Encyclopedia
Politics of the United Kingdom take place in the framework of a
parliamentary, representative democratic
monarchy, in which the
Prime Minister is the head of government. It is a pluriform multi-party system with a partial devolution of power in
Scotland,
Wales, and sometimes
Northern Ireland. Executive power is exercised by the government.
Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the
House of Commons and the
House of Lords. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Its system of government has been adopted by other countries, such as
Canada,
India,
Australia,
New Zealand,
Singapore,
Malaysia and
Jamaica, countries which made up part of the
British EmpireThe constitution is uncodified, being made up of constitutional conventions,
statutes and other elements.
Monarchy
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.
The British Sovereign possesses many hypothetical 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. The monarch retains the ability to deny giving a bill
Royal Assent, although in modern times this becomes increasingly more unlikely, as it would cause a constitutional crisis.
Queen Anne was the last monarch to exercise this power, which she did on 11 March 1708 with regard 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.
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 formal terms, the
Crown in Parliament is sovereign even though in practical terms the political head of the UK is the
Prime Minister . 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 fulfils 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, 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
The Government performs the Executive functions of the United Kingdom on behalf of the Sovereign, in whom executive power is theoretically and nominally vested. The monarch appoints a
Prime Minister, guided by the strict convention that the Prime Minister should be the member of the House of Commons most likely to be able to form a Government with the support of the House. The Prime Minister then selects the other Ministers which make up the Government and act as political heads of the various Government Departments. About twenty of the most senior government ministers make up the
Cabinet.
As in some other
parliamentary systems of government , the executive is drawn from and is answerable to Parliament - a successful vote of no confidence will force the government either to resign or to seek a parliamentary dissolution and a general election. In practice members of parliament of all major parties are strictly controlled by
whips who try to ensure they vote according to party policy. If the government has a large majority, then they are very unlikely to lose enough votes to be unable to pass legislation.
In November 2005, the Blair government suffered its first defeat, on a
proposal to extend the period for detaining terrorist suspects to 90 days. Before this, the last bill proposed by a government that was defeated in the
House of Commons was the Shop Hours Bill in 1986, one of only three in the 20th century. Governments with a small majority, or coalition governments are much more vulnerable to defeat. They sometimes have to resort to extreme measures, such as "wheeling in" sick MPs, to get the necessary majority.
Margaret Thatcher in 1983 and
Tony Blair in 1997 were swept into power with such large majorities that even allowing for dissent within their parties, they were assured of winning practically all parliamentary votes, and thus were able to implement radical programmes of legislative reform and innovation. But other Prime Ministers, such as
John Major in 1992 who enjoy only slender majorities can easily lose votes if relatively small numbers of their backbench MPs reject the whip and vote against the Government's proposals. As such, Governments with small majorities find it extremely difficult to implement controversial legislation and tend to become bogged down cutting deals with factions within their party or seeking assistance from other political parties.
Government departments
The Government of the United Kingdom contains a number of ministries known mainly, though not exclusively as departments, e.g. Ministry of Defence. These are politically led by a Government Minister who is often a Secretary of State and member of the Cabinet. He or she may also be supported by a number of junior Ministers.
Implementation of the Minister's decisions is carried out by a permanent politically neutral organization known as the civil service. Its constitutional role is to support the Government of the day regardless of which political party is in power. Unlike some other democracies, senior civil servants remain in post upon a change of Government. Administrative management of the Department is led by a head civil servant known in most Departments as a Permanent Secretary. The majority of the civil service staff in fact work in executive agencies, which are separate operational organisations reporting to Departments of State.
"Whitehall" is often used as a synonym for the central core of the Civil Service. This is because most Government Departments have headquarters in and around the former Royal Palace of
Whitehall.
Legislative
Parliament is the centre of the political system in the United Kingdom. It is the supreme
legislative body , and Government is drawn from and answerable to it. Parliament is
bicameral, consisting of the
House of Commons and the
House of Lords.
House of Commons
The UK is divided into parliamentary constituencies of broadly equal population , each of which elects a Member of Parliament to the House of Commons. Of the 646 MPs there is currently only one who does not belong to a
political party. In modern times, all Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition have been drawn from the Commons, not the Lords.
Alec Douglas-Home resigned from his peerages days after becoming Prime Minister in 1963, and the last Prime Minister before him from the Lords left in 1902 .
One party usually has a majority in Parliament, because of the use of the
First Past the Post electoral system, which has been conducive in creating the current two party system. The monarch normally asks a person commissioned to form a government simply whether it can
survive in the House of Commons, something which majority governments are expected to be able to do. In exceptional circumstances the monarch asks someone to 'form a government'
with a parliamentary minority which in the event of no party having a majority requires the formation of a coalition government. This option is only ever taken at a time of national emergency, such as war-time. It was given in 1916 to
Andrew Bonar Law, and when he declined, to
David Lloyd George. It is worth noting that a government is not formed by a vote of the House of Commons, merely a commission from the monarch. The House of Commons gets its first chance to indicate confidence in the new government when it votes on the
Speech from the Throne .
House of Lords
The
House of Lords was previously a hereditary, aristocratic chamber. Major reform has been partially completed and it is currently a mixture of hereditary members,
bishops of the
Church of England known as Lords Spiritual and appointed members . It currently acts to review legislation formed by the House of Commons, with the power to propose amendments, and exercises a
suspensive veto. This allows it to delay legislation it does not approve of for twelve months. However, the use of vetoes is limited by convention and the operation of the
Parliament Acts: the Lords may not veto the "money bills" or major manifesto promises . Persistent use of the veto can also be overturned by the
Parliament Act by the Commons. Often governments will accept changes in legislation in order to avoid both the time delay, and the negative publicity of being seen to clash with the Lords.
The House of Lords is currently also the final court of appeal within the United Kingdom, although in practice only a small subset of the House of Lords, known as the Law Lords, hears judicial cases. However, the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 outlines plans for a Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to replace the role of the Law Lords.
Judiciary
The
Lord Chancellor is the head of the judiciary in
England and Wales. He appoints judges and magistrates for criminal courts on behalf of the
Sovereign. The Lord Chancellor fell into all the three branches of government, taking roles in the executive,
legislature and judiciary, which is a peculiarity amongst many
liberal democracies in the world today. However, the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 removes much of the power in this role and gives it to others in the British government, mainly the newly created post of Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. Another part of The Lord Chancellor's duties in the House of Lords have been replaced by a dedicated "Lord/Lady Speaker", who acts as a permanent presiding officer for the House of Lords.
Devolved Powers
In addition to the House of Commons,
Scotland now has its own parliament and
Wales and
Northern Ireland have assemblies.
Some members of the devolved bodies are elected by a form of proportional representation. Although the new devolved governments have some legislative and other powers, they do not have the same powers as the UK parliament. As
devolved systems of government, they have no constitutional
right to exist and can have their powers broadened, narrowed or changed by an Act of the UK Parliament.
Thus, the United Kingdom is said to have a
unitary state with a devolved system of government. This contrasts with a
federal system, in which sub-parliaments or state parliaments and assemblies have a clearly defined constitutional
right to exist and a
right to exercise certain constitutionally guaranteed and defined functions and cannot be unilaterally abolished by Acts of the central parliament.
England
The government has no plans to establish an English parliament or assembly although several pressure groups are calling for one. One of their main arguments is that MPs 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 cannot vote on matters devolved to the Scottish parliament. Indeed, current Home Secretary John Reid, who is an MP for a Scottish constituency, runs a department which deals primarily with England and Wales. This anomaly is known as the West Lothian question.
The policy of the UK Government in England was to establish elected regional assemblies with no legislative powers. The
London Assembly was the first of these, established in 2000, following a referendum in 1998, but further plans were abandoned following rejection of a proposal for an elected assembly in
North East England in a
referendum in 2004. Unelected regional assemblies remain in place in eight
regions of England.
Northern Ireland
The current government of Northern Ireland was established as a result of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. This created the
Northern Ireland Assembly which is currently under suspension. The Assembly is a
unicameral body consisting of 108 members elected under the
Single Transferable Vote form of proportional representation. The Assembly is based on the principle of power-sharing, in order to ensure that both communities in Northern Ireland, unionist and nationalist, participate in governing the region. When fully operational, it has power to legislate in a wide range of areas and to elect the Northern Ireland Executive . It sits at Parliament Buildings at Stormont in
Belfast.
The Assembly has authority to legislate in a field of competences known as "transferred matters". These matters are not explicitly enumerated in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 but instead include any competence not explicitly retained by the Parliament at Westminster. Powers reserved by Westminster are divided into "excepted matters", which it retains indefinitely, and "reserved matters", which may be transferred to the competence of the Northern Ireland Assembly at a future date. Health and education are "transferred" but criminal law and police are "reserved" and royal succession, defence and international relations are all "excepted".
While the Assembly is in suspension, its legislative powers are exercised by the UK government, which effectively has power to legislate by decree. Laws that would normally be within the competence of the Assembly are passed by the UK government in the form of Orders-in-Council rather than legislative acts.
Scotland
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 Executive 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 two ways that are not the case at Westminster: a public petitioning system, and Cross Party Groups on policy topics which the interested public join and attend meetings of alongside Members of the Scottish Parliament .
Wales
The
National Assembly for Wales is a devolved assembly with power to make legislation in
Wales, and is also responsible for most UK government departments in Wales. The Assembly was formed under the Government of Wales Act 1998, by the Labour government, after a
referendum in 1997, , approved its creation.
There is no legal or constitutional separation of the legislative and executive functions of the National Assembly, since it is a single corporate entity. Compared with other
parliamentary systems, and other UK devolved countries, this is highly unusual. In reality there is some sort of day to day separation, and the terms "Assembly Government" and "Assembly Parliamentary Service" have been used to distinguish between the two arms. It is proposed to regularise the separation, and it is considered likely that the UK Parliament will pass the necessary legislation.
Although the Assembly is a legislature, it currently does not have primary legislative or fiscal powers, as these powers had been reserved by
Westminster. However, the position is set to change with the passing of the Government of Wales Bill in 2006.
Elections and Parties
Unlike many
European nations, the United Kingdom uses a
first-past-the-post system to elect members of Parliament. Therefore, elections and political parties in the United Kingdom are affected by Duverger's Law, which causes the agglomeration of related political ideologies into a few large parties with many small parties rarely winning representation.
Historically, the United Kingdom had two major political parties, though currently three parties dominate the political landscape. Originally, the Conservatives and the Liberals dominated British politics, but the Liberal Party collapsed in the early twentieth century and was largely replaced by the Labour Party. In the 1980s, the Liberals merged with the Social Democratic Party and have recently experienced a resurgence as the
Liberal Democrats, enough so to again be considered a major party. In addition to the three major parties, many minor parties contest elections. Of these, few except for regional parties such as the
Scottish National Party and
Democratic Unionist Party win seats in Parliament.
In the most recent
general election in 2005, the Labour Party won re-election on a reduced majority, with both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats making gains at the expense of Labour.
Electoral Systems
Various electoral systems are used in the UK:
Under mixed member proportional representation [i] a ...
and
London Assembly.
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 the party with fewer popular votes actually came out with the larger number of seats. One reason for all the quirks is that Britain has many political parties, making it possible to win individual constituencies on less than 50% of the vote due to the opposition votes being divided.
Electoral reform has been considered for general elections many times, but after the Jenkins Commission report in October 1998, which suggested the Alternative vote top-up for general elections was effectively ignored by the government, there have been no further government proposals for reform. It is highly unlikely that electoral reform will happen unless there is a significant change in the balance of power and Labour loses its large majority.
Low turnout is a concern, as the percentage of the electorate who voted in the
last general election was just 61%.
History of Political Parties
UK political parties originated in 1662 in the aftermath of the
English Civil War, with the creation of the Court Party and the Country Party, soon becoming known as the
Tories and the Whigs . The two remained the main political parties until the
20th century.
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 "whiggamor" was a cattle driver, and a "tory" was an
Irish term for an outlaw.
Generally, the Tories were associated with lesser gentry and the Church of England, while Whigs were more associated with trade, money, larger land holders , expansion and tolerance. Both were still committed to the political system in place at that time. Neither group could be considered a true political party in the modern sense.
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.
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 1870 and then alternated with the Conservative Party as the party of government throughout the late 19th century and early 20th century.
The
Irish Parliamentary Party was set up to replace the Home Rule League in 1882. It remained the third-largest party in British politics until 1918, often holding the balance of power.
In 1900, the Labour Representation Committee was established and it 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, ending with it taking 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 and 1979-1997 .
During this second period, right-winger
Margaret Thatcher, who became leader of the Conservative party in 1975, made a fundamental change to Conservative policies, turning the Conservative Party into a staunch 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 under her successor
John Major, Conservative governments pursued policies of privatisation, anti-
trade-unionism, and 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. Several right-wing MPs formed a breakaway group in 1981, called the Social Democratic Party , 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, 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 in 1997 and 2001 gained an increased number of seats in the House of Commons.
Labour were badly defeated by the Conservatives in the
general election of 1983 and Michael Foot was replaced by
Neil Kinnock as leader of the Labour Party. Kinnock expelled the far left-wing
Militant Tendency group, and moderated many of the party's policies. He was replaced by John Smith after Labour's narrow defeat in the
1992 general election.
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 right by loosening links with the
unions and embracing many of Margaret Thatcher's policies. This, coupled with the professionalising of the party machine's approach to the media, helped Labour win the
1997 General Election with a historic landslide result. The Labour Party has moved from being a democratic socialist party to being a
social democrat party, giving it three landslide victories but often alienating its core membership.
Links To Main Political PartiesCurrent electoral landscape
In the
2005 General Election, the Labour Party consolidated its position in 2001, winning a full third term - a first-time achievement for the Labour Party - under the leadership of
Tony Blair, who won Labour the 1997 election too.
This led to a crisis of confidence in the Conservative Party, which some would argue had become complacent with its position as the 'natural party of government' after 18 years of power. The party's drift to the right lost it many of its working-class voters, and its ageing membership and vote meant that avoiding extinction became a higher priority than winning an election. It appeared that Labour's drop in popularity in 2003-2004, coinciding with the Conservatives' appointment of
Michael Howard as leader, might make the Conservatives again a serious challenger to the Labour government. However, Tony Blair's party secured a majority for the third time in May 2005, albeit with a greatly reduced majority.
After Labour’s third victory in the general election in 2005 the Conservative Party, under Michael Howard knew that to regain power it must change both itself and perhaps more importantly its image. Michael Howard tendered his resignation, but said that he would not resign with immediate effect, as is the norm. Instead there was to be a long leadership campaign in which there would be time to find the correct direction for the party. After this leadership campaign David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party. The Conservatives under David Cameron have seen their popularity grow, as is shown by their success at the Local Elections in May 2006 and the recent newspaper opinion polls which sometimes put them ahead of Labour, a position that they have not been since the early 1990’s.
During the same time as the Conservative Party was finding its feet again the Labour administration has been suffering from internal power-struggles as to when Tony Blair will step down as Prime Minister and sleaze, as is evidenced by the “cash for peerages”, Regional Casino bid affair and the failures of the Home Office to monitor immigration.
Major issues in current British national politics, in descending order of voter concern , are:
...
There are also specific regional issues, not listed above.
Minor Parties
Small Parties
The
Respect party, a left-wing group that came out of the anti-war movement has one MP
George Galloway and a small number of seats on local councils across the country.
Non-Parliamentary Political Parties
Two parties have no seats in Parliament, but multiple seats in the
European Parliament and a number of seats on local councils.
The Greens also have two seats in the
London Assembly; UKIP elected two members to the London Assembly, but they subsequently quit the party and now sit as
One London members. Veritas has one Member of the European Parliament , its founder and former leader
Robert Kilroy Silk, though he was elected for UKIP . The
Scottish National Party and
Scottish Socialist Party have seats in the Scottish Parliament, and
Plaid Cymru have seats in the Welsh Assembly, as well as each having a number of council seats. A number of other parties have local councillors including the
British National Party 
