKIP MP.
The party also has
two Lords in the House of
Lords who defected from the Conservative Party and has
the joint third largest British block of MEPs in the European
Parliament. Two UKIP members were elected to the
London Assembly in 2000, but they quit the
party in February 2005 to join
Veritas which they quit in
September 2005 to sit as
One London
members. They were not re-elected in 2008.
There are also a small number of
Independent politicians in
parliament with no party allegiance. In modern times, this has
usually occurred when a sitting member leaves his party, and some
such MPs have been re-elected as independents. However, since 1950
only two new members have been elected as independents without
having ever stood for a major party:
- Martin Bell
represented the Tatton
constituency in Cheshire
between 1997 and 2001. He was elected
following a "sleaze" scandal involving the sitting Conservative MP,
Neil Hamilton -- Bell, a
BBC journalist, stood as an anticorruption
independent candidate, and the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties
withdrew their candidates from the election.
- Dr.
Richard Taylor MP was
elected for the Wyre Forest
constituency in the 2001 on a platform opposing the
closure of Kidderminster hospital. He later established
Health Concern, the party under which
he ran in 2005.
Non-Parliamentary political parties
Other
UK political parties exist, but generally do not succeed in
returning MPs to Parliament.
The
Green Party of England
and Wales has seats in the European Parliament
as well as two seats on the London Assembly and around 120 local
councillors.
The
Scottish Green Party has 2 MSPs
in the Scottish
Parliament and a number of local councillors.
The
Alliance Party of
Northern Ireland has several MLAs in the
Northern Ireland Assembly and a
number of local councillors.
The
British National Party (BNP)
has two seats in the European Parliament, a seat on the London
Assembly as well as a number of councillors.
The
English Democrats, which wants
a parliament for England, has some local councillors and had its
candidate elected mayor of Doncaster in 2009.
Other parties include: the
Free
England Party, the
Communist Party of Britain, the
Socialist Workers
Party, the
Scottish
Socialist Party, the
Liberal Party,
Mebyon Kernow (a Cornish nationalist party) in
Cornwall,
Veritas, and the
Communist
Left Alliance (in
Fife).
Several local parties contest only within a specific area, a single
county, borough or district. Examples include the
Better Bedford Independent
Party, which was one of the dominant parties in
Bedford Borough Council and led by
Bedford's former Mayor,
Frank
Branston. The most notable local party is
Health Concern, which controls a single seat
in the UK Parliament.
The
Jury Team, launched in March 2009 and
described as a "non-party party", is an umbrella organisation
seeking to increase the number of
Independent members of both
domestic and European members of Parliament in Great Britain.
Current political landscape
Since the
2005
General Election, each of the main political parties has
changed party leader:
David Cameron
was elected leader of the Conservatives in 2005,
Gordon Brown was elected unopposed to lead the
Labour Party (and therefore become Prime Minister) in June 2007,
and
Nick Clegg was elected leader of the
Liberal Democrats in December 2007.
The Conservatives under David Cameron have seen their popularity
grow, as shown by their success at the Local Elections in May 2008,
the
London Mayoral Election
and opinion polls which show a strong lead over Labour. They also
won a by election in
Crewe and Nantwich with
a swing of 17.6%.
In Scotland, the Scottish National Party made some strong advances,
winning the
Scottish
parliamentary election in May 2007 and gaining support in most
national opinion polls since then. In July 2008, the SNP achieved a
remarkable by-election victory in
Glasgow East, winning the
third safest Labour seat in Scotland with a swing of 22.54%.
However,in October of the same year, despite
confident public predictions by the SNP's leader Alex Salmond that they would win another
by-election in Glenrothes
, the seat was comfortably won by Labour with a
majority of 6,737 and an increased share of the vote. Given
that the SNP won the equivalent
Holyrood
seat in 2007 this was viewed as a significant step back for the
SNP. More recently, the SNP significantly out-polled the Labour
Party in the 2009 European election.
Local Government
The UK is divided into a variety of different types of
Local Authorities, with different functions
and responsibilities.
England has a mix of two-tier and single-tier councils in
different parts of the country. In Greater
London
, a unique two-tier system exists, with power shared
between the London borough councils,
and the Greater London
Authority which is headed by an elected mayor.
Unitary Authorities are used throughout
Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland.
European Union
The United Kingdom is a member of the
European Union (EU).
As such, UK citizens
elect 78 Members of
the European Parliament to represent them in the European
Parliament in Brussels
and Strasbourg
.
In recent years, there have been divisions in both major parties as
to whether the UK should form greater ties within the EU, or reduce
the EU's supranational powers. Opponents of greater European
integration are known as
Eurosceptic,
supporters Europhiles. Division over Europe is prevalent in both
major parties. The Conservative Party is seen as most split over
this issue, whilst in Government up to 1997, and today in
opposition. However the Labour Party is also split, with
conflicting views within Cabinet over UK adoption of the
euro, although the party is on the whole in favour of
further integration where in the interest of the UK.
UK nationalists have long campaigned against
European integration. The strong
showing of the eurosceptic
United Kingdom Independence
Party (UKIP) in the
2004 European Parliament
elections has shifted the debate over UK relations with the
EU.
Parliament decided in March 2008 not to hold a
referendum on the ratification of the
Treaty of Lisbon, signed in December 2007.
This was despite the Labour government promising in 2004
to hold a
referendum on the previously proposed
Constitution for
Europe.
International organization participation
See also
Notes
External links
(IOC)
(NATO)
(OAS) (observer)
(UPU)
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