Reigning and administering the United Kingdom

Britain is a constitutional monarchy which means that the sovereign state of the country is the hereditary monarch
(a king or a queen), currently it’s Queen Elizabeth II to whom the Parliament (legislative body) is dependent and forms the Her Majesty’s Government headed by a Prime Minister reigning on Queen’s behalf and having a viable, executive power.

Monarch as the symbol of United Kingdom

The reigning monarch isn’t the head of state indeed, but the symbol of union among British nations, he or she reigns, but doesn’t rule, just to keep the tradition. The title is hereditary, succession is passed to the oldest male child (eventually female) and then, after the coronation, he or she will become the head of executive, judiciary, the Head of the Church of England and a commander-in-chief of British armed forces. Being a King or Queen gives the law to suspend or dissolve the Parliament, appoint officials, confer honours (noble titles), remit sentences (criminals), declare war or peace on another country and take part in working over foreign affairs. All of the governmental decisions need to be passed by a monarch, who takes no responsibility for them, according to the statement that “The king can’t do anything badly”.

Even the monarchy seems to be an ancient, useless and irrational institution in times of democracy, it’s still popular in Britain (90% of society want to be ruled by the monarch). The authority of a King or a Queen penetrated British minds as a fascinating, mysterious heritage and the symbol of unity.

The legislative power of the House of Parliament

The legislative force comes to the Parliament which is a regular meeting of chosen people in the House of Parliament (Westminster Palace, the one with a Big Ben) to think over the national problems, make laws, supervise the work of government and the financial system, protect the people and discuss current problems and foreign affairs. The House of Parliament, which origins come from 1265 when it was held for the first time as a meeting of nobility, consists of two parts and this division comes from 14^th century with a short  brake during republican reign in 17^th century.

The House of Commons (green room in Westminster) includes 646 members (529 from England, 59 from Scotland, 40 from Wales and 18 from Ulster). One of them becomes the Speaker who controls the Commons’ actions, gives and takes away the voice, supervises the rules and doesn’t vote at all, and the following three of them are the Chairmen helping the Speaker. Members (more than 21 years old, not imprisoned or bankrupted) that are gathered in parties are chosen for a five-years long cadence during the national election. What is interesting the chamber of the Commons has only 437 seats inside and it is also the only rectangular-shaped parliamentary chamber with the Speaker’s seat at one end (most of European parliamentary chambers are semicircular with Speaker’s seat at the middle).

The House of Lords (red room in Westminster) is on the other hand an absolutely undemocratic house which includes 748 members - 26 Lords Spiritual (high-positioned clergymen of the Church of England) and 722 Lords Temporal (secular officials) of which 618 are life peers (peers until their death) with 12 law peers (ex-judges), they are nominated by the monarch among the active people of political life; 92 are hereditary peers (the seat is hereditary) from aristocracy and monarch’s offices and 12 judiciary specialists (nominated by a king or queen). This house is to make opinions on Commons’ works and supervise executive and judiciary, Lords hasn’t got much power, however their decisions are widely accepted and respected.

The executive power of the Government and its Cabinet

The executive force belongs to the government which is formed on King’s or Queen’s behalf by a leader of a winning party soon after the election who becomes the Prime Minister. The Government is responsible for administration and financial system and consists of about 100 ministers gathered mainly in Whitehall Street and in Downing Street.

The Cabinet is the core of Government’s most important ministers (Treasury, Foreign Affairs, Defence, Justice, Administration, Education, Transportation, ministers of Scotland, Wales and Ulster) and the Prime Minister who should give confidence to Whitehall’s works, introduce balance in both action and prudence in politics and provide collective decisions in controversial cases. Similarly to the Cabinet, the Shadow Cabinet is formed by the Opposition’s leader to control Cabinet’s action and replace its members in case of emergency (every minister in Cabinet has a deputy in the Shadow Cabinet).

The Civil Service is the institution including 600,000 officials dependent to the Government and responsible for administering its decision in a proper and impartial way.

The judiciary power of courts and judges

The law is one of the most traditional areas of British life. The highest court in the legal system of England and Wales is the Supreme Court of England and Wales with the Court of Appeal, the High Court of Justice (for civil cases) and the Crown Court (for criminal cases), while the highest appeal and judiciary instance is the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. The county courts are responsible for minor problems. What’s interesting there’s almost no written rules, e.g. the murder hasn’t been illegal according to any written law and its qualification as a crime depends only on the judges’ authority.

Also the Constitution which is to supervise all of the legal rules and legislature works in the country has never been written based on the confidence to the judiciary system. There are also no educated judges, this function comes to experienced barristers – the senior branch of judiciary profession, chosen by the Lord Chancellor while the solicitors are to deal with public. Barrister have to graduate from one of the Inns of Court – colleges providing legal training and the Bar examination. The highest legal function is Lord Chancellor – he selects judges, he is the Speaker in the House of Lords and is a member of Cabinet responsible for legal advices.

The Scottish system is dependent to the Court of Session (civil cases) and the High Court of Justice (criminal cases), however for the cases of lower importance the sheriff courts are dedicated to. The Courts of Northern Ireland are to assure the just sentences in both civil and criminal cases in Northern Ireland.

The institution that was found to keep the order and peace in the country is the Police. Until 1986 the police was responsible for both detection of criminals and prosecution, which came to blaming people without strong evidence.

Conservatives and Labourists as the core of British political system and its parties

The British reigning system consists of two main political parties that has the viable parliamentary power and almost 80 per cent of public support in every election.

The Conservative Party (Tories) is connected with the party of aristocracy and the Church, importance of law and order which founds patriotism, tradition and strong army as the first-rate cases. Economic freedom and resistance to changes are the modern face of the Conservatives whose history is estimated into 18^th century.

 The Labour Party was found in 1900 according to the trend of socialism. It’s more democratic than Tories, proposes social justice and equality, wellbeing for everyone and the public ownership.

Another quite influential party is the association of people under the Liberal Democrats’ Party which is a coalition (1988) of 18^th century Liberals (Whigs) and Social Democratic Party that tends to get the votes of people whose political thoughts are situated between the Labourists’ and Conservatives’ opinions. Furthermore, there are other parties   of interesting statements that consists of a few Members of Parliament are the Green Party (ecology), British National Party (nationalistic point of view), Democratic Unionist Party (the biggest among Ulster’s parties), United Kingdom Independence Party (which tends to escape from European Union to reinstate the viable sovereignty of British nation) etc.

The local authorities and their cooperation with central government

The local governments employ almost three million officers represent the Parliament which may grant or limit local authorities’ power on the local level. However, local councils can choose better solutions for local problems, there’s no special system of supervising those authorities – they just do whatever best suits the particular area which is the source of misunderstandings with the central power. However that is the money which is the reason of biggest tensions between local and central authorities as none of the public cash was spent with the full acceptance, they also argue when it comes to further divisions of land, performing own businesses, growth of suburbs (areas around the core of the city, town) and conurbations (towns with no visible borders). About 25 per cent of total public expenditure are spent by local governments and what’s important 30 per cent of money received by councils is given on educational aims.

England is divided into counties, districts and parishes and has the administration on each stage. County departments are responsible for building highways, traffic regulations, planning and in some way the health and education, however district councils look after housing problems, environmental health, fire services or waste disposal. Scotland consists of 32 counties; Wales is divided into 9 counties, 10 municipal counties and 3 cities – all of them treated equally; while Northern Ireland includes 9 counties and 6 of them are the part of United Kingdom.

The system of defence and national security

Britain has traditionally best equipped, trained and technically developed armed forces in the world with the second greatest defence expenses of the world with more than 2 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. It has got official nuclear weapons, latest warfare inventions like the Challenger 2 tank and the Eurofighter Typhoon jet fighter and nearly 250,000 employed soldiers and 200,000 civil supporters. Although the army is widely respected by 250 year long tradition of regiments and immortal fame of unbeaten and indestructible Royal Navy, it’s not liked by liberals who regret spent money and manpower in times of peace. The British Army (land), the Royal Navy (sea), the Royal Marines (sea) and the Royal Air Force (air) are most famous and significant armed divisions on different areas which has already taken part in international peace missions e.g. in Iraq or Afghanistan. The regular army is also supported by reserve forces in case of emergency like the Territorial Army, the Royal Naval Reserve, Royal Marines Reserve and the Royal Auxiliary Air Force which altogether gather almost 500,000 additional personnel. British overseas garrisons are placed at Ascension Island, Brunei, Canada, the Falkland Islands (last famous war in 1982 took place there), Germany, Gibraltar, Kenya, and Cyprus. Lately, British society is less willing of limiting the military expenditure as security is a British obsession. Intelligence organisations like MI5, MI6 (known from books about James Bond) collect evidences mainly on foreign spies and organisations dangerous for national safety and try to limitate their harmful actions. This system is kept in secret and linked to similar operations in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

United Kingdom in the international organisations

As Britain used to be an empire quite a short time ago, the country wasn’t likely to cooperate with another smaller and less influential countries, however this situation has recently changed and Britain commutes with its own benefits.

The Commonwealth of Nations gathers independent countries that used to be a part of the British Empire, like United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, Pakistan, Republic of South Africa, New Zealand, Jamaica etc. with the symbolic Head of Commonwealth who is Queen Elizabeth II and the headquarters in London. It’s an international organisation held in 1926 connecting nearly 2,000 million citizens within 53 sovereign countries to promote democracy, peace, free trade, good reigning and to secure human rights not only on the stretches of the former Empire.

Britain is also one of the members of the European Union (entered in 1973) – a political and economical community of 27 European countries to create a great state of Europe guaranteeing the freedom of movement of people, goods and money within the members, the development of poorer countries and a mutual cooperation in foreign affairs. Many of those countries has introduced a European currency – Euro. The political centres are Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a military alliance headed by United States of America with the headquarters in Brussels (Belgium) made to establish the world peace by a collective defensive system.

United Nations is also an international organisation stated to confirm the international law and security, support the economical development and social progress, fight diseases and finally secure the human rights. Among its members we can find almost every independent states (currently in amount of 192) gathered in UN’s centre in New York.

The Group of Eight (G8) is a regular, annual meeting of the heads of most developed and significant countries of the world which represent 65 per cent of world’s economy and majority of global military power (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States of America) to discuss the global problems.

Finally, the World Trade Organization that was held to supervise and review global trade and favour non-discrimination and intellectual property among its members (151 countries all over the world) with the centre in Geneva.