About: British Political System   Sponge Permalink

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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a constitutional monarchy, meaning that it is officially "ruled" by a monarch whose powers are controlled by constitutional law. In reality, the monarch is a powerless symbolic figurehead and the country is governed by its legislature: a Parliament made up by the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Although Britain has a parliamentary system and the Prime Minister, the de facto head of government, is supposed to simply be the executive of a ruling political party, some recent Prime Ministers, notably Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, have tended towards a "Presidential" executive style of rule. More concisely, the monarch is head of state while the prime minister is the head of government compared to a nation like the US wher

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  • British Political System
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  • The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a constitutional monarchy, meaning that it is officially "ruled" by a monarch whose powers are controlled by constitutional law. In reality, the monarch is a powerless symbolic figurehead and the country is governed by its legislature: a Parliament made up by the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Although Britain has a parliamentary system and the Prime Minister, the de facto head of government, is supposed to simply be the executive of a ruling political party, some recent Prime Ministers, notably Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, have tended towards a "Presidential" executive style of rule. More concisely, the monarch is head of state while the prime minister is the head of government compared to a nation like the US wher
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  • The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a constitutional monarchy, meaning that it is officially "ruled" by a monarch whose powers are controlled by constitutional law. In reality, the monarch is a powerless symbolic figurehead and the country is governed by its legislature: a Parliament made up by the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Although Britain has a parliamentary system and the Prime Minister, the de facto head of government, is supposed to simply be the executive of a ruling political party, some recent Prime Ministers, notably Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, have tended towards a "Presidential" executive style of rule. More concisely, the monarch is head of state while the prime minister is the head of government compared to a nation like the US where the head of state and head of government are the same person. An extremely important thing to note about the British government is that it is more or less synonymous with Parliament (the Civil Service notwithstanding): all authority flows from Westminster. Beyond that, Parliament theoretically holds absolute power: any law passed by Parliament may be repealed by Parliament at any time for any reason. This setup is a result of the English Civil War (1641–51), the result of which was the monarchy handing over all its power (which in the Tudor era had been de facto absolute) to Parliament—a process helped by the fact that George I and II barely spoke English and didn't much care for governing Britain anyway—and incidentally resembles Thomas Hobbes' conception of government. In any case, though this sounds rather scary at first—in theory, British liberty could be dead with a single Act of Parliament—the UK's membership in the EU and its institutions, as well as a couple of other well-enforced treaties, have added a measure of restriction to the actions of Parliament; for the first time, Parliament has to deal with potentially making illegal laws.
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