Politicians need to start listening to us. We would get engaged in mainstream politics if we felt that our opinions were respected LORDS–COMMONS CONFLICT RESOLVED With the Commons controlling financial decisions and coming to dominate the major debates of the day, it became increasingly difficult for a prime minister to sit in the Lords. The Conservatives, moreover, controlled the majority in that chamber by virtue of the hereditary peers. The conflict was brought to a climax by the Liberal government of 1906, when Lloyd George’s challenge to ‘Mr Balfour’s Poodle’ (the Lords) lit the blue touch paper to a massive constitutional battle, which the Lords eventually lost in 1911, when its powers were reduced to that of delay of a bill by 24 months. From now on, no prime minister could sit in the Lords and the number of ministers who could do the same effectively became limited as well. In 1949 the period of delay of a bill was reduced to a single year. Extinction Rebellion UK, part of the wider global environmental movement, has been the most well-known activist group in the past few years. The group has staged non-violent protests to draw attention to the climate emergency. This led to MPs declaring a climate emergency in parliament in 2019. At the moment Northern Ireland does not have a sitting government but Northern Ireland does have the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly which has powers closer to those already devolved to Scotland. Who makes the laws in the UK?

THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1789 Events in France had a huge impact on encouraging reform and a movement for democracy throughout Europe. Bliss it was . . . to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven.

Is the Queen in charge of the UK?

In a country of 62.4 million people (2011 figure), any kind of direct democracy substantially involving every citizen is not possible. So representatives are elected to a national parliament, where the issues of the day are discussed and new laws are debated before being passed into law. Across the UK, 650 MPs (Members of Parliament) are elected by 46.1 million registered voters from constituencies, each containing around 60,000 voters. While MPs are elected individually, it would be very difficult for so many people to agree on detailed courses of action, so, since the middle of the nineteenth century, activists have combined with like-minded people to form and run modern political parties. These provide the vehicles which enable democracy to function. These organisations seek membership from voters and seek to create policies likely to attract votes not just from their own members and supporters but from the totality of voters. They also, through their networks of local branches, seek to win electoral contests at constituency level by campaigning via leaflets, meetings and doorto-door canvassing. After polling on election day, the party with the most elected MPs forms the government, its party leader becoming prime minister, who, according to the ritual, is invited to do so by the person who used to run governments before democratic times: the Queen. The second largest party of MPs becomes the official opposition, which provides a ‘shadow’ government, critically monitoring government actions and, with the next election in mind, seeking to assemble its case for being the ‘government in waiting’. During the two world wars of the twentieth century, coalition governments The party with the most winning candidates forms a majority government if they win over 50% of the seats, otherwise, they can form a coalition government with other parties to take them over 50% or form a minority government. The leader of the winning party becomes Prime Minister and appoints a Cabinet of Ministers to head the different government departments ( health, education, defense, etc.). There are currently 23 ministerial departments and 20 non-ministerial departments. Andrew Marr is one of the most acclaimed journalists in British politics, and his book A History of Modern Britain is a celebration of the stubbornness and challenges faced by its people. EPILOGUE From being an absolute monarchy at the close of the Dark Ages, British government saw the evolution of an advisory council into a bicameral legislature that assumed much of the monarch’s power but paradoxically chose to vest it in the leader of the biggest party elected to the lower house of the legislature. Instead of an ‘absolute’ monarch, we now arguably have a secular ‘president’ in the form of the prime minister – certainly when the office was in the hands of Thatcher and Blair. Something which has transformed the way politics is conducted since the inception of democracy is the media, which now permeate and ventilate – for good and ill – every aspect of the system, from elections to appointed quangos. Local elections, held every four years, where voters elect local councilors. England and Wales use the FPTP system, while Scotland and Northern Ireland use STV.

Of course I voted in the last election. Everyone should vote! Young people need to start voting in general elections. If we don't vote, we won't change anything forming the province of Northern Ireland. It thus effectively received devolution, with a legislative assembly, via the Govern­ ment of Ireland Act 1920. But the nationalist minority within the province continued the struggle for unification with the Irish Republic and blighted British politics with three decades of ‘the Troubles’ between Catholics and Protestant communities from the end of the 1960s. Eventually the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 established the basis for the formation of a power-sharing government, which, somewhat belatedly, came into being in 2007. WALES AND SCOTLAND However, the 11 deaths were not in vain, as the indignation generated by the massacre led directly to the formation of the Chartists and fed into the movement for the Great Reform Act. Executive power – the power to implement and enforce laws – is controlled by the British government, which works on behalf of the Queen, as well as the devolved governments of Scotland and Wales and the Northern Ireland Executive.

Preferences

the twentieth century, the Tories seemed to be the ‘natural party of government’, in that they were in office two-thirds of the time, to Labour’s one-third. Churchill more or less accepted Labour’s changes in the 1950s but when the economy began to decline in the 1960s the Conservatives urged a return to a more ‘free market’ economy. Edward Heath, Prime Minister 1970–74, did not really deliver such an outcome but he did succeed in negotiating the UK’s entry into the European Community, a historic and still controversial decision. By the end of the decade, Margaret Thatcher had become leader and after 1979 she pursued a robust policy of making the British economy competitive again. This entailed allowing traditional and inefficient industries to go bankrupt, confronting and subduing the trade unions and imposing her formidable personality upon her party. By 1990, it had had enough and John Major took over, until his political capital was exhausted as the 1997 election approached. Labour has traditionally been more socially progressive in areas such as worker rights, LGBT rights, gender equality, and immigration policies. It has also been mostly pro-Europe, with the majority of its MPs voting against Brexit. Traditionally it has held support among working-class and socially liberal voters, although its working-class base has diminished recently. The party’s performance in the 2019 election was its worst since 1935. Scottish National Party (SNP) GLORIOUS REVOLUTION, 1688–89 The restored monarchy discovered it was very much not business as usual. The monarchy had been bested by a body with some claim to represent the country and from now on monarchs ignored public sentiment at their peril. Consequently, the attempts of James II to introduce Catholicism to what was now, largely, a Protestant nation repelled the political class in his own country. William of Orange was approached by seven leading politicians – Whig and Tory – and invited to overthrow his father-in-law. This was an astonishing act of treason from one point of view, but it is always the victors who write the history and, in 1689, William proceeded to become such a person, and with the minimum of bloodshed. On 11 April 1689, William I can’t relate to any of the politicians. They all seem fairly similar and rarely listen to young people. If politicians really listened to the voters, I think more young people would vote.

The DUP formed a coalition government with Theresa May’s Conservatives from 2017 to 2019. It currently holds eight out of 18 available seats in Westminster. Sinn Féin The party’s ideology is a mix of traditional liberalism and social democracy. It favors a market-based economy, supported by a strong welfare state. It also supports civil liberties, LGBT rights, European integration, and a shift to proportional representation voting. The UK is now treated as a non-member country by EU/EFTA countries, thus UK citizens are now subject to the same visa restrictions and barriers to accessing many public services in member states as many other third-country nationals. Similarly, EU/EFTA citizens no longer have freedom of movement or equal rights to access many services in the UK. Citizens from the EU/EFTA who have been living long-term in the UK and want to stay need to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme.So wrote the young poet William Wordsworth (The Prelude, 1805) of the French Revolution, which began in 1789. While the course of the Revolution took much of the passion out of the reform Since its creation, the UK has had a functioning democracy. Only two parties formed governments until 1923 – the Conservatives and the Liberals (who were the Whigs until the mid-19th century). Since 1923, only the Conservatives and Labour have been in power. Universal suffrage was in 1918 for men and 1928 for women. The evolution of the British political system 2 Introductory overview of the British political system British Politics: The Basics analyses these changes and places them within the context of the evolution of British society from absolute monarchy to representative democracy. It considers each of the major components of British politics, such as the Monarchy and the House of Lords, the Commons, voting behaviour, parties and pressure groups, the Prime Minister and Cabinet, devolution, local government, and foreign policy. Its contents include coverage of recent events such as the Scottish Referendum and the 2015 General Election.

Legislative power is the power to make new laws or remove old ones. This power is held by Parliament, which is made up of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, and the Northern Irish Assembly also have legislative powers; however, they do not have as much authority as Parliament. This group supported James II after 1680. Although they accepted the Glorious Revolution, they then supported the ‘Jacobite’ ‘Pretenders’ to the throne; as a result, they stayed out of power until the reign of George III. What often happens in the case of a hung parliament is that one large party will join up with a smaller party to form a coalition. By doing this, they exclude the main opposition and still have power – although it is now shared between the two coalition parties. Young people and politics Lifting the lid on how things work from the newsrooms to Number 10 Downing Street, Dunt utilises interviews from those inside to show exactly how things work, and how we can go about starting to fix them.century this speaking assembly, or ‘parliament’, began to meet separately: the nobility in what became known as the House Lords and the commoners in the House of Commons. King John had also been obliged to submit his proposals for taxation to this parliament and, over time, it became the lower house which acquired precedence in this respect. This ability to control the source and extent of the nation’s finances was the crucial lever used by parliament to extract recognised rights regarding its powers and functions. The Green Party was founded in 1990. It has joint leaders, Sian Berry and Jonathan Bartley, and one MP in Westminster, former leader Caroline Lucas. Its support is strongest among university-educated people in metropolitan areas. The electoral system in the UK Yes, Minister and its sequel Yes, Prime Minister were sitcoms of the early 1980s about an essentially well-meaning but hapless minister, and the civil servants who thwart his aims at every turn – sometimes because his plans are more idealistic than achievable, but usually just to preserve their own jobs and interests. The writers talked to a lot of politicians, civil servants and journalists to get a realistic picture of what life in government was really like, and the picture they painted was so accurate, that questions were raised about whether they were connected to spies (they weren’t). Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were considered unnervingly accurate by those in the know.