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The United Kingdom is a unitary state with devolution, is governed within the framework of a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, in which the monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II, is the head of state and the prime minister of the United Kingdom, currently Theresa May, is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the British government, on behalf of and by the consent of the monarch, as well as by the devolved governments of Scotland and Wales, and the Northern Ireland Executive. Legislative power is vested in the two chambers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, as well as in the Scottish parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. The highest court is the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

The UK political system is a multi-party system. Since the 1920s, the two largest political participation 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. While 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 such as the Liberal Democrats to deliver a working majority in Parliament. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government held office from 2010 until 2015, the first coalition since 1945. The coalition ended following Parliamentary elections on May 7, 2015, in which the Conservative Party won an outright majority of 330 seats in the House of Commons, while their coalition partners lost all but eight seats.

With the partition of Ireland, Northern Ireland received home rule in 1920, though civil unrest meant direct rule was restored in 1972. Support for (non-British) nationalist parties in Scotland 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 executive, with devolution in Northern Ireland being conditional on participation in certain all-Ireland institutions. The United Kingdom government remains responsible for non-devolved matters and, in the case of Northern Ireland, co-operates with the government of the Republic of Ireland.

It is a matter of dispute as to whether increased autonomy and devolution of executive and legislative powers has contributed to the increase in support for independence. The principal pro-independence party, the Scottish National Party, became a minority government in 2007 and then went on to win an overall majority of MSPs at the 2011 Scottish parliament elections and forms the Scottish Government administration. A 2014 referendum on independence led to a rejection of the proposal, but with 45% voting to secede. In Northern Ireland, a smaller percentage vote for Irish nationalist parties. The largest, Sinn Féin, not only advocates Irish reunification, but its members also abstain from taking their elected seats in the Westminster parliament, as this would entail taking a pledge of allegiance to the British monarch.

The constitution of the United Kingdom is uncodified, being made up of constitutional conventions, statutes and other elements such as EU law. This system of government, known as the Westminster system, has been adopted by other countries, especially those that were formerly parts of the British Empire.

The United Kingdom is also responsible for several dependencies, which fall into two categories: the Crown dependencies, in the immediate vicinity of the UK, and British Overseas Territories, which originated as colonies of the British Empire.

History

The Crown

The British monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II, is the chief of state of the United Kingdom. Though she takes little direct part in government, the Crown remains the fount in which ultimate executive power over government lies. These powers are known as royal prerogative and can be used for a vast amount of things, such as the issue or withdrawal of passports, to the dismissal of the Prime Minister or even the declaration of war. The powers are delegated from the monarch personally, in the name of the Crown, and can be handed to various ministers, or other officers of the Crown, and can purposely bypass the consent of Parliament.

The head of Her Majesty's Government, the prime minister, also has weekly meetings with the sovereign, where she may express her feelings, warn, or advise the prime minister in the government's work.

According to the uncodified constitution of the United Kingdom, the monarch has the following powers:

Domestic powers

  • The power to dismiss and appoint a prime minister
  • The power to dismiss and appoint other ministers
  • The power to summon, prorogue and dissolve Parliament
  • The power to grant or refuse Royal Assent to bills (making them valid and law)
  • The power to commission officers in the Armed Forces
  • The power to command the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom
  • The power to appoint members to the Queen's Counsel
  • The power to issue and withdraw passports
  • The power to grant prerogative of mercy (though capital punishment is abolished, this power is still used to change sentences)
  • The power to grant honours
  • The power to create corporations via Royal Charter

Foreign powers

  • The power to ratify and make treaties
  • The power to declare war and peace
  • The power to deploy the Armed Forces overseas
  • The power to recognize states
  • The power to credit and receive diplomats

Executive

Executive power in the United Kingdom is exercised by the Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II, via Her Majesty's Government and the devolved national authorities - the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Executive.

The United Kingdom Government

The monarch appoints a Prime Minister as the head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, guided by the strict convention that the Prime Minister should be the member of the House of Commons most likely to be able to form a Government with the support of that House. In practice, this means that the leader of the political party with an absolute majority of seats in the House of Commons is chosen to be the Prime Minister. If no party has an absolute majority, the leader of the largest party is given the first opportunity to form a coalition. The Prime Minister then selects the other Ministers which make up the Government and act as political heads of the various Government Departments. About twenty of the most senior government ministers make up the Cabinet and approximately 100 ministers in total comprise the government. In accordance with constitutional convention, all ministers within the government are either Members of Parliament or peers in the House of Lords.

As in some other parliamentary systems of government (especially those based upon the Westminster System), the executive (called "the government") is drawn from and is answerable to Parliament - a successful vote of no confidence will force the government either to resign or to seek a parliamentary dissolution and a general election. In practice, members of parliament of all major parties are strictly controlled by whips who try to ensure they vote according to party policy. If the government has a large majority, then they are very unlikely to lose enough votes to be unable to pass legislation.

The Prime Minister and the Cabinet

The Prime Minister is the most senior minister in the Cabinet. They are responsible for chairing Cabinet meetings, selecting Cabinet ministers (and all other positions in Her Majesty's government), and formulating government policy. The Prime Minister being the de facto leader of the UK, he or she exercises executive functions that are nominally vested in the sovereign (by way of the Royal Prerogatives). Historically, the British monarch was the sole source of executive powers in the government. However, following the lead of the Hanoverian monarchs, an arrangement of a "Prime Minister" chairing and leading the Cabinet began to emerge. Over time, this arrangement became the effective executive branch of government, as it assumed the day-to-day functioning of the British government away from the sovereign.

Theoretically, the Prime Minister is primus inter pares (,i.e. Latin for "first among equals") among their Cabinet colleagues. While the Prime Minister is the senior Cabinet Minister, they are theoretically bound to make executive decisions in a collective fashion with the other Cabinet ministers. The Cabinet, along with the PM, consists of Secretaries of State from the various government departments, the Lord High Chancellor, the Lord Privy Seal, the President of the Board of Trade, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Ministers without portfolio. Cabinet meetings are typically held weekly, while Parliament is in session.

Government departments and the Civil Service

The Government of the United Kingdom contains a number of ministries known mainly, though not exclusively as departments, e.g., Department for Education. These are politically led by a Government Minister who is often a Secretary of State and member of the Cabinet. He or she may also be supported by a number of junior Ministers. In practice, several government departments and Ministers have responsibilities that cover England alone, with devolved bodies having responsibility for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, (for example - the Department of Health), or responsibilities that mainly focus on England (such as the Department for Education).

Implementation of the Minister's decisions is carried out by a permanent politically neutral organisation known as the civil service. Its constitutional role is to support the Government of the day regardless of which political party is in power. Unlike some other democracies, senior civil servants remain in post upon a change of Government. Administrative management of the Department is led by a head civil servant known in most Departments as a Permanent Secretary. The majority of the civil service staff in fact work in executive agencies, which are separate operational organisations reporting to Departments of State.

"Whitehall" is often used as a metonym for the central core of the Civil Service. This is because most Government Departments have headquarters in and around the former Royal Palace Whitehall.

Devolved national administrations

Scottish Government

The Scottish Government is responsible for all issues that are not explicitly reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament at Westminster, by the Scotland Act; including NHS Scotland, education, justice, rural affairs, and transport. It manages an annual budget of more than £25 billion. The government is led by the First Minister, assisted by various Ministers with individual portfolios and remits. The Scottish Parliament nominates a Member to be appointed as First Minister by the Queen. The First Minister then appoints their Ministers (now known as Cabinet Secretaries) and junior Ministers, subject to approval by the Parliament. The First Minister, the Ministers (but not junior ministers), the Lord Advocate and Solicitor General are the Members of the 'Scottish Executive', as set out in the Scotland Act 1998. They are collectively known as "the Scottish Ministers".

Welsh Government

The Welsh Government and the National Assembly for Wales have more limited powers than those devolved to Scotland, although following the passing of the Government of Wales Act 2006 and the Welsh devolution referendum, 2011, the Assembly can now legislate in some areas through an Act of the National Assembly for Wales. Following the 2011 election, Welsh Labour held exactly half of the seats in the Assembly, falling just short of an overall majority. A Welsh Labour Government was subsequently formed headed by Carwyn Jones.

Northern Ireland Executive

The Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly have powers closer to those already devolved to Scotland. The Northern Ireland Executive is led by a diarchy, most recently First Minister Arlene Foster (Democratic Unionist Party) and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness (Sinn Féin), with both positions currently vacant.

Electoral systems

Various electoral systems are used in the UK:

The use of the first-past-the-post to elect members of Parliament is unusual among European nations. The use of the system means that when three or more candidates receive a significant share of the vote, MPs are often elected from individual constituencies with a plurality (receiving more votes than any other candidate), but not an absolute majority (50 percent plus one vote).

Elections and political parties in the United Kingdom are affected by Duverger's law, the political science principle which states that plurality voting systems, such as first-past-the-post, tend to lead to the development of two-party systems. The UK, like several other states, has sometimes been called a "two-and-a-half" party system, because parliamentary politics is dominated by the Labour Party and Conservative Party, while the Liberal Democrats, used to, hold a significant number of seats (but still substantially less than Labour and the Conservatives), and several small parties (some of them regional or nationalist) trailing far behind in number of seats, although this changed in the 2015 general election.

In the last few general elections, voter mandates for Westminster in the 30–40% ranges have been swung into 60% parliamentary majorities. No single party has won a majority of the popular vote since the Third National Government of Stanley Baldwin in 1935. On two occasions since World War II – 1951 and February 1974 – a party that came in second in the popular vote actually came out with the larger number of seats.

Electoral reform for parliamentary elections have been proposed many times. The Jenkins Commission report in October 1998 suggested implementing the Alternative Vote Top-up (also called alternative vote plus or AV+) in parliamentary elections. Under this proposal, most MPs would be directly elected from constituencies by the alternative vote, with a number of additional members elected from "top-up lists." However, no action was taken by the Labour government at the time. There are a number of groups in the UK campaigning for electoral reform, including the Electoral Reform Society, Make Votes Count Coalition and Fairshare.

The 2010 general election resulted in a hung parliament (no single party being able to command a majority in the House of Commons). This was only the second general election since World War II to return a hung parliament, the first being the February 1974 election. The Conservatives gained the most seats (ending 13 years of Labour government) and the largest percentage of the popular vote, but fell 20 seats short of a majority.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats entered into a new coalition government, headed by David Cameron. Under the terms of the coalition agreement the government committed itself to hold a referendum in May 2011 on whether to change parliamentary elections from first-past-the-post to AV. Electoral reform was a major priority for the Liberal Democrats, who favour proportional representation but were able to negotiate only a referendum on AV with the Conservatives. The coalition partners campaigned on opposite sides, with the Liberal Democrats supporting AV and the Conservatives opposing it. The referendum resulted in the Conservative's favour and the first-past-the-post system was maintained.

Political parties

Uk general election 2005 by age
2005 election results by age group: voters for Conservative (blue), Labour (red), Lib Dem (yellow), other parties (green); and those not voting (grey).

There are two main parties in the United Kingdom: the Conservative Party, and the Labour Party. The Scottish National Party (SNP) is the third party in terms of representatives elected and party membership.

The modern day Conservative Party was founded in 1834 and is an outgrowth of the Tory movement or party, which began in 1678. Today it is still colloquially referred to as the Tory Party and its members as Tories. The Liberal Democrats or "Lib Dems" were founded in 1988 by an amalgamation of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a Labour breakaway movement formed in 1981. The Liberals and SDP had contested elections together as the SDP–Liberal Alliance for seven years previously. The modern Liberal Party had been founded in 1859 as an outgrowth of the Whig movement or party (which began at the same time as the Tory party and was its historical rival) as well as the Radical and Peelite tendencies.

The Liberal Party was one of the two dominant parties (along with the Conservatives) from its founding until the 1920s, when it rapidly declined in popularity, and was supplanted on the left by the Labour Party, which was founded in 1900 and formed it's first government in 1924. Since that time, the Labour and Conservative parties have been dominant, with the Liberals (later Liberal Democrats) being the third-largest party until 2015, when they lost 48 of their 57 seats, while the Scottish National Party increased from 6 seats to 56. Founded in 1934, the SNP advocates for Scottish independence and has had continuous representation in Parliament since 1967. The SNP currently leads a minority government in the Scottish Parliament.

Minor parties also hold seats in parliament:

In the most recent general election in 2015, the Conservatives, who in the previous parliament had led a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, gained a majority of seats and went on to form a government.

Conservatives (Tories)

The Conservative Party won the largest number of seats at the 2015 general election, returning 330 MPs (plus the Speaker's seat, uncontested, bringing the total MPs to 331), enough for an overall majority, and went on to form the first Conservative majority government since the 1992 general election.

The Conservative party can trace its origin back to 1662, with the Court Party and the Country Party being formed in the aftermath of the English Civil War. The Court Party soon became known as the Tories, a name that has stuck despite the official name being 'Conservative'. The term "Tory" originates from the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678-1681 - the Whigs were those who supported the exclusion of the Roman Catholic Duke of York from the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland, and the Tories were those who opposed it. Both names were originally insults: a "whiggamore" was a horse drover (See Whiggamore Raid), and a "tory" (Tóraidhe) was an Irish term for an outlaw, later applied to Irish Confederates and Irish Royalists, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

Generally, the Tories were associated with lesser gentry and the Church of England, while Whigs were more associated with trade, money, larger land holders (or "land magnates"), expansion and tolerance of Catholicism.

The Rochdale Radicals were a group of more extreme reformists who were also heavily involved in the cooperative movement. They sought to bring about a more equal society, and are considered by modern standards to be left-wing.

After becoming associated with repression of popular discontent in the years after 1815, the Tories underwent a fundamental transformation under the influence of Robert Peel, himself an industrialist rather than a landowner, who in his 1834 "Tamworth Manifesto" outlined a new "Conservative" philosophy of reforming ills while conserving the good.

Though Peel's supporters subsequently split from their colleagues over the issue of free trade in 1846, ultimately joining the Whigs and the Radicals to form what would become the Liberal Party, Peel's version of the party's underlying outlook was retained by the remaining Tories, who adopted his label of Conservative as the official name of their party.

The Conservatives were in government for 18 years between 1979 and 1997, under the country's first ever female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and then under John Major. Their landslide defeat in the 1997 general election saw the Conservative Party lose over half their seats gained in 1992, and saw the party re-align with public perceptions of them.

In 2008, the Conservative Party formed a pact with the Ulster Unionist Party to select joint candidates for European and House of Commons elections; this angered the DUP as by splitting the Unionist vote, republican parties will be elected in some areas.

After thirteen years as the official opposition, the Party returned to power as part of a coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats in 2010, going on to form a majority government in 2015. 2016 saw the resignation of David Cameron, which resulted in the appointment of the country's second female Prime Minister Theresa May. The party often is the only party in the United Kingdom to have ever had not one, but two female prime ministers.

Historically, the party has been the mainland party most pre-occupied by British Unionism, as attested to by the party's full name, the Conservative & Unionist Party. This resulted in the merger between the Conservatives and Joseph Chamberlain's Liberal Unionist Party, composed of former Liberals who opposed Irish home rule. The unionist tendency is still in evidence today, manifesting sometimes as a scepticism or opposition to devolution, firm support for the continued existence of the United Kingdom in the face of movements advocating independence from the UK, and a historic link with the cultural unionism of Northern Ireland.

Labour

The Labour Party won the second-largest number of seats in the House of Commons at the 2015 general election, with 232 MPs.

The history of the Labour Party goes back to 1900, when a Labour Representation Committee was established and changed its name to "The Labour Party" in 1906. After the First World War, this led to the demise of the Liberal Party as the main reformist force in British politics. The existence of the Labour Party on the left-wing of British politics led to a slow waning of energy from the Liberal Party, which has consequently assumed third place in national politics. After performing poorly in the general elections of 1922, 1923 and 1924, the Liberal Party was superseded by the Labour Party as the party of the left.

Following two brief spells in minority governments in 1924 and 1929–1931, the Labour Party had it's first true victory after World War II in the 1945 "khaki election". Throughout the rest of the twentieth century, Labour governments alternated with Conservative governments. The Labour Party suffered the "wilderness years" of 1951-1964 (three straight general election defeats) and 1979-1997 (four straight general election defeats).

During this second period, Margaret Thatcher, who became Leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, made a fundamental change to Conservative policies, turning the Conservative Party into an economic neoliberal party. In the General Election of 1979 she defeated James Callaghan's Labour government following the winter of discontent.

For all of the 1980s and most of the 1990s, Conservative governments under Thatcher and her successor John Major pursued policies of privatization, anti-trade-unionism, and, for a time, monetarism, now known collectively as Thatcherism.

The Labour Party elected left-winger Michael Foot as their leader after their 1979 election defeat, and he responded to dissatisfaction with the Labour Party by pursuing a number of radical policies developed by its grassroots members. In 1981, several centrist and right-wing leaning Labour MPs formed a breakaway group called the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a move which split Labour and is widely believed to have made the Labour Party unelectable for a decade. The SDP formed an alliance with the Liberal Party which contested the 1983 and 1987 general elections as a centrist alternative to Labour and the Conservatives. After some initial success, the SDP did not prosper (partly due to its unfavourable distribution of votes by the First-Past-The-Post electoral system), and was accused by some of splitting the anti-Conservative vote.

The SDP eventually merged with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats in 1988. Support for the new party has increased since then, and the Liberal Democrats (often referred to as Lib Dems) gained an increased number of seats in the House of Commons in the 2001 and 2005 general elections.

The Labour Party was defeated in a landslide in the 1983 general election, and Michael Foot was replaced shortly thereafter by Neil Kinnock as party leader. Kinnock progressively expelled members of Militant, a far left group which practised entryist, and moderated many of the party's policies. Despite these changes, and because of Kinnock's negative media image, Labour was defeated in the 1987 and 1992 general elections, and he was succeeded by John Smith .

Tony Blair became Leader of the Labour Party after John Smith's sudden death from a heart attack in 1994. He continued to move the Labour Party towards the "centre" by loosening links with the unions and continuing many of Margaret Thatcher's neoliberal policies. This coupled with the professionalising of the party machine's approach to the media, helped Labour win a historic landslide in the 1997 General Election, after 18 years of Conservative government. Some observers say the Labour Party had by then morphed from a democratic socialist party to a social democratic party, a process which delivered three general election victories but alienated some of its core base - leading to the formation of the Socialist Labour Party (UK).

A subset of Labour MPs stand as joint Labour and Co-operative candidates due to a long-standing electoral alliance between the Labour Party and the Co-op Party - the political arm of the British co-operative movement. In the 2015 general election 42 candidates stood using the Labour and Co-operative Party description, of which 24 were elected.

Scottish National Party

The Scottish National Party won the third-largest number of seats in the House of Commons at the 2015 general election, winning 56 MPs from the 59 constituencies in Scotland having won 50% of the popular vote. This was an increase of 50 MPs on the result achieved in 2010.

The SNP has enjoyed parliamentary representation continuously since 1967. Following the 2007 Scottish parliamentary elections, the SNP emerged as the largest party with 47 MSPs and formed a minority government with Alex Salmond as First Minister. After the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election, the SNP won enough seats to form a majority government, the first time this had ever happened since devolution was established in 1999.

Members of the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru work together as a single parliamentary group following a formal pact signed in 1986. This group currently has 59 MPs.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats won the joint-fourth largest number of seats at the 2015 general election, returning 8 MPs.

The Liberal Democrats were founded in 1988 by an amalgamation of the Liberal Party with the Social Democratic Party, but can trace their origin back to the Whigs and the Rochdale Radicals who evolved into the Liberal Party. The term 'Liberal Party' was first used officially in 1868, though it had been in use colloquially for decades beforehand. The Liberal Party formed a government in 1868 and then alternated with the Conservative Party as the party of government throughout the late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century.

The Liberal Democrats are a party with policies on Constitutional and Political Reforms, including changing the voting system for General Elections (UK Alternative Vote referendum, 2011), abolishing the House of Lords and replacing it with a 300-member elected Senate, introducing Fixed Five Year Parliaments, and introducing a National Register of Lobbyists. They also support what they see as greater fairness and social mobility. In the coalition government, the party promoted legislation introducing a pupil premium - funding for schools directed at the poorest students to give them an equal chance in life. They also supported same-sex marriage and increasing the income tax threshold to £10,000, a pre-election manifesto commitment.

Northern Ireland parties

The Democratic Unionist Party had 8 MPs elected at the 2015 general election. Founded in 1971 by Ian Paisley, it has grown to become the larger of the two main unionist political parties in Northern Ireland. Other Northern Ireland parties represented at Westminster include the Social Democratic and Labour Party (3 MPs), the Ulster Unionist Party, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (1 MP) and Sinn Féin (4 MPs). Sinn Féin MPs refuse to take their seats and sit in a 'foreign' parliament.

Plaid Cymru

Plaid Cymru has enjoyed parliamentary representation continuously since 1974 and had 3 MPs elected at the 2015 general election. Following the 2007 Welsh Assembly elections, they joined Labour as the junior partner in a coalition government, but have fallen down to the third-largest party in the Assembly after the 2011 Assembly elections, and have become an opposition party.

Other parliamentary parties

The Green Party of England and Wales kept its sole MP, Caroline Lucas, in the 2015 General Election (it previously had an MP in 1992; Cynog Dafis, Ceredigion, who was elected on a joint Plaid Cymru/Green Party ticket). It also has seats in the European Parliament, two seats on the London Assembly and around 120 local councillors.

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) has one MP and 24 seats in the European Parliament as well as seats in the House of Lords and a number of local councillors. UKIP also has a MLA in the Northern Ireland Assembly. UKIP has become an emerging alternative party among some voters, gaining the third-largest share of the vote in the 2015 General Election and the largest share of the vote of any party (27%) in the 2014 European elections. In 2014 UKIP gained it's first ever MP following the defection and re-election of Douglas Carswell in the 2014 Clacton by-election. They campaign mainly on issues such as reducing immigration and EU withdrawal.

The Respect party, a left-wing group that came out of the anti-war movement had a single MP, George Galloway from 2005-2010, and again between 2012-2015.

There are usually a small number of Independent politicians in parliament with no party allegiance. In modern times, this has usually occurred when a sitting member leaves their party, and some such MPs have been re-elected as independents. The only independent MP in the current parliament is Sylvia Hermon, previously of the Ulster Unionist Party. However, since 1950, only two new members have been elected as independents without having ever stood for a major party:

  • Martin Bell represented the Tatton constituency in Cheshire between 1997 and 2001. He was elected following a "sleaze" scandal involving the-then incumbent Conservative MP, Neil Hamilton—Bell, a BBC journalist, stood as an anti-corruption independent candidate, and the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties withdrew their candidates from the election.
  • Dr. Richard Taylor MP was elected for the Wyre Forest constituency in 2001 on a platform opposing the closure of Kidderminster hospital. He later established Health Concern, the party under which he ran in 2005.

Non-Parliamentary political parties

Other UK political parties exist, but generally do not succeed in returning MPs to Parliament.

The Scottish Green Party has 6 MSPs in the Scottish Parliament and a number of local councillors.

The Green Party (Ireland) has one MLAs in the Northern Ireland Assembly as well as local councillors.

The British National Party (BNP) won two seats in the European Parliament in the 2009 European Elections, but currently has none. It also has a number of councillors.

The Libertarian Party was founded in 2008 and has contested several local elections and parliamentary constituencies, gaining some local councillors.

The English Democrats, which wants a parliament for England, has some local councillors and had its candidate elected mayor of Doncaster in 2009.

Other parties include: the Socialist Labour Party (UK), the Free England Party, the Communist Party of Britain, the Socialist Party (England and Wales), the Socialist Workers Party, the Scottish Socialist Party, the Liberal Party, Mebyon Kernow (a Cornish nationalist party) in Cornwall, Veritas, the Communist Left Alliance (in Fife) and the Pirate Party UK.

Several local parties contest only within a specific area, a single county, borough or district. Examples include the Better Bedford Independent Party, which was one of the dominant parties in Bedford Borough Council and led by Bedford's former Mayor, Frank Branston. The most notable local party is Health Concern, which controlled a single seat in the UK Parliament from 2001 to 2010.

The Jury Team, launched in March 2009 and described as a "non-party party", is an umbrella organisation seeking to increase the number of independent members of both domestic and European members of Parliament in Great Britain.

The Official Monster Raving Loony Party was founded in 1983. The OMRLP are distinguished by having a deliberately bizarre manifesto, which contains things that seem to be impossible or too absurd to implement – usually to highlight what they see as real-life absurdities. In spite of (or perhaps because of) a reputation more satirical than serious, they have routinely been successful in local elections.

Current political landscape

After winning the largest number of seats and votes in the 2015 general election, the Conservatives first under David Cameron and now under Theresa May remain ahead of the Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn since September 2015. The SNP has maintained its position in Scotland, the party was just short of an overall majority at the Scottish parliamentary elections in May 2016.

However a turbulent referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union, called for by David Cameron, led to his own resignation, the appointment of a new prime minister Theresa May, and divided opinion on Europe amongst the party.

In addition, the EU referendum campaign plunged the Labour Party into crisis and resulted in a motion of no confidence in the party leader Jeremy Corbyn being passed by the party's MPs in a 172-40 vote, which followed a significant number of resignations from the Shadow Cabinet. This led to an ongoing leadership election which began with Angela Eagle, the former Shadow First Secretary of State and Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills who eight days later withdrew from the leadership race, to support Owen Smith, the former Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Following the vote to leave the European Union, Nigel Farage offered his own resignation as leader, something he had campaigned for since 1992. A leadership contest also took place in the Green Party, which led to the joint election on 2 September 2016 of Jonathan Bartley and Caroline Lucas as co-leaders, who took over the role in a job-share arrangement. Lucas, was previously leader until 2010 and is the party's only MP.

Membership

All political parties have membership schemes that allow members of the public to actively influence the policy and direction of the party to varying degrees, though particularly at a local level. Membership of British political parties is around 1% of the British electorate, which is lower than in all European countries except for Poland and Latvia. Overall membership to a political party has been in decline since the 1950s. In 1951, the Conservative Party had 2.2 million members, and a year later in 1952 the Labour Party reached their peak of 1 million members (of an electorate of around 34 million).

The table below details the membership numbers of political parties that have more than 5,000 members.

Party Members Date
Conservative 174,000 29 July 2014
Green Party of England and Wales 60,000 29 April 2015
Labour 370,658 8 October 2015
Liberal Democrats 70,000 29 June 2016
Plaid Cymru 7,863 27 January 2012
Scottish Green Party 9,000 + 9 June 2015
Scottish National Party 114,221 16 October 2015
UK Independence Party 39,143 28 August 2014

No data could be collected for the four parties of Northern Ireland: the DUP, UUP, SDLP, and Sinn Féin. However, in January 1997, it was estimated that the UUP had 10-12,000 members, and the DUP had 5,000 members.

European Union

The United Kingdom first joined the European Economic Community in January 1973, and has remained a member of the European Union (EU) that it evolved into; UK citizens, and other EU citizens resident in the UK, elect 73 members to represent them in the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg.

The UK's membership in the Union has been objected to over questions of sovereignty, and in recent years there have been divisions in both major parties over whether the UK should form greater ties within the EU, or reduce the EU's supranational powers. Opponents of greater European integration are known as "Eurosceptics", while supporters are known as "Europhiles". Division over Europe is prevalent in both major parties, although the Conservative Party is seen as most divided over the issue, both whilst in Government up to 1997 and after 2010, and between those dates as the opposition. However, the Labour Party is also divided, with conflicting views over UK adoption of the euro whilst in Government (1997–2010), although the party is largely in favour of further integration where in the country's interest.

British nationalists have long campaigned against European integration. The strong showing of the eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) since the 2004 European Parliament elections has shifted the debate over UK relations with the EU.

In March 2008, Parliament decided to not hold a referendum on the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, signed in December 2007. This was despite the Labour government promising in 2004 to hold a referendum on the previously proposed Constitution for Europe.

In June 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in a referendum. After the referendum, it was debated as to how and when the UK should leave the EU. On the 11th July 2016, the Cabinet Office Minister, John Penrose failed to deliver a final answer on whether it would be at the disposal of the Prime Minister and one of the Secretaries of State, through the Royal prerogative, or of Parliament, through primary legislation.

International organization participation

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See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Política del Reino Unido para niños

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