Everything you need to know about the British political system in 5 minutes

That United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland present a particular political system. It consists of 4 countries ((England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) with a common king, which have been united for centuries due to conquests, alliances and dynastic unions. This British political system is should that all of us living in the UK should know.

An atypical constitutional monarchy

English is Constitutional monarchy, where Queen Elizabeth II served as interim Head of State Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) is the Head of Government, in charge of the executive.

Interestingly, english constitution It is not written, it is what is known as Constitution’not encoded’. It consists of an accumulation of laws, court decisions, international treaties and parliamentary conventions. The jurisprudence produced by all these sources is equivalent to a written constitution of the continental type (such as: German, French or Spanish, For example).

This difference implies that parliament, by passing laws, you can change the Constitution without having to go through a certain process – (not as in Spain, where there are 2 procedures, each more complex to reform the Law of the Law) known as ‘parliamentary sovereignty’. There is also no constitutional court therefore, the DPR itself and the Supreme Court are tasked with dividing these functions.

Officially known as Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, that The British Parliament is bicameral. It consists of two chambers commonly known as the lower house (the General) and the upper house (i.e. knowledge). The two met at the Palace of Westminster.

House of Commons

That The House of Commons is a fundamental part of the British political system. consist of 650 Members of Parliament (MP) are elected by universal suffrage in single-member constituencies with a simple majority in principle every 5 years. That is, the United Kingdom is divided into 650 (more or less) equal constituencies, political parties exist for one candidate in each district and finally the candidate with the most votes is the district’s representative in the House of Commons.

House of Lords

That manor house it is also the key to understanding the British political system. This is governed by another dynamic: does not have a fixed number of members and this they are not democratically elected. As of 2010, this chamber has 733 members appointed by the King on the recommendation of the Prime Minister..

there is two kinds of God, spiritual and temporal. The Spiritual Lords are 26 bishops who represent the high hierarchy of the Anglican Church; Temporary masters are in turn of two types: lifetime (the majority) or hereditary, of which, after successive reforms, only a few remain.

Second room do not have the same weight in decision making. Previously the two rooms had symmetrical power, that is, for the approval of a statute, a majority must be obtained in both: first the approval in the Commons and then the assent of the Lords. With Parliament Act 1911 The House of Lords loses the ability to veto laws; he still retains the capacity to stop legislation for one year, though his role is primarily advisory.

Great Britain’s Decentralization

That great Britain it was a very politically centralized country to date; During the 1990s, Tony Blair’s Labor government initiated a process called devolution through which various executive and legislative powers are “returned” to the other states that make up the empire: English, Gales, Scotland e Northern Ireland.

Decentralization was carried out from the ground up, with regions asking what kind of competence they wanted to embody. As a result, the level of self-government of these territories varies from one to another.

In Spain the process is reversed, from top to bottom, with the State in charge of distributing and assigning power (commonly called ‘Coffee for everyone’, with some peculiarities such as provincial laws in Navarra and the Basque country or Catalan civil law).

How was England divided?

  • ‘Greater London’: the capital city and its metropolitan area is home to nearly 9 million people, half immigrants. This is practically a city-state in England. For this reason London is the only region in the UK to benefit from a devolution jurisdiction that gives broad administrative powers to local authorities.
  • Scotland: Following the entry into force of the Scotland Act 1998, the Scottish Parliament as a regional legislature. Competencies are also returned to him in other fields such as education, health, finance, civil administration, cultural and language policy.
  • strong winds: your process devolution it parallels Scotland, although it started a little later in 1999. The level of Welsh self-government, supported in regional plebiscites, is lower than Scotland’s.
  • Northern Ireland: island fragment belongs great Britain life a rather specialized process for achieving self-government. After decades of a certain degree of self-government, especially at the hands of the Anglican community to the detriment of Catholicism, the period known as Problem This encourages a paradigm shift that is more in line with the social realities of the region. Formalized in Northern Ireland Act 1998, local self-government covers areas such as taxation, social coverage and legislative power (collected in .) assembly). The distribution of power between groups is now more equitable.
  • Crown dependencies: They are considered as crown dependencies islands T-shirt, Guernsey you Man. The correct administrative term is bailia. Due to their small size and geographical location, these enclaves have a wider range of competencies than other municipalities.

British political system: a declining two-party system

The British political system is sometimes defined as a bipartisan regime in the hands of Labor, on the one hand, and conservatism on the other. This distribution does not represent the realities of British politics, it is the cause of certain electoral systems, specifically the type of constituency (533 constituencies in England, 59 in Scotland, 40 in Wales and 18 in Northern Ireland). Result of, a greater parliamentary majority is obtained in exchange for a less representative parliament.

Political parties, unlike in Spain, do not present lists for each constituency. They nominate a candidate, one in each constituency in which they compete. Once parliament is elected, residents of each constituency can submit complaints or petitions to members of parliament in their district.

Total 10 political parties has reached parliamentary representation (and an independent deputy). Of these formations, only two were able to muster a sufficient number of representatives to form a stable majority: Conservative party and Labor Party.

Recently, Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) and the party Liberal Democrat they have succeeded in increasing their number of representatives to the point of being able to consider themselves a ‘hinge party’ (a party which, with their support, is able to give an absolute majority to a third party).

Matt Thompson

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