Here's the deal

I've been asked to explain how the British political system works. I get asked this a lot, so it's worth writing a few paragraphs to explain it I guess, rather than try to reply to notes individually. I'm no expert, and I can't guarantee all this is right, but here's the deal:

The queen is the head of state. She's unelected and unaccountable. There is no method of removing her from power if she goes spacco and starts abusing her position. The royalists will tell you it's no problem because she has no real power, but that is just wrong. She does have real power. All legislation must get royal asscent before it becomes law, and in theory she could just refuse to give it if she decided it was the right thing to do one morning. Additionally, she has other powers that are very real. In the event of a hung parliament for instance, that is a general election in which there is no clear winner, guess who gets to choose the PM, yup, Her Maj.

There are two chambers in the Houses of Parliament, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Lords are not elected. They are appointed by the main political parties. Lords cannot be removed by the public, but they do occasionally go off the rails like Lord Jeffrey Archer, who lied in court about his relationship with some exotic ladies of the night at Kingscross station. He went to jail, but he is still a lord. You also get really odd people in the Lords, like Andrew Lloyd Webber the musician, who shouldn't be anywhere near politics if you ask me, but is.

The house of Commons is elected. There are 600ish seats in the commons and each one is occupied by an MP (member of parliament). Each MP represents a particular area (constituency) of the country. Even the PM is an elected MP and represents a specific area. The idea is that everyone can write to their own local MP and take their concerns to parliament. Each MP is either a member of a political party, or an independent, and the party with the most members in the Commons gets to play at being the government. The leader of that party is the PM of course.

A general election, where anyone over 18 and not in jail or mental institute can vote, decides who is elected to the Commons. Each person in the country has a single vote and can vote only for the people contesting the seat in parliament that represents their own area. You can be registered to vote in one area only, and it would usually be where you live.

A government can stay in power for up to 4 years, but the term is not fixed. The PM decides when to call an election. So, after two or three years in power the PM can decide to have an early election if he/she thinks it's a good moment, or can defer the election until the very last moment if they want.

The party in power (government) forms a cabinet of MPs. The roles within cabinet are not fixed, but they don't change much. There is always a PM, Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, and there are also ministers for health, education, transport, environment, etc. These cabinet ministers take on the responsibility of their own cabinet post in addition to things that concern their own constituency.

Just about anything can be debated in parliament, and then voted on. Usually each party tells it's members which way to vote, but sometimes each MP is allowed vote however they want. Because the party in power has most seats (and therefore votes), it usually wins the vote. Some controversial debates rumble on for years however, like fox hunting for instance.

When something has been voted on in parliament, it gets passed to the lords and voted on again. If the lords approve it, and they usually do, it goes for royal ascent and becomes law. In the case of fox hunting, the debate was so controversial that it was voted on several times in the commons, changing slightly each time, until a majority of MPs voted to approve it. It was then passed to the Lords who threw it out. This happened so many times that the Blair government invoked an archaic piece of legislation that allowed them to bypass the lords completely. It was called the parliament act and it was an act put in place to prevent the lords from voting on things that they would by biased about. Anyway, the fox hunting bill went to the queen without being approved by the lords and we are now not allowed to hunt with dogs. Thanks for that then Tony.

There are three major political parties; the Labour Party (corrupt scumbags currently in power), the Conservatives (sometimes called Tories, got very sleazy about 10 years ago but recovering now), and the Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems formed about 25 years ago when the Liberals and the Social Democrats merged. They are polling about 14% now. They have no hope of winning an election, but they do have a significant number of seats in the Commons and can swing a vote one way or the other. There are other parties, but none that have a hope of forming a government.

There are separate Welsh and Scottish assemblies which have some power, though things like defence and foreign policy are still controlled by London. There is no separate English parliament, which ironically means that Scottish and Welsh MPs can vote on things that affect only the English, but not the other way round. This is a Blair legacy. The labour party relies upon Scottish MPs in particular to drive English and Welsh legislation through.

Currently the PM is Gordon Brown. He was not leader of the Labour party when the last general election took place and consequently is not considered by many to be the people's choice. He took over from Tony Blair about a year ago and has lurched from one crisis to the next almost from day one. There is talk currently of a challenge to Gordon Brown's leadership, and potential successors are creeping out of the woodwork. This has happened because the Labour party are doing very very badly in terms of popularity currently and the PM is getting the blame. To change leaders twice in 18 months would look pretty desperate in the eyes on the public though and there would be pressure for an early election. The next one may not be for at least another 18 months as far as I remember. If there was an early election, Labour would lose, even with a new leader.