The United
Kingdom is a Constitutional monarchy. This means that it has a monarch (a
king or a queen) as its Head of State. The monarch has very little power
and can only reign with the Support of Parliament. Parliament consists of
two chambers known as the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Parliament and the monarch have different roles in the government of the
country, and they only meet together on symbolic occasions such as the coronation
of a new monarch or the opening of Parliament. In reality, the House of Commons
is the only one of the three which has true power. It is here that new bills
are introduced and debated. If the majority of the members are in favour
of a bill it goes to the House of Lords to be debated and finally to the
monarch to be signed. Only then does it become law. Although a bill must
be supported by all three bodies, the House of Lords only has limited powers,
and the monarch has not refused to sign one since the modern Political system
began over 200 years ago.
The House of Commons
and the electoral system
The House
of Commons is made up of 650 elected members, known as Members of
Parliament (abbreviated to MPs), each of whom represents an area (or constituency)
of the United Kingdom. They are elected either at a general election, or
at a by-election following the death or retirement of an MP. The election
campaign usually lasts about three weeks. Everyone over the age of 18 can
vote in an election, which is decided on a simple majority - the candidate
with the most votes wins. Under this system, an MP who wins by a small number
of votes may have more votes against him (that is, for the other candidates)
than for him. This is a very simple system, but many people think that it
is unfair because the wishes of those who voted for the unsuccessful candidates
are not represented at all. Parliamentary elections must be held every five
years at the latest, but the Prime Minister can decide on the exact date
within those five years.
The party system
The British
democratic system depends on political parties, and there has been a party
system of some kind since the 17th century. The political parties choose
candidates in elections (there are sometimes independent candidates, but
they are rarely elected). The Party which wins the majority of seats forms
the Government and its leader usually becomes Prime Minister. The largest
minority party becomes the Opposition. In doing so it accepts the right of
the majority party to run the country, while the majority party accepts the
right of the minority party to criticize it. Without this agreement between
the political parties, the British Parliamentary system would break down.
The Prime
Minister chooses about twenty MPs from his or her party to become Cabinet
Ministers. Each minister is responsible for a particular area of government,
and for a Civil Service department. For example, the Minister of Defence
is responsible for defence policy and the armed forces, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer for financial Policy, and the Home Secretary for, among other
things, law and order and immigration. Their Civil Service departments are
called the Ministry of Defence, the Treasury and the Home Office respectively.
They are staffed by civil servants who are politically neutral and who therefore
do not change if the Government changes. The leader of the Opposition also
chooses MPs to take responsibility for opposing the Government in these areas.
They are known as the 'Shadow Cabinet'.
The parliamentary parties
The Conservative
and Liberal parties are the oldest, and until the last years of the 19th
century they were the only parties elected to the House of Commons. Once
working-class men were given the vote, however, Socialist MPs were elected,
but it was not until 1945 that Britain had its first Labour Government. At
this election, the number of Liberal MPs was greatly reduced and since then
Governments have been formed by either the Labour or the Conservative party.
Usually they have had clear majorities - that is, one party has had more
MPs than all the others combined.
The Conservative
Party can broadly be described as the party of the middle and upper classes
although it does receive some working-class support. Most of its voters live
in rural areas, small towns and the suburbs of large cities. Much of its
financial support comes from large industrial companies. The Labour Party,
on the other hand, has always had strong links with the trade unions and
receives financial support from them. While many Labour voters are middle-class
or intellectuals, the traditional Labour Party support is still strongest
in industrial areas.
Today there
are a number of other political parties represented in Parliament. Presently
the representation is as follows (646 in all)
Labour Party
356, Conservative Party 198, Liberal Democrats 62, Democratic Unionist Party
9, Scottish National Party 6, Plaid Cymru 3, Sinn Fein 5, Ulster Unionists
1, Social Democratic 3, Independent 1, and others
The House
of Lords is the second house of the Parlament of the United Kingdom and is
also and is also commonly referred to as "the Lords". Membership of the House
of Lords was once a right of birth to hereditary peers, but following a series
of reforms the House now consists almost entirely of appointed members. As
of January 2009 the House of Lords has 743 members,
97 more than the 646
The power
of the Lords to reject a bill passed by the House of Commons is severely
restricted by the Parliament Acts. The House of Lords cannot delay a money
bill (a bill that concerns national taxation) for more than one month. Other
public bills cannot be delayed by the House of Lords for more than one calendar
year.
The judicial
functions of the House of Lords are exercised not by the "Law Lords".The
jurisdiction of the House of Lords extends, in civil and in criminal cases,
to appeals from the courts of England and Wales, and of Northern Ireland.
by David Frost
and Anthony Jay
From far and
wide and every land they come to gaze in awe upon it ‑ the seat of liberty,
the throne of conscience, the cradle of democracy, the Mother of Parliaments.
Here, beside the sweet Thames, if nowhere else in the world, a man can breathe
the very air of freedom. Here, they are told, in this great Parliament, the
people of England maintain to this day the right they established centuries
ago to control their own destinies. This is the powerhouse; the very centre
of events, the model for constitutions.
The visitor, suitably
pious and humble, enters and mounts to the Strangers' Gallery. And what does
he see? A few half‑ asleep Members of Parliament listening to one half‑awake
Member of Parliament making a speech, pausing every now and again for some
piece of incomprehensible ritual as people in breeches, ruffles and wigs
strut in and out carrying symbolic sticks and baubles.
It is one of those
English institutions ‑ Trooping the Colour, Changing the Guard, the Lord
Mayor's Show etc. ‑ in which the form remains enshrined in ceremony long
after most of the substance has departed. There was real substance once. Parliament,
after all, was the place where those who were going to be asked to pay taxes
were summoned to make representations and give their advice about what taxes
would be accepted and how they should be collected.
There was even
a time when it could refuse to allow the taxes. But once the political parties
got Parliament sewn up a hundred years ago, with members having to submit
to party discipline and party loyalty because it was party organization that
got them into Parliament and kept them there, all power started to pass from
Parliament to Government. And that is the way it has been moving ever since.
Today most of the members are lobby fodder, rendered by the party system incapable
of stopping, or even amending in any significant way, legislation of which
they disapprove. Little wonder the more talented of their number begin to
despair of the system. Proclaiming themselves in their campaign speeches
as the people's watchdogs, they soon discover that they have no facility
whatever ‑ no office, no secretary, no research teams ‑ to enable them to
keep watch in any serious way on the executive.
All that is required
of them as members of the country's sovereign assembly is that they shall
vote as they are directed. A flicker of disobedience and they are hauled up
to be ticked off by the whips; a serious sign of rebellion and the Prime Minister
himself will lay into them with warnings that every dog is allowed one bite,
but only one. At the second its licence is taken away; in other words the
party withdraws its support.
They flex their
muscles at Question time, and then when the division bell rings they must
meekly swallow whatever feelings of power this exercise has given them, and
troop away behind their leader through the appropriate lobby door. Their choice is not between a sensible decision and a stupid
decision, a good law or a bad one. It is between their party and the other
party.
The parties
have cleverly contrived a system whereby backbenchers cannot stop measures
they do not like when proposed by their own government ‑ it is instantly
a major issue of confidence, and instead of having to choose whether or not
to let this one single measure become law, they have to choose whether to
bring the whole government down, and perhaps precipitate a general election
and let the other party in ‑ perhaps even lose their seats as well. The consequence
is that this has never been done, in this century anyway; M.P.'s have sometimes
got rid of their leader and replaced him by another, sometimes dissolved
or formed coalitions, but bring down their own government and force a general
election ‑ well, theoretically it could happen, just as, theoretically, the
Queen could divorce Prince Philip (and marry John Smith).