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The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy which, by legislation and convention, operates as a unitary parliamentary democracy. A hereditary monarch, currently King Charles III, serves as head of state while the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, currently Sir Keir Starmer since 2024, serves as the elected head of government.
Under the United Kingdom's parliamentary system, executive power is exercised by His Majesty's Government, whose leadership are formally appointed by the King to act in his name. However, the King may only appoint individuals that are members of and have the confidence of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Parliament has two houses: the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Parliament is the UK's supreme legislative body; however some powers have been devolved to the parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The British political system is a multiple-party system[1] and was according to the V-Dem Democracy Indices 2023 the 22nd most electorally democratic in the world.[2] Since the 1920s, the two dominant 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. 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.[3] The coalition ended following parliamentary elections on 7 May 2015, in which the Conservative Party won an outright majority of seats, 330 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, while their coalition partners lost all but eight seats.[4]
With the partition of Ireland, Northern Ireland received home rule in 1920, though civil unrest meant direct rule was restored in 1972. Support for nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales led to proposals for devolution in the 1970s, though only in the 1990s did devolution happen. Today, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each possess a parliament and government, with devolution in Northern Ireland being conditional on participation in certain all-Ireland institutions. The British government remains responsible for non-devolved matters and, in the case of Northern Ireland, co-operates with the government of the Republic of Ireland. Devolution of executive and legislative powers may have contributed to increased support for independence in the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.[5] The principal Scottish 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 which formed the current Scottish Government administration. In a 2014 referendum on independence 44.7% of voters voted for independence versus 55.3% against.[6] In Northern Ireland, Irish nationalist parties such as Sinn Féin advocate Irish reunification. In Wales, Welsh nationalist parties such as Plaid Cymru support Welsh independence.
The constitution of the United Kingdom is uncodified, being made up of constitutional conventions, statutes and other elements. 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, are strictly-speaking subject to the Crown (i.e., the Monarch) but not part of the sovereign territory of the United Kingdom (though de facto British territory), and British Overseas Territories, as British colonies were re-designated in 1983, which are part of the sovereign territory of the United Kingdom, in most of which aspects of internal governance have been delegated to local governments, with each territory having its own first minister, though the title used may differ, such as in the case of the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, though they remain subject to the Parliament of the United Kingdom (when United Kingdom is used to refer only to that part of the British Realm, or sovereign British territory, which is governed directly by the British Government, and not via local subsidiary governments, United Kingdom logically refers to a local government area, though the national government performs the role of local government within that area).
- ^ "two-party system | Features, Advantages, & Problems". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 19 November 2020.
- ^ V-Dem Institute (2023). "The V-Dem Dataset". Retrieved 14 October 2023.
- ^ "General Election results through time, 1945–2001". BBC News. Retrieved 19 May 2006.
- ^ "UK election results – what does it all mean? As it happened". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 8 October 2016.
- ^ "How the independence referendum energised devolution around the UK". The Guardian. 11 September 2014. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
- ^ "Scottish independence referendum – Results". BBC News. Retrieved 4 March 2021.