Judiciary

The Lord Chancellor was the head of the judiciary in England and Wales. He appoints judges and magistrates for criminal courts on behalf of the Sovereign. The Lord Chancellor falls into all the three arms of state, taking roles in the executive, legislative and judiciary, which is a peculiarity amongst many liberal democracies in the world today. However, the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 removes much of the power in this last role and gives it to others in the British government, mainly the newly created post of Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. There are various levels of judiciary in England and Wales — different types of courts have different styles of judges. They also form a strict hierarchy of importance, in line with the order of the courts in which they sit, so that judges of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales are generally given more weight than district judges sitting in County Courts and Magistrates. At 31 March 2006 there were 1,825 judges in post in England and Wales, most of whom were Circuit Judges (626) or District Judges (572). By statute, judges are guaranteed continuing judicial independence.

Political parties

The UK is a multi-party system and since the 1920s, the two largest political parties have been the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, before the Labour Party rose in British politics the Liberal Party was the other major political party along with the Conservatives. Though coalition and minority governments have been an occasional feature of parliamentary politics, the first-past-the-post electoral system used for general elections tends to maintain the dominance of these two parties, though each has in the past century relied upon a third party to deliver a working majority in Parliament.

Support for nationalist parties in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales led to proposals for devolution in the 1970s though only in the 1990s did devolution actually happen. Today, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each possess a legislature and government alongside that of the United Kingdom, responsible for devolved matters. However, it is a matter of dispute as to whether increased autonomy and devolution of executive and legislative powers has contributed to a reduction in support for independence. The principal pro-independence party, the Scottish National Party, won 20 extra MSPs at the 2007 Scottish parliament elections and now forms the Scottish Government as a minority administration, with plans to hold a referendum on negotiating for independence. In Wales, the nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, is the junior coalition partner in the Welsh Assembly Government although unlike the Scottish National Party it does not officially advocate complete secession from the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland, the largest Pro-Belfast Agreement party, Sinn Féin, not only advocates Northern Ireland's unification with the Republic of Ireland, but also abstains from taking their elected seats in the Westminster government, as this would entail taking a pledge of allegiance to the British monarch. In the most recent general election in 2010, the result amounted to a hung parliament, and after several days of negotiations, the Labour Party left the government with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats operating a coalition government.