The House of Commons
The actual legislative powers rest with the House of Commons . It has 659 Members of Parliament elected for a five-year term , England with 529, Scotland with 72, Wales with 40 and Northern Ireland with eighteen seats. Majority voting
applies (one seat per constituency, which the candidate with the most votes wins). All citizens over the age of 18 and all citizens of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland who are on the electoral roll of the Commonwealth are eligible to vote . Universal women’s suffrage has existed in Great Britain since 1928 .
No lower house mandate is allowed to exercise: Church dignitaries of the Anglicans, Presbyterians and Catholics, the holders of ministerial offices (civil servants) as well as members of the professional army, police officers, judges and members of the upper house.
On the recommendation of the prime minister and opposition leader, the speaker is elected as speaker and chairman of the lower house, and his office, which dates back to the 13th century, obliges him to be politically neutral.
Another important job is for the Leader of the House, a member of the Cabinet who ensures that the House complies with the law dealt with comprehensively and timely by the government. To this end, he works closely with the parliamentary managing directors, the whips and the opposition leadership. Because of the close interlinking of the lower house majority and the government, the main work of parliamentary control lies with the opposition, which is protected by special rights (e.g. it determines parliamentary debates on nineteen days of the year).
The executive
The executive power lies nominally with the crown, but it is exercised de facto by the cabinet chaired by the prime minister. He and the ministers proposed by him are appointed by the monarch. You must belong to the House of Commons. The government (ministry) in the broader sense consists of about 100 people, of which only about 20 form the narrow government as a cabinet.
The persons who are permanent members of the cabinet include the Foreign Minister, the Interior Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the President of the Privy Seal and the Lord Privy Seal.and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
The position of the Prime Minister has been emphasized since 1905 by the award of a special protocol-based rank (special precendence). He alone determines the timing of early elections.
As another organ exists Secret Privy Council (Privy Council). Its 330 members include a. the Cabinet and other persons appointed by the Crown on the proposal of the Prime Minister. As a plenary, it only meets when the monarch dies. Its duties, which are performed in committees with a limited number of participants, include the approval of government regulations.
The party system
Great Britain and Northern Ireland have a two-party system due to unrestricted majority voting . The Conservative and Unionist Party, which is determined by traditional political values, is opposed to the Labor Party, which emerged from the labor movement. The Liberal Party, which lost most of its electorate to the Labor Party after the First World War, formed an electoral alliance with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. In 1988, both groups merged to form the Social and Liberal Democrats, which have been Liberal Democrats since 1990. While the Democratic Left (successor to the Communist Party of Great Britain) has little political influence, the Green Party (founded in 1973 as the Ecology Party) has developed into a force to be taken seriously.
Unions
According to the organizational principles of trade unions, four main types prevail:
- Trade associations (craft unions),
- Industrial unions,
- general unions (General Union) and
- Professional Employees (white collar unions).
The main organ is the Trade Union Congress (TUC), founded in 1868 , to which approx. 76 trade unions with around 6.8 million members belong. The annually elected General Council (45 members) represents the individual unions to the government and the public.
The unions play a special role within the Labor Party, where, among other things, they have a strong influence on the party’s politics through their block votes at party congresses. They also provide the majority of the party’s revenue. The TUC is a member of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).
