{"id":460,"date":"2007-05-03T07:27:28","date_gmt":"2007-05-03T06:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=460"},"modified":"2007-05-03T07:27:28","modified_gmt":"2007-05-03T06:27:28","slug":"questions-about-the-uk-political-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=460","title":{"rendered":"Questions about the UK political system"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today there are elections in the UK at local level in some parts of England and at country level in Scotland & Wales. Although we are likely to have a new Prime Minister shortly, we don’t need to have a Parliamentary election for three years.
\nNow some months ago, I gave a lecture to a group of Chinese civil servants entitled “A Short Guide To The British Political System”. I put a supporting text on my web site here<\/a>.
\nPeople seem to have found it helpful and I recently had an e-mail which said: “I found your website most interesting and very helpful when explaining the workings of the British Parliamentary system to my young son.” However, the writer went on to ask six detailed questions and I thought that you might find the answers of interest:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Must the prime minister be a member of the House of Commons and, if so, since when has that been the case?\n

    Technically, no – he can be a member of the House of Lords. The only PM from the Lords in modern times was Alec Douglas-Home in 1963-64. These days, I don’t think a Lord as PM would be politically acceptable.<\/p>\n

  2. Must all cabinet minsters be MPs and are they always from the same political party as the prime minister?\n

    No, they don’t have to be MPs – they can be members of the House of Lords instead, although this is rare. No, they can be members of any party or none – but this only happens in very unusual situations such as the Second World War.<\/p>\n

  3. Since when has the term of a government been limited to 5 years?\n

    The Parliament Act of 1911 reduced the maximum lifespan of a Parliament from seven years to its present five years.<\/p>\n

  4. Does the term “government” refer to the two Houses of Parliament or just to those Members of Parliament who are are members of the ruling political party?\n

    Neither – the term refers to all Ministers whether they are members of the House of Commons or the House of Lords.<\/p>\n

  5. How can the ruling party get laws voted through Parliament (ie passed) if they do not have an overall majority in the House of Commons (and\/or House of Lords)?\n

    They can only do this by persuading members of other parties to support that legislation or to abstain when it is voted upon. This is not easy and so a minority government usually calls an early General Election.<\/p>\n

  6. Are the number of voters in each of the various constituencies equal, or are there any constituencies which have a significantly higher\/lower number of voters (ie which leads to a disproportionate high\/low number of votes cast in an election for a particular MP)?\n

    The Boundary Commissions for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland try to achieve a rough equality of size in terms of electors. But seats in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are generally smaller than those in England (so that the ‘national’ character of the UK is respected) and rural seats are generally smaller than urban seats (so that they do not become too big geographically).<\/ol>\n

    Do you have any questions? If so, I’ll try to answer them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Today there are elections in the UK at local level in some parts of England and at country level in Scotland & Wales. Although we are likely to have a new Prime Minister shortly, we don’t need to have a Parliamentary election for three years. Now some months ago, I gave a lecture to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}