1. The political system of the uk.

a) The organs of government (the legislature, the executive, the judiciary).

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a constitutional monarchy. It is a unitary state.

As a matter of fact there is no constitution in the UK in the sense of the basic law of the country, written in a single document. The UK constitution is formed partly by statutes, and partly by conventions. The organs of government in the United Kingdom are:

1. the legislature which consists of the Queen (the supreme authority of the realm) and Parliament (the main law-making body);

2. the executive branch which consists of a) the Cabinet and other ministers of the Crown, b) government departments, and c) local authorities;

3. the judiciary (law courts) which determines common law and interprets the laws.

b) The monarchy. Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. The queen’s role. The royal family.

Britain is a constitutional monarchy. This means that the monarch, at the moment Queen Elizabeth II, is the Head of State. The Queen is also head of the judiciary and of the Church of England, as well as the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The Queen is the personification of the state. Her face is on all British bank notes, coins and postage stamps. The Queen’s title is “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith”.

T he Queen’s constitutional role, however, is mainly symbolic. True power lies in the hands of the Prime Minister and his or her Cabinet. It is the Queen who formally opens Parliament every autumn, but the speech she makes from the throne, giving details of the government’s future plans, is written for her by politicians. Nothing becomes British law without the monarch’s signature, but the Queen would never refuse to sign a bill which has been passed by Parliament. It is the Queen who officially appoints the Prime Minister, but traditionally she always asks the leader of the party with a majority in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister visits Buckingham Palace every Tuesday and informs the Queen of all state affairs.

The most important function of the Queen is ceremonial. On great occasions, such as the State Opening of Parliament, she is driven through the streets in a golden carriage, guarded by soldiers. She gives a state banquet, usually in her home Buckingham Palace, when foreign monarchs or Heads of State visit Britain and soldiers dressed in eighteenth-century uniforms help her welcome them. The Queen is head of the Commonwealth (a group of former and present-day British colonies). As head of the Commonwealth, she meets and entertains prime ministers of the member states.

Since Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952, she has represented Britain in visits to most parts of the world. Prime Ministers come and go, but she carries on above politics, a symbol of British traditions. Today the Queen is not only head of state, but also an important symbol of national unity.

The surname of the royal family is Windsor. This might sound very British, but the royal family’s ancestors were German. The present Queen’s great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria (1819-1910), was born in Britain, but her mother and her husband were both German. When Queen Victoria got married, she became a Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The British royal family continued with this surname until the First World War (1914-1918) when King George V (1865-1936) decided to adopt the more English-sounding name of Windsor. In fact, Windsor is the name of one of their castles.

Nowadays the Royal Family includes the Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, her three sons (Princes Charles, Andrew, Edward) and a daughter (Princess Anne), her grandchildren and cousins.

There are many colourful ceremonies that involve the royal family, and members of the family often visit towns and institutions all over the UK and in other countries. Stories about them often appear in newspapers and on television, and many people like and respect them. Apart from the Queen, the most popular members of the royal family include Princess Anne (who does a lot of work for charity organizations), and Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge. However, the royal family became less popular during the 1990s, especially when people found out that Prince Charles was having a relationship with another woman, and because of the end of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales. People think that the royal family have old-fashioned and very traditional values.

c) The British Parliament (the House of Commons and the House of Lords).

The British Parliament has two houses, or chambers: the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The House of Commons is the most powerful and decides national policy, but the House of Lords can ask the House of Commons to rewrite certain parts of a bill before it becomes a new law.

The House of Commons consists of Members of Parliament, MPs. Each MP is elected by voters in one constituency (region). There are 650 MPs, or seats, in the House of Commons, each representing a constituency. The government brings bills to the House of Commons, where they are discussed by MPs. The bills then go to the House of Lords. The House of Lords can suggest changes to a bill, but does not have the power to stop it from becoming law. When the bills come back to the Commons, MPs vote on them, and if they passed they are signed by the Queen or King and become Acts of Parliament, which means that they become part of British law. Parliament controls and criticizes the government in office, which is particularly exercised during the Question Time when MPs may ask any questions on any aspects of the government activities.

The chief officer of the House of Commons is the Speaker. He is chosen from the members but, once elected, is no longer considered a party man. He chairs the debates. The Leader of the House is responsible for organizing the work of the British Parliament.

The leader of the main party opposing the government is called the Leader of the Opposition. The Opposition has a duty to challenge government policies and to present an alternative programme. The Opposition functions as a system of checks and balances.

The House of Lords today is a place of discussion and debate, and it normally passes legislation already approved by the House of Commons. This house has relatively little power.

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. Nowadays the House of Lords has 743 members.

The House of Lords comprises the lords temporal (life peers and hereditary peers) and the lords spiritual. Hereditary peers are the heads of aristocratic families. Life peers are given their title as a reward for their good work. The bishops and archbishops in the Church of England who are members of the House of Lords are called the lords spiritual.

The head of both Houses of Parliament is the Queen. She enters the Palace of Westminster only on the day of the State Opening of Parliament at the beginning of the session. Crowned and wearing many of the finest Crown Jewels, she makes her speech from the throne in the House of Lords.

Before the throne in the House of Lords, and dividing the benches, is the Woolsack upon which the Lord Speaker presides over the lords. By tradition the Woolsack is stuffed with wool from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and from Commonwealth countries. The Peers’ benches, covered in red leather, are arranged in five rows on either side of the House. Members of the Government and their supporters are to the right of the throne, and those of the Opposition to the left. The galleries are reserved for diplomats and distinguished strangers or guests, and reporters.

Before every sitting of the House of Commons, the Speaker wearing wig and gown walks in procession to the Chamber from his residence within the Royal Palace. The benches in the House of Commons are covered in green leather. The floor of the House is covered by a green carpet bearing on either side a red stripe, over which no Member may cross when addressing the House. The front bench on the Speaker’s right is for the Prime Minister and the leading members of the Government. The Leader of the Opposition and his supporters are on the Speaker’s left.

d) The Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Local government.

The party with most MPs forms the government. The leader of the winning party automatically becomes Prime Minister and appoints the Cabinet. The Prime Minister is the most important person in Parliament. He has considerable individual power to introduce and control policies and to change the Cabinet by appointing new ministers.

The members of the Cabinet are the leading government ministers. Departments and ministries are run by civil servants, who are permanent officials. Even if the Government changes after an election, the same civil servants are employed.

The party who comes second is the Opposition and forms its own Shadow Cabinet. The Shadow Cabinet consists of the opposition party leader and those who would receive Cabinet posts if the opposition leader became prime minister.

British Prime Ministers have lived at 10 Downing Street since 1731. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (responsible for money and finance) lives next door at number 11. People often talk about “Downing Street” when they mean the Prime Minister and his or her Cabinet.

Now the Prime Minister of the UK is David Cameron who was appointed Prime Minister on 11 May 2010. At the age of 43, Cameron became the youngest British Prime Minister since the Earl of Liverpool 198 years earlier. At the 2010 general election Cameron led the Conservatives to their best performance since the 1992 election. The Conservatives gained a plurality of seats in a hung parliament and talks between Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg led to an agreed Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition. The Cameron Ministry is the first coalition government in the United Kingdom since the Second World War.

The organizations that are responsible for local government in the UK are called councils. Their main job is to provide local services such as schools, libraries, and the Fire Service. They are also responsible for the local environment, and take rubbish from people’s houses and clean the streets. Councils are given an amount of money each year by the national government, and also get money from local taxes. Local councils are elected by people who live in that area. Councillors usually represent one of the national political parties, but are often elected because of their policies on local issues. Councils can make bylaws, which only apply in their area. For example, councils decide which streets people can park their cars on, and how much parking fines should be.

e) Political parties (the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats). The electoral system.

Every five years, British people over the age of 18 can vote in a general election. People vote for the candidate they want in their constituency (region). The candidate who wins becomes the MP in the House of Commons, even if they do not receive more than fifty per cent of the vote. This is called the first past the post system. Under this system, smaller parties have proportionally less representation than their share of the popular vote, as their candidates often do not get enough votes in constituencies to send members to Parliament.

The first past the post electoral system in Britain promotes the two most powerful parties at the expense of the smaller parties. Since the 1920s, the two main parties have been the left-wing Labour Party and the right-wing Conservative Party. The Liberal Democrats, a centre party, are not happy with the current first past the post electoral system. This is because it is a party which does not win many seats in Parliament, but comes second in many constituencies. It would prefer a system of proportional representation, in which the number of MPs is based on the number of people who vote for a party in the whole of the country.

The two-party system has evolved since the 18th century when the conflicting groups within Parliament formed opposing parties known as Tories and Whigs. The Conservative party emerged to defend the interests of big, reactionary landowners, of the cavaliers who supported Charles I in his struggle with Parliament, of the conservative gentry and the clergy of the Church of England. They were called Tories — an insult as the name meant “Irish thief”. The other group consisted of merchants and those landowners linked with commerce and the Scottish Presbyterians who helped then to win in the civil war against the King. The latter had been had been called Whiggamores, or outlaws, and this name was shortened to Whigs, a term which lasted into the 19th century, but unlike the name Tory, is now obsolete.

Today the Conservative Party is the party of the Right, identified with the idea of economic freedom and mainly with the idea of resistance to change. The aims of the Party are to uphold religion, to maintain defence forces adequate for the preservation of freedom and prevention of war, to provide freedom and opportunity by supporting free enterprise and initiative against socialist system of state-trading and nationalization, to encourage wider spread of ownership of property, to improve standards of life, to promote better health, to give greater educational opportunities. The Conservative party has successfully portrayed itself as the party of patriotism. It gives emphasis to the importance of law and order, and it is highly disciplined, tending no dissent from the leadership publicly. It was the Conservative Party that had Britain’s first woman prime minister and the longest serving British prime minister of the 20th century — Margaret Thatcher.

T he Labour Party was formed in 1900. It was traditionally a socialist party that was closely connected with the trade unions.

The Labour Party is less disciplined but more democratic, with more open disagreements between the leadership and other party members. Labour is the party of social justice, though its emphasis is less on equality than on the achievement of wellbeing and opportunity for all members of society. Traditionally it has been committed to public ownership of major industries (nationalization) and to economic organization. During the 1980s and 1990s it changed and moved towards the political centre, especially after Tony Blair became party leader in 1994. Since then the party has also been known as New Labour. It has now accepted more use of market forces and less central control, it encourages diversity, individual enterprise, decentralised economic organisation. And contrary to its earlier policies now it fully supports Britain’s membership in the European Union as essential to the Country’s political and economic future.

The party of Liberal Democrats was formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. Its leader is Nick Clegg. It is a social liberal political party. It voices strong support for constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, and civil liberties. At the 2010 general election, 57 Liberal Democrat MPs were elected. They formed the third largest group in the House of Commons.

f) Justice and the law.

The law in the UK is based on tradition. The legal system for England and Wales (there are separate ones for Scotland and Northern Ireland) does not have a criminal or civil code, but is founded upon two basic elements: Acts of Parliament or statute law, and common law which is the outcome of past decisions and practices based upon custom and reason. Common law has slowly built up since Anglo-Saxon times 1,000 years ago, while Parliament has been enacting statutes since the thirteenth century. Almost all criminal law is now set out in Acts of Parliament, while the greater part of civil law still depends upon common law, the weight and guidance of previous similar decision.

The initial decision to bring a criminal charge normally lies with the police. There are two main types of court for criminal cases: Magistrates’ Courts (or “courts of first instance”), which deal with about 95 per cent of criminal cases, and Crown Courts for more serious offences.

A magistrate is not normally a professional lawyer but a suitable member of the public. It is an unpaid, part-time job. The magistrates (there are usually three of them in the court) decide whether the defendant is guilty of the crime, and they fix the punishment, or sentence. They deal with cases such as driving offences, shoplifting or vandalism, and the maximum sentences they can give are six months in prison or a £5,000 fine.

In the Crown Court the person in charge is a professional judge. The judge decides on the sentence: there are limits for each type of crime, and the maximum penalty for murder is life imprisonment. The judge does not decide whether the defendant is guilty; that is done by a jury of 12 ordinary citizens. The jurors are chosen at random from the population between the ages of 18 and 70, but police officers, lawyers and criminals cannot sit on a jury. The idea is that the public should take part in the judicial system.

It is often said that the English legal system looks very fair in theory, but in practice it is difficult for ordinary people to use. Firstly, it is extremely expensive: a good lawyer costs £200 per hour (however, poor defendants are given free legal aid).

Secondly, it is very formal. The judge and the lawyers wear extraordinary old-fashioned costumes: black robes, high white collars and (most surprisingly) powdered white wigs. Thirdly, lawyers use a lot of legal jargon and many Latin expressions.