Britain - traditions and visions

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UK - The political system

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

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.



The British Parliament Today,

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 contract 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).