A constitutional monarchy, in which the Monarch is the head of state and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government. Legislative power is vested in the two chambers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. A multi-party system: the Conservative Party and the Labour Party and the Liberal Party.

2 The Queen’s Role

Head of State in the United Kingdom, Head of the Armed Forces, Fount of Justice. As a constitutional monarch, Her Majesty does not ‘rule’ the country, but fulfills important ceremonial and formal roles with respect to Government. Queen’s powers are largely traditional and symbolic. The government at national and locals levels is elected by the people and governs according to British constitutional principles.

3 Political System

3.1 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. Strictly speaking, the Parliament today consists of the Queen, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. These three institutions must all agree to pass any given legislation.

House of Lords: Below the Queen is the House of Lords which is the oldest part of Parliament. It consists of the Lords Spiritual, who are the most prominent bishops of the Church of England; and other noble people, usually called peers, sit in the Lords either because they have inherited the seat from their forefathers or because they have been appointed by the sovereign, at the suggestion of the Prime Minister. These latter are called life peers. Unlike those who serve in the House of Commons, they do not receive salaries .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.The House of Lords was replaced as the final court of appeal on civil cases within the United Kingdom on 1 October 2009, by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

House of Commons: In modern times, all Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition have been drawn from the Commons, not the Lords.The House of Commons which is where the real power lies. The members of the House of Commons are not appointed, but elected at the present time. The Commons consists of 659 Members of Parliament (MPs) (2001) who are elected from the 659 electoral districts of the U. K. called constituencies. Its members hold their seats for a maximum period of five years, although the government can hold a General Election at any time during its term. When a member of the Commons dies, another is elected at a by-election to occupy his seat in the House of Commons. 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. A government is not formed by a vote of the House of Commons, it is a commission from the monarch.

3.2 Executive

3.2.1 Political Parties

There are three major national parties: The Conservative party and the Labour party are the two biggest, and any general election is really about which of those two is going to govern. But there is a third important party, the Liberal Democrats, who usually receive up to about 20% of the votes: not enough to form a government, but enough to have a big impact on which of the other two parties does so. Anyone can join any of these parties and so take part in their internal politics: it’s just a question of paying a small annual fee. All encourage people to join since it means more money for their campaigns, and greater legitimacy for their policies.

The Labour party is the newest of these three, created by the growing trade union movement at the end of the nineteenth century. It quickly replaced the Liberal party as one of the two biggest parties (nineteenth century politics had essentially been a competition between the Liberals and the Conservatives). Labour is a socialist party. That is to say that they believe a society should be relatively equal in economic terms, and that part of the role of government is to act as a “redistributive” agent: transferring wealth from richer to poorer by means of taxing the richer part of society and providing support to the poorer part of society. As well as this redistributive role, they see the government as the right body to provide a range of public services available to all, such as health, education and public transport. The labour government that came to power in 1945 had a major effect on British society: setting up the National Health Service to provide high quality health care for all, free, “from cradle to grave”; providing a range of welfare payments (to replace or supplement wages in case of unemployment, sickness, poverty, etc.); and, most controversially, it “nationalised” (changed from private to state ownership) a wide range of industries, making the UK into a mixed economy with both private enterprises and a large state-owned sector. This remained the case for the next 34 years. All this government activity required money, so the Labour party became known as a party of high taxation levels. Its party activities are still largely funded by the trade unions.

The Conservative Party is the party that spent most time in power. In the post-1945 period the party of government changed fairly frequently, as Labour government was replaced by Conservative and vice versa. From 1979 to 1997, the Conservative Party won 4 elections in row and was in power for a long period. Basically the Conservatives are seen as the party of the individual, protecting the individual’s right to acquire wealth and to spend it how they choose, and so favouring economic policies which businessmen prefer, such as low taxes. They receive a lot of their party funding from big companies. But in the past this economic policy was coupled with a “fatherly” sense of obligation to the less fortunate in society, which meant that even though the “Big” government which Labour set up in the post-45 era was against their principles, they did not dismantle it when they were in power. Thus the difference between the Labour party and the Conservative party is one of degree, not an absolute. However, as we shall see in the section below, neither party has stood still, and there have been substantial recent changes in both parties.

The Liberal Democrats are the third biggest party, and to some extent may be seen as a party of the “middle”, occupying the ideological ground between the two main parties. As such, at election time they may receive votes both from those who usually vote labour and from those who usually vote Conservative. Many people see them as comparatively flexible and pragmatic in their balance of the individual and the social. They emphasis the need for change in Britain’s constitutional arrangements to make government more democratic and accountable.

There are small parties supporting the independence of each of the three smaller countries in the Union, though at the moment they all receive a small share of the vote at election time.

3.2.2 General Elections

Periodic national elections are very important in the western model of democracy. The election is seen as an opportunity to influence future government policy ― or, less positively, that whatever else the failings of the political system, at least the election provides the opportunity to “kick the rascals out”!

After a government has been in power for five years, it has to resign and hold a general election in which all British adults are given the chance to vote again for their constituency’s MP.

3.2.3 The United Kingdom Government

The monarch appoints a Prime Minister as the head of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, 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. If no party has an absolute majority, the leader of the largest party is given the first opportunity to form a coalition. 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.

3.2.4 The Prime Minister and the Cabinet

To ensure good relations between Crown and Parliament, the king or queen met regularly with a group of important Parliamentarians, a group which became known as the Cabinet.

The Prime Minister is the most senior minister in the Cabinet. S/he is responsible for chairing Cabinet meetings, selecting Cabinet ministers (and all other positions in Her Majesty’s government), and formulating government policy. The Prime Minister is the leader of the UK government, since s/he exercises executive functions that are nominally vested in the sovereign. Historically, the British monarch was the sole source of executive powers in the government. However, 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.

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. Cabinet meetings are typically held weekly, while Parliament is in session. Around 20 MPs in the governing party who are chosen by the Prime Minister will become government ministers in the Cabinet. The Cabinet carries out the functions of policy-making, coordination of government departments and the supreme control of government.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British politician, army officer, and writer, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.

As Prime Minister, Churchill led Britain to victory in the Second World War. Ideologically an economic liberal and British imperialist.

Churchill represented five constituencies during his career as Member of Parliament (MP).

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, (13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to have been appointed. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.

Theresa Mary May （1 October 1956) is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party since 2016. Following Cameron's resignation, May won a leadership election in July 2016, becoming the second female Prime Minister after Margaret Thatcher.

As Prime Minister, May began the process of withdrawing the UK from the European Union, triggering Article 50 in March 2017.

4. 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 saw a new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom come into being in October 2009 that took on the appeal functions of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords.[19] The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, comprising the same members as the Supreme Court, is the highest court of appeal for several independent Commonwealth countries, the UK overseas territories, and the British crown dependencies. The Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition is the present Government of the United Kingdom, formed after the 2010 general election, which had ended in a hung parliament with the Conservatives having the most seats but no party having an overall majority.

The Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats entered into discussions which culminated in the 2010 coalition agreement, setting out a programme for government until the next general election, scheduled for 2015. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats both wanted to be ‘green governments’ with Nick Clegg spearheading electoral reform. Michael Gove led efforts to reform education to ‘drive up education standards’. The Coalition Government also led efforts to help the Arab Spring most notably pushing for NATO action on the Libyan civil war. In 2012 a consultation to legalize gay marriage was opened. In 2012 the coalition government also introduced plans to monitor the emails of all UK citizens.

Following two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the UK entered a double-dip recession in the first quarter of 2012.