History UsefulNotes / BritishPoliticalSystem

Since February 2023, when Nicola Sturgeon abruptly resigned as party leader, the SNP have been seen to be on something of a downward spiral. As Sturgeon had kept a tight lid on any internal fracturing within the party, the power vacuum left by her departure exposed an antagonistic relationship between the old-school socially conservative "Tartan Tories" that made up the party's historic base and the younger, more progressive wing championed by Sturgeon. The result was a contentious leadership election between Kate Forbes, representing the former group, and Humza Yousaf, who cast himself as the Sturgeonite continuity candidate. Yousaf won (barely), but was widely viewed as a man who was out of his depth and had more or less "failed upwards" into the position by uncritically toeing the party line. Further issues arose when both Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive, were arrested in connection with an investigation of their handling of the SNP's finances, with Murrell ultimately being charged with embezzling donations. As a result of all of this, the SNP's popularity has taken a substantial hit, and polls show that a resurgent Labour has drawn neck-and-neck with them in Scotland.\\

Since February 2023, when Nicola Sturgeon abruptly resigned as party leader, the SNP have been seen to be on something of a downward spiral. Sturgeon's departure led to an increasingly contentious relationship between the party's two main factions, the old-school socially conservative "Tartan Tories" and the younger, more progressive wing championed by Sturgeon. The result was a contentious leadership election between Kate Forbes, representing the former group, and Humza Yousaf, who cast himself as a Sturgeonite continuity candidate. Yousaf won, but came to be viewed as a man who was out of his depth, having more or less "failed upwards" into the position by uncritically toeing the party line. Further issues arose when both Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive, were arrested in connection with an investigation of their handling of the SNP's finances, with Murrell ultimately being charged with embezzling donations. As a result of all of this, the SNP's popularity has taken a substantial hit, and they're now neck-and-neck with a resurgent Labour in polls of Scottish voters.\\

Since February 2023, when Nicola Sturgeon abruptly resigned as party leader, the SNP have been seen to be on something of a downward spiral. Sturgeon's departure led to an increasingly contentious relationship between the party's two main factions, the old-school socially conservative "Tartan Tories" and the younger, more progressive wing championed by Sturgeon. The result was a contentious leadership election between Kate Forbes, representing the former group, and Humza Yousaf, presenting himself as a Sturgeonite continuity candidate. Yousaf eventually won, but was viewed by both commentators and a large proportion of the Scottish public as a man who was out of his depth and had essentially failed upwards into the position by uncritically toeing the party line; as a result he was given the derogatory nickname "Humza Yousless" by his detractors. Further issues arose when both Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive, were arrested in connection with an investigation of their handling of the SNP's finances, with Murrell ultimately being charged with embezzling donations. As a result of all of this, the SNP's popularity has taken a substantial hit, and they're now neck-and-neck with a resurgent Labour in polls of voters in Scotland.\\

Since February 2023, when Nicola Sturgeon abruptly resigned as party leader, the SNP have been seen to be on something of a downward spiral. Sturgeon's departure led to an increasingly contentious relationship between the party's two main factions, the old-school socially conservative "Tartan Tories" and the younger, more progressive wing championed by Sturgeon. The result was a contentious leadership election between Kate Forbes, representing the former group, and Humza Yousaf, presenting himself as a Sturgeonite continuity candidate. Yousaf eventually won, but was viewed by both commentators and a large proportion of the Scottish public as a man who was out of his depth (being given the derogatory "Humza Yousless" by his detractors) and had essentially failed upwards into the position by uncritically toeing the party line. Further issues arose when both Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive, were arrested in connection with an investigation of their handling of the SNP's finances, with Murrell ultimately being charged with embezzling donations. As a result of all of this, the SNP's popularity has taken a substantial hit, and they're now neck-and-neck with a resurgent Labour in polls of voters in Scotland.\\

Since February 2023, when then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon resigned, the SNP have been seen to be on something of a downward spiral. Sturgeon's departure led to an increasingly contentious relationship between the party's two main factions, the old-school socially conservative "Tartan Tories" and the younger, more progressive wing championed by Sturgeon. The result was a contentious leadership election between Kate Forbes, representing the former group, and Humza Yousaf, presenting himself as a Sturgeonite continuity candidate. Yousaf eventually won, but was viewed by both commentators and a large proportion of the Scottish public as a man who was out of his depth (being given the derogatory "Humza Yousless" by his detractors) and had essentially failed upwards into the position by uncritically toeing the party line. Further issues arose when both Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive, were arrested in connection with an investigation of their handling of the SNP's finances, with Murrell ultimately being charged with embezzling donations. As a result of all of this, the SNP's popularity has taken a substantial hit, and they're now neck-and-neck with a resurgent Labour in polls of voters in Scotland.\\

Since February 2023, when then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stood down, the SNP have been seen to be on something of a downward spiral. A contentious leadership election saw Humza Yousaf take over as party leader; however, Yousaf was widely viewed as someone who was out of his depth (being nicknamed "Humza Yousless" by his detractors) and had more or less failed upwards into the position by uncritically towing the party line. More problematically, Sturgeon's departure led to the relationship between the SNP's two main factions--the old-school socially conservative "Tartan Tories" and the younger, more progressive wing--becoming increasingly contentious. Further issues arose when both Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive, were arrested in connection with an investigation of their handling of the SNP's finances, with Murrell ultimately being charged with embezzling donations. As a result of all of this, the SNP's popularity has taken a substantial hit, and they're now neck-and-neck with a resurgent Labour in polls of Scottish voters.\\

Since February 2023, when then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stood down, the SNP have been seen to be on something of a downward spiral. A contentious leadership election saw Humza Yousaf take over as party leader; however, Yousaf was widely viewed as someone who was out of his depth (being nicknamed "Humza Yousless" by his detractors) and had more or less failed upwards into the position by uncritically towing the party line. More problematically, Sturgeon's departure led to the relationship between the SNP's two main factions--the old-school socially conservative "Tartan Tories" and the younger, more progressive wing--becoming increasingly contentious. Further issues arose when both Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive, were arrested in connection with an investigation of their handling of the SNP's finances, with Murrell ultimately being charged with embezzling donations. As a result of all of this, the party's support in the polls has fallen from their dominating all of the other parties amongst Scottish voters to being neck-and-neck with Labour.\\

Since February 2023, when then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stood down, the SNP have been seen to be on something of a downward spiral. A contentious leadership election saw Humza Yousaf take over as party leader; however, Yousaf was widely seen as someone who was out of his depth (being nicknamed "Humza Yousless" by his detractors) and had more or less failed upwards into the position by uncritically towing the party line. More problematically, Sturgeon's departure led to the relationship between the SNP's two main factions--the old-school socially conservative "Tartan Tories" and the younger, more progressive wing--becoming increasingly contentious. Further issues arose when both Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive, were arrested in connection with an investigation of their handling of the SNP's finances, with Murrell ultimately being charged with embezzling donations. As a result of all of this, the party's support in the polls has fallen from their dominating all of the other parties to being neck-and-neck with Labour, and it's widely expected that they'll lose a large number of seats in the next general election.\\

In the 2017 election, the SNP found their support slashed -- although they still won 35 of the 59 seats in Scotland, they only managed to poll about 40% of the vote, with the remaining 60% split among parties who explicitly vowed to oppose another independence referendum.[[note]]Virtually all the seats they did hold turned into marginals, despite previously having SNP majorities in excess of 10,000 -- Stephen Gethins held North East Fife for the SNP by just ''two'' votes.[[/note]] In addition, their two most notable [=MPs=], former First Minister Alex Salmond and Westminster group leader Angus Robertson, were two of the twelve who lost their seats to Conservative candidates. This resulted in some loss to their momentum, but they made a dozen net gains (including Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson's seat) in the 2019 election, thus putting the issue of a second independence referendum back onto the agenda. A very similar result to the 2016 Holyrood elections was achieved in 2021, bringing the issue even more into the fore. However, with the Conservatives having an 80-seat majority at Westminster, any movement on this may prove difficult to achieve.

Since February 2023, when then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stood down, the SNP have been seen to be on something of a downward spiral. A contentious leadership election saw Humza Yousaf take over as party leader; however, Yousaf was widely seen as someone who was out of his depth (being nicknamed "Humza Yousless" by his detractors) and had more or less failed upwards into the position by uncritically towing the party line. More problematically, Sturgeon's departure led to the relationship between the SNP's two main factions--the old-school socially conservative "Tartan Tories" and the younger, more progressive wing--becoming increasingly contentious. Further issues arose when both Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive, were arrested in connection with an investigation of their handling of the SNP's finances, with Murrell ultimately being charged with embezzling donations. As a result of all of this, the party's support in the polls has fallen from their dominating all of the other parties to being neck-and-neck with Labour, and it's widely expected that they'll lose half their seats or more in the next general election.\\

In the 2017 election, the SNP found their support slashed -- although they still won 35 of the 59 seats in Scotland, they only managed to poll about 40% of the vote, with the remaining 60% split among parties who explicitly vowed to oppose another independence referendum.[[note]]Virtually all the seats they did hold turned into marginals, despite previously having SNP majorities in excess of 10,000 -- Stephen Gethins held North East Fife for the SNP by just ''two'' votes.[[/note]] In addition, their two most notable [=MPs=], former First Minister Alex Salmond and Westminster group leader Angus Robertson, were two of the twelve who lost their seats to Conservative candidates. This resulted in some loss to their momentum, but they made a dozen net gains (including Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson's seat) in the 2019 election, thus putting the issue of a second independence referendum back onto the agenda. A very similar result to the 2016 Holyrood elections was achieved in 2021, bringing the issue even more into the fore. However, with the Conservatives having an 80-seat majority at Westminster, any movement on this may prove difficult to achieve.\\

'''Scottish Parliament status:''' Largest party, coalition government.\\

'''Scottish Parliament:''' Fourth-largest party, coalition government.\\

When in the Commons, [=MPs=] address each other not by name, but as "The Honourable Member for [name of constituency]" or "My Honourable friend" for someone from their own party, or "The Honourable gentleman/lady" for those from a different party. It's a holdover from the days when Parliament had to meet in secret to avoid detection, imprisonment, and execution by the agents of the King (who is popularly given to be UsefulNotes/CharlesI). There are some varying titles, such as "Right Honourable", used for members of the Privy Council, "Learned" (pronounced "learn-ed") for [=MPs=] who are also [[UsefulNotes/BritishCourts barristers]], and [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs "Right Honourable and Learned" for MPs who are barristers and members of the Privy Council]]. While rarely used today, there is also the "Right Honourable and Gallant" for former Military Officers (UsefulNotes/ClementAttlee, a Major in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, being one example; UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill was fastidious in referring to him as such, as despite their intense political rivalry he respected Attlee deeply as a man and a statesman).\\

When in the Commons, [=MPs=] address each other not by name, but as "The Honourable Member for [name of constituency]" or "My Honourable friend" for someone from their own party, or "The Honourable gentleman/lady" for those from a different party. It's a holdover from the days when Parliament had to meet in secret to avoid detection, imprisonment, and execution by the agents of the King (who is popularly given to be UsefulNotes/CharlesI). There are some varying titles, such as "Right Honourable", used for members of the Privy Council, "Learned" (pronounced "learn-ed") for [=MPs=] who are also [[UsefulNotes/BritishCourts barristers]], and [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs "Right Honourable and Learned" for MPs who are barristers and members of the Privy Council]]. While rarely used today, there is also the "Right Honourable and Gallant" for former Military Officers (UsefulNotes/ClementAttlee, a Major in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, being one example; his political foe UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill was fastidious in referring to him as such).\\

That said, the current setup is a result of the UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar (1641–51), which ended with the monarchy handing over virtually all its power (which in the Tudor era had been ''de facto'' absolute) to Parliament -- a process helped by the fact that Kings George I and II barely spoke English and didn't much care for governing Britain anyway -- and incidentally resembles [[HobbesWasRight Thomas Hobbes]]' conception of government. In any case, though this sounds rather scary at first -- in theory, one Act of Parliament could kill British liberty[[note]]Indeed, a single amendment to the Constitution could also kill American liberty; however, such would require two-thirds of votes in each house of Congress and the assent of the legislatures of three-quarters of the states. This has only happened 18 times (once to enact the amendments that form the Bill of Rights over the 1789–91 period, and seventeen times since then) since 1789.[[/note]] -- the UK's (now former) membership in UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion and its institutions, as well as a couple of other well-enforced treaties, have added a measure of restriction to the actions of Parliament; for the first time, Parliament has to deal with potentially making illegal laws.[[note]]Although Parliament still asserts legislative supremacy over Europe and intended to keep applying an anti-terrorism law Europe found partially illegal. Generally, though, European Court rulings work the same as Supreme Court decisions in America: they won't be enforced for whatever time the law is still on the books.[[/note]]\\

That said, the current setup is a result of the English Civil War (1641–51), which ended with the monarchy handing over virtually all its power (which in the Tudor era had been ''de facto'' absolute) to Parliament -- a process helped by the fact that Kings George I and II barely spoke English and didn't much care for governing Britain anyway -- and incidentally resembles [[HobbesWasRight Thomas Hobbes]]' conception of government. In any case, though this sounds rather scary at first -- in theory, one Act of Parliament could kill British liberty[[note]]Indeed, a single amendment to the Constitution could also kill American liberty; however, such would require two-thirds of votes in each house of Congress and the assent of the legislatures of three-quarters of the states. This has only happened 18 times (once to enact the amendments that form the Bill of Rights over the 1789–91 period, and seventeen times since then) since 1789.[[/note]] -- the UK's (now former) membership in UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion and its institutions, as well as a couple of other well-enforced treaties, have added a measure of restriction to the actions of Parliament; for the first time, Parliament has to deal with potentially making illegal laws.[[note]]Although Parliament still asserts legislative supremacy over Europe and intended to keep applying an anti-terrorism law Europe found partially illegal. Generally, though, European Court rulings work the same as Supreme Court decisions in America: they won't be enforced for whatever time the law is still on the books.[[/note]]\\

'''Scottish Parliament status:''' Largest party, current government.\\

'''Scottish Parliament status:''' No seats.\\

[[WeAreStrugglingTogether Another]] pro-independence party in Scotland, set up by former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond after his rather public falling-out with the SNP over an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct (of which Salmond was cleared). Partly designed to try and maximise a pro-independence vote in the Scottish Parliament elections by gaming Scotland's combined first-past-the-post and proportional representation system. Gained two [=MPs=] upon its formation, both defectors from the SNP; however, it failed to get any noticeable percentage of votes in the Scottish Parliament election, with the non-SNP pro-independence voters primarily opting for the Green Party instead.

'''Northern Ireland Assembly status:''' Largest party.\\

'''Current leader:''' Sir Jeffrey Donaldson (MP, Lagan Valley).[[labelnote:And...]]\\

'''Northern Ireland Assembly status:''' Second-largest party.\\

'''Northern Ireland Assembly status:''' Fifth-largest party.\\

'''Northern Ireland Assembly status:''' Fourth-largest party.\\

'''Northern Ireland Assembly status:''' Third-largest party.\\

'''Northern Ireland Assembly status:''' A single MLA.\\

'''Northern Ireland Assembly status:''' A single MLA.\\

[[folder: Legal definition and status]]

Although Britain has a parliamentary system and the Prime Minister (Rishi Sunak, appointed 25 October 2022, who is the first British Asian and Hindu Prime Minister), the ''de facto'' head of government, is supposed to be simply the executive/chief spokesperson of a governing political party, some prime ministers from the late 20th century on, most notably UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher and UsefulNotes/TonyBlair, have tended towards a 'presidential' executive style of rule. More concisely, the monarch is head of state and the prime minister is head of government, compared to a nation like [[UsefulNotes/AmericanPoliticalSystem the US]] where the head of state and head of government are the same person, the president, who functions independently of the legislature rather than being part of it.\\

An extremely important thing to note about the British government is that it is roughly synonymous with Parliament (the civil service notwithstanding): all authority flows from Westminster. Indeed, the "keystone" of the British constitutional order as identified by the celebrated scholar [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._V._Dicey A.V. Dicey]] is this: "Parliament ... has ... the right to make or unmake any law whatever, and further, that no person or body is recognized by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of parliament."[[note]]Indeed, it has been said that if the British Parliament wanted to make it illegal for an American to smoke on the streets of Washington, D.C., it could. Enforcing that law would be another matter.[[/note]]\\

The roots of this system are ''spectactularly'' old. Like, 800-900 years old even discounting the propaganda of the 19th-century Whig historians (who would have it that English popular government dates back to the time of UsefulNotes/AlfredTheGreat). But it's indisputably true that Parliament as an institution dates back to no later than Simon de Montfort's Parliament, called in 1265, and that this Parliament--which included elected knights of the shire and burgesses/citizens from the towns/cities in addition to great magnates and churchmen--did its level best to turn [[UsefulNotes/HenryTheThird Henry III]] into a PuppetKing. It failed, mostly because de Montfort made some strategic miscalculations. That said, Parliament remained and developed over the decades; by the middle reign of UsefulNotes/EdwardTheFirst, the inclusion of elected representatives had become a permanent feature of the system (specifically the Model Parliament, called in 1290). The separation of these elected representatives from the magnates and churchmen into the House of Commons and House of Lords (respectively) dates from about the reign of Edward III in the 14th century.\\

That said, the current setup is a result of the English Civil War (1641–51), which ended with the monarchy handing over virtually all its power (which in the Tudor era had been ''de facto'' absolute) to Parliament -- a process helped by the fact that Kings George I and II barely spoke English and didn't much care for governing Britain anyway -- and incidentally resembles [[HobbesWasRight Thomas Hobbes]]' conception of government. In any case, though this sounds rather scary at first -- in theory, one Act of Parliament could kill British liberty[[note]]Indeed, a single amendment to the Constitution could also kill American liberty; however, such would require two-thirds of votes in each house of Congress and the assent of the legislatures of three-quarters of the states. This has only happened 18 times (once to enact the amendments that form the Bill of Rights over the 1789–91 period, and seventeen times since then) since 1789.[[/note]] -- the UK's (now former) membership in UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion and its institutions, as well as a couple of other well-enforced treaties, have added a measure of restriction to the actions of Parliament; for the first time, Parliament has to deal with potentially making illegal laws.[[note]]Although Parliament still asserts legislative supremacy over Europe and intended to keep applying an anti-terrorism law partially found illegal by Europe. Generally, though, European Court rulings work the same as Supreme Court decisions in America: they won't be enforced for whatever time the law is still on the books.[[/note]]\\

[[folder: The House of Commons]]

The House of Commons is staffed by Members of Parliament ([=MPs=]) who are elected by each constituency. These are analogous to a congressional district in the US-- a large city will have multiple constituencies. A constituency is represented by a single MP. Each of these constituencies has an individual name. Every decade or so, the boundaries are redrawn by the non-partisan Boundary Commission, which does take representations from the parties.\\

The House of Commons is elected for a period of five years, with the calling of an election at the Prime Minister's choosing at any time, which was the case up to 2011 and has been the case since 2022. Between 2011 and 2022, elections could only be held every five years, or earlier either (a) the government loses a vote of confidence or (b) two-thirds of the entire House of Commons votes in favour of dissolving it.[[note]]The general elections of both 2017 and 2019 were called in the latter way.[[/note]] [=MPs=] are elected on the basis that the candidate winning the most votes is declared the winner, even if they only have one more vote than the next candidate when there are multiple candidates; i.e. it is not necessary to win more than 50% of the votes cast. (No British MP has ever literally [[DecidedByOneVote won by just one vote]], although several seats have been won by just ''two'' votes, most recently North East Fife at the 2017 general election. If the top two candidates tied for number of votes, the winner would be declared by drawing lots.)\\

When in the Commons, [=MPs=] address each other not by name, but as "The Honourable Member for [name of constituency]" or "My Honourable friend" for someone from their own party, or "The Honourable gentleman/lady" for those from a different party. It's a holdover from the days when Parliament had to meet in secret to avoid detection, imprisonment, and execution by the agents of the King (who is popularly given to be Charles I). There are some varying titles, such as "Right Honourable", used for members of the Privy Council, "Learned" (pronounced "learn-ed") for [=MPs=] who are also [[UsefulNotes/BritishCourts barristers]], and [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs "Right Honourable and Learned" for MPs who are barristers and members of the Privy Council]]. While rarely used today, there is also the "Right Honourable and Gallant" for former Military Officers (UsefulNotes/ClementAttlee, a Major in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, being one example; his political foe UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill was fastidious in referring to him as such).\\

Parliamentary debates and question times are far more rowdy than the (modern) United States Congress, with creative insults and heckling being the order of the day -- the late Creator/RobinWilliams once memorably described it as "Congress with a two-drink minimum". However, it's pretty much all verbal, and {{Floor Fight}}s are very rare. The chamber is presided over by the Speaker or one of his/her deputies. The Speaker is a [[LawfulNeutral non-partisan figure]] -- once elected speaker, they renounce their party affiliation, and at a general election they will stand as "The Speaker seeking re-election". It is convention that the major parties do not contest the Speaker's constituency, so it is highly unlikely that they will ''not'' be re-elected.[[note]]In the 2001 and 2005 elections, when Speaker Michael Martin (previously Labour) sought re-election in his constituency in Glasgow, Scotland, the Scottish National Party, whose constitution compels it to field candidates in every Scottish constituency, challenged him (though they weren't a major party at the time).[[/note]] The Deputy Speakers do not have to leave their party, but still they must remain impartial and do not take part in partisan politics -- although they may take part in politics relating to their constituency. The Speaker can be a very powerful figure, especially in cases when the government has a thin majority, as was demonstrated by former Speaker Sir John Bercow (much to the irritation of the governing Conservative Party which, ironically, he had been a member of).\\

[[folder: Elections]]

The first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system slightly favours the two main parties and heavily disadvantages the Liberal Democrats (and small parties in general), reflecting the two main parties' concentrations of support in certain areas (urban and working-class areas for Labour, affluent and rural areas for the Conservatives), and the Lib Dems having a fairly even support spread nationwide. In theory, the Lib Dems could even beat the Conservatives into second and Labour could remain the ''largest'' party with ''twice'' as many seats as the Lib Dems. The voting system can cause political parties to ''lose'' seats even though their popular vote increases (or, more rarely, vice versa), and indeed has sometimes. This happens to the minor parties more than Labour and the Conservatives, although Labour actually managed to lose an election that way: in 1951, candidates from UsefulNotes/ClementAttlee's Labour beat UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill's Conservatives by almost a quarter-million votes collectively, but ended up with ''twenty-six fewer'' seats. The same happened to the Conservatives in the June 2017 election: despite their popular vote share increasing by several percentage points to levels unseen since the 1980s, they managed to lose their overall majority because Labour enjoyed a larger jump in vote share and won its own largest share of the vote in twenty years.\\

[[folder: Forming a government]]

If a party can command a majority, it is often considered the ruling party. Their elected leader, chosen by the party through varying methods,[[note]]Labour and the Lib Dems by the single transferable vote, the Tories by run-off voting.[[/note]] then chooses a cabinet of which they serve as ''primus inter pares'' (first among equals). These men and women are responsible for various departments of government; there are currently 27 cabinet members (including the Prime Minister) who between them hold 42 positions -- during the Labour governments of Blair and Brown, Harriet Harman acquired the nickname "Three Hats Harman" for having three separate posts. They're often referred to as "The X Secretary", but their actual title is "The Secretary of State for X"--except for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, often called just "The Chancellor".[[note]]In most countries, this specific position is called "Minister of Finance"; in the States, it's "Secretary of the Treasury".[[/note]] Cabinet membership is not subject to parliamentary approval and may not even be along party lines (although, these days, it nearly always is), so it chops and changes frequently, with much attendant press speculation.\\

Contrary to public assumptions, and the press' frequent bellyaching, prime ministers are ''not'' directly elected (except as MP for their own constituency), so it means nothing to call a PM "unelected" except to take a swipe at a PM you don't like. UsefulNotes/GordonBrown got a ''lot'' of this to the point of being the press' ButtMonkey in the run-up to the 2010 election, despite the fact that, of the 23 prime ministers since 1900, fourteen ascended to the position in the middle of a government.[[note]]The last PM to be both appointed as the result of a general election victory and dismissed as the result of a loss was UsefulNotes/EdwardHeath, who won in 1970 and lost in March 1974.[[/note]] Even Winston Churchill was "unelected" for his first run at the premiership during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (in fact, the Churchill Conservatives never actually "won" a democratic election -- his second government in 1951 was, as detailed above, a fluke of the system as his party took considerably fewer votes than Labour). In fairness, there is some merit to this criticism: elections often swing entirely based on the personal popularity of leaders, and both of the main parties are ideologically varied enough that the direction of government can change dramatically based on which faction the leader is from. The Labour Party, for instance, has had five leaders in the 21st century, varying from Tony Blair, a centrist (to his allies. His enemies felt he had no principles whatsoever) who had the confidence of UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher, to Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran left-wing activist who has been variously described as anything from a "[[https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/jeremy-corbyn-mainstream-scandinavian-social-democrat/ mainstream [Scandanavian] social democrat]]" to a "[[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/corbyns-hard-left-blueprint-revealed-7t7ch53wz far-left]]" Marxist.\\

The official title of the largest party that is not in government is "His [or Her] Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition". Fittingly for a British institution, the name of this post began as a joke; the term was coined in 1826 by Whig MP John Hobhouse, who was riffing on the term "His Majesty's Government" in the midst of a critique of the policies of then-Foreign Secretary UsefulNotes/GeorgeCanning. The idea took off, however, as many came to realise that it was a much better way of understanding the relationship between Government and Opposition than had been before -- namely, rather than the Government regarding the Opposition as just a few steps shy of treasonous, Government and Opposition would emphasise their common loyalty to the Crown and the institution of Parliament while simultaneously disagreeing about everything else.\\

[[folder: The Conservative Party]]

'''Current leader:''' UsefulNotes/RishiSunak (MP, Richmond (Yorkshire)[[note]]This is the official name of his constituency, to avoid it being confused for the now-defunct constituency of Richmond in Surrey, as well as the extant constituency of Richmond Park in London.[[/note]]).[[labelnote:Regional leaders]]\\

Formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, indicating their position on UsefulNotes/TheIrishQuestion (and now the 'Scottish Question'), although this isn't always emphasised -- especially given that 2019 polling indicates that most of their voters would be happy to give up Northern Ireland (and possibly Scotland) to "get Brexit done." The party which currently has the PM and the Cabinet (executive branch). The traditional party for rural voters, suburban voters, the aspirational working class/NouveauRiche types, and the wealthy. They have tended to take a more populist approach to politics in recent years, especially during the leaderships of UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher and UsefulNotes/DavidCameron, and until the 2016 referendum, were usually perceived as a centre-right party with a middle-class focus and classical liberal economic tendencies.[[note]]Especially under Thatcher and Cameron, the Tories have enacted wide-ranging cuts to attempt to close the deficit.[[/note]] Having moved towards the middle for about ten years in the 21st century (though with some right-wing traditionalist opinions such as on fox-hunting and benefits), following the 2016 EU referendum, they've moved sharply back to the right under UsefulNotes/TheresaMay and UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson (forced on May by the powerful pro-Brexit 'Economic Research Group' of backbenchers, and embraced by Johnson), courting former Labour working-class voters. The popular opinion between 1997 and 2015 was that they and Labour had almost converged. With the Brexit referendum and the ascension of Jeremy Corbyn, emblem of the Labour Party's left wing, that has since changed, even with the rise of Corbyn's more centrist successor, Sir Keir Starmer.\\

The Conservatives currently form a majority government in Westminster following the 2019 election, having previously governed as a minority following the loss of their majority in the 2017 election (poor leadership, utterly bland and complacent campaigning, and a rather questionable manifesto were all considered to be factors), relying on the support of the Northern Irish DUP (see below), which while being their only possible ally in the current Parliament, raised a few eyebrows among supporters and detractors alike. Johnson then gambled on another election, and won big, gaining the biggest Conservative majority since the 1980s, gobbling up much of the former "Red Wall" of Labour seats in north Wales and the Midlands/north of England -- old industrial regions that had voted Leave -- which hadn't voted anything ''but'' Labour in generations. He was partially helped by the fact that the Brexit Party leader Farage, supposedly on the orders of US President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump, formed an unofficial alliance with the Conservatives and only campaigned in non-Conservative constituencies, draining votes away from Labour supporters.\\

A couple of years later, in June 2022, the wheels fell off after a long string of scandals, including the infamous "Partygate" (where raucous parties took place at 10 Downing Street while the rest of the nation, from the Queen downwards, was strictly abiding by COVID restrictions); it became increasingly obvious that Boris would say anything he needed to, no matter how [[BlatantLies obviously untruthful it was]], to get away with whatever he'd done this time, and that he had no loyalty to anyone but himself. Worse, he had become politically toxic, with both former Red Wall seats, taken in 2019, and Blue Wall seats in Tory heartlands that had been in Tory hands for centuries falling in by-elections to Labour and the Liberal Democrats -- and the main reason cited by former Tory voters was usually "Boris". Aside from his hardcore loyalists, most Cabinet ministers finally got sick of both this and being marched out to repeat a party line on the news that would often change halfway through the interview, resulting in their public humiliation. Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned within minutes of each other, with an astonishing domino effect -- over 40 ministers and aides resigned in the space of 24 hours, three Education Ministers resigned in as many days, and the newly minted Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, led a delegation of ministers to Downing Street within a day of taking his position to tell Boris to resign. Finally, Boris gave in and resigned with about as much grace as one could expect (that is, very little, [[NeverMyFault blaming everyone but himself]]), remaining as a caretaker until early September while the Tories began their traditional political knife-fight for the succession, with as many as 11 candidates initially standing. Eventually, Rishi Sunak reached the final round, much as was expected, as did UsefulNotes/LizTruss, which was not. Truss was announced as the winner on 5 September 2022.\\

Truss resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party on 20 October 2022 -- reportedly making her the shortest-serving prime minister in the country's history. The resignation followed the turbulent previous day, when her Home Secretary resigned, a vote on fracking was positioned as a confidence vote, and her Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip were both widely reported to have resigned (but then, eventually, stated they were remaining in post). During her resignation speech she stated that she would remain in office as Prime Minister for approximately a week, until her successor was chosen, which turned out to be UsefulNotes/RishiSunak, unopposed (after Boris Johnson had flirted with a very sudden political comeback).\\

Sunak has remained in office ever since, as poll numbers refused to budge and continued to predict a historic Labour majority at the next election - and in the worst cases, Conservative seats in the middling double-figures. As of March 2024, the Tories are once again indulging in their favourite hobby: plotting political regicide. While no clear rival has emerged, it remains unclear who, exactly, will lead the Tories into the next election...\\
\\

[[folder: The Labour Party]]

Started off as a socialist party that appealed to working people (hence the name) but became more pro-market in the late 1980s and moved closer to the centre under Neil Kinnock and especially Tony Blair, before moving slightly back to the left under Jeremy Corbyn.[[note]]We've skipped over a thumping great chunk of their history here, but it's not something you'd make movies about. Apart from the miners' and general strikes of UsefulNotes/JamesCallaghan's time, but that's another story.[[/note]] In the mid-1990s, Blair dubbed his centrist vision for the party "New Labour", a piece of branding designed to distance Labour from its bitter infighting and more left-wing early-1980s incarnation, which the image-obsessed Blair thought had a negative perception amongst voters; this label came to be used more as a term of abuse by the party's enemies and internal dissenters rather than a badge of honour, and the party itself has since dropped it. There was between 1994 and 2010 a dangerous divide between the Blairites, named after UsefulNotes/TonyBlair, and Brownites, named after UsefulNotes/GordonBrown, though no one was quite sure what the difference was; the general consensus was that Brown was deemed slightly more socialist and Eurosceptic, while Blair was more centrist and pro-European -- and, in the view of his detractors be they leftish, rightish, or centrist, had no discernible principles whatsoever.\\

You'll see several Labour members listed as "Lab/Co-Op". This means that they are also sponsored by the Co-operative Party, the political arm of the UK Co-operative movement (as in the supermarket chain Co-op). The Co-op Party is largely identical to Labour, apart from an emphasis on fair trade, and doesn't run candidates itself.\\
\\

In February 2023, the Labour Party was removed from the EHRC's 'special measures' as it had been assessed to be now providing sufficient protection from similar antisemitic bullying going forward. Emboldened by this, the standing down of charismatic SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, and a 20-point poll lead, Starmer stated that Corbyn would definitively not be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in his constituency of Islington North and threw down the gauntlet to his supporters on the Labour Left, especially Momentum. The gist of the message was 'get with the program or leave', intentionally striking a contrast with the Conservatives, who at the time had three former prime ministers on the backbenches[[note]]Boris Johnson would resign from Parliament and force a by-election that summer.[[/note]] (and a fourth, UsefulNotes/JohnMajor, being very active from outside Parliament and often at cross purposes to the leadership). While Corbyn retains a significant chunk of popularity on the Left of the party, that popularity was further dented by one of his erstwhile allies, Diane Abbott, publicly admitting that the key contention between Corbyn and Starmer was the fact that yes, Corbyn really was a Brexit supporter (which was taken as read, but never confirmed) while Starmer was passionately pro-European -- one of the few things he reliably has in common with most of the Labour Left in the twenty-first century. As for the relationship between him and Starmer, the fact that Starmer's wife is Jewish and they keep Jewish festivals probably didn't help either. Even prominent Corbyn allies have quietly said that they'd much rather he didn't challenge as an Independent in Islington North.\\

The anthem of the Labour Party is "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDIuApfVxBg The Red Flag]]", by Jim Connell, to the tune of "O Tannenbaum":[[note]]The left-wing English singer/songwriter Music/BillyBragg notes that Jim Connell meant "The Red Flag" to be sung to a much less dreary tune, "The White Cockade". Bragg's EP of political songs ''The Internationale'' features a version of the song with the original tune.[[/note]]

Since 1927, the Labour Party has been in a permanent coalition with the Co-operative Party, founded in 1917 as the political arm of the co-operative movement (much as Labour was, as previously stated, the political arm of the trade unions). (It has its origins in the Joint Parliamentary Committee of the Co-operative Union, founded 1881, which was primarily a watchdog and lobby group.) The Co-operative Party is actually the fourth largest party in number of [=MPs=], but this is obscured as they run as "Labour and Co-operative Party" (otherwise using Labour's logo and font) and sit on the Parliamentary Labour Group. Besides its defense of co-operative principles, it is, like Labour, a social democratic/democratic socialist party. It is also British Unionist and Pro-Europeanist. Due to its co-operative principles, it doesn't have a Leader, but rather a Chairperson: as of 2021 it's Jim [=McMahon=], Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer.

[[folder: The Liberal Democrats]]

Since the Liberals' fall from popularity back in TheRoaringTwenties, their realistic aims have been to be {{kingmaker|Scenario}}s in a hung parliament, which they did in the 2010 election, deciding to ally with the Tories after talks with Labour failed.[[note]]Given the parliamentary mathematics, this was the best move: the alternatives were a centre-left alliance, which would've been too prone to nationalist interests, or a Conservative minority government, which might have quickly collapsed too.[[/note]] They would suffer from that decision, having gone from 57 [=MPs=] down to ''eight'' in 2015. Some of this was because people thought they had betrayed their voters by one or both of: getting into a coalition with the Tories[[note]]The backlash was so intense because there are a ''lot'' of constituencies where the voters either outright hate or deeply mistrust the Conservative Party but Labour commands insufficient support to win the seat. Many voters voted Liberal Democrat because at least it kept the Tories out, so when the Lib Dems joined the Tory-led coalition, voters felt personally betrayed by the Lib Dems' decision, essentially getting the Conservatives into power by the back door with their help.[[/note]] and splitting in half to vote to raise tuition fees despite promising not to.[[note]]For older readers, this is a spectacular case of the FleetingDemographicRule: not only had Labour broken election promises not to raise fees back in 1998 and 2004 (and indeed they introduced them to begin with), they did so with monster majorities, not coalition compromises, and they were also planning to raise tuition fees ''again'' until around 8:40 p.m. on 11 May 2010. The Tories had similar plans too, and indeed followed through with yet ''another'' rise in 2017.[[/note]] The rest was because many of their [=MPs=] depended on tactical voting to keep Labour/the Tories out in their seat, and the coalition meant this broke down on both sides.\\

Following on from the 2019 local election wins, to general shock the Lib Dems won Chesham and Amersham in a by-election in June 2021. The shock came in because this was a traditional 'Blue Wall' seat that had voted Conservative since its creation in 1974 and had returned a majority of 16,000 for Conservative MP Dame Cheryl Gillan (whose death had precipitated the by-election). This time, it returned a majority of 8,000 for the Lib Dems after a 25% swing, and has sparked a lot of speculation about the Lib Dems hoovering up parts of the Blue Wall that had voted Remain, had an influx of Londoners, and felt ignored by the Tory focus on the Midlands and the North, supported by tactical Labour voting (the Labour presence at Chesham and Amersham was largely and carefully anonymous). While it's unclear if this will get anywhere, the post-election celebrations featured Davey smashing a wall of blue boxes with a small orange hammer. In December the Liberal Democrats followed up by winning North Shropshire, overturning a majority of 23,000 by nearly 6,000 in the seventh largest swing in by-election history after the incumbent MP Owen Paterson was forced to resign in a very public corruption scandal, and in June 2022 they made it a hat-trick by similarly overcoming a majority of 24,000[[note]]Although there have been larger swings, including in Chesham, this was the largest numerical majority ever overturned in a by-election[[/note]] in Tiverton and Honiton following the resignation of incumbent Neil Parish after he admitted to viewing pornography in the House of Commons.\\

[[folder: The Regional & Smaller Parties]]

In the 2017 election, the SNP found their support slashed -- although they still won 35 of the 59 seats in Scotland, they only managed to poll about 40% of the vote, with the remaining 60% split among parties who explicitly vowed to oppose another independence referendum.[[note]]Virtually all the seats they did hold turned into marginals, despite previously having SNP majorities in excess of 10,000 -- North East Fife was held by the SNP's Stephen Gethins by just ''two'' votes.[[/note]] In addition, their two most notable [=MPs=], former First Minister Alex Salmond and Westminster group leader Angus Robertson, were two of the twelve who lost their seats to Conservative candidates. This resulted in some loss to their momentum, but they made a dozen net gains (including Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson's seat) in the 2019 election, thus putting the issue of a second independence referendum back onto the agenda. A very similar result to the 2016 Holyrood elections was achieved in 2021, bringing the issue even more into the fore. However, with the Conservatives having an 80-seat majority at Westminster, any movement on this may prove difficult to achieve.\\

Left-of-centre party agitating for Cornish autonomy, in the style of Celtic region devolution. Nothing more than a handful of members of Cornwall County Council. Regarded by non-Cornish people as not much more than a joke.[[note]]Although Cornwall isn't exactly a political heavyweight, it does have a distinct cultural identity. The Cornish language, which is distantly related to Welsh and Breton, is one of the very few languages to have died out ''and been revived''; at the beginning of the 20th century nobody spoke it at all, but by 2008 there were an estimated 2000 people who speak it fluently. In 2009, UNESCO raised the status of the language from "Extinct" to "Critically Endangered".[[/note]]

English nationalist party in the vein of the SNP and Plaid Cymru. Generally close in ideology to the Conservatives, with most of their elected party members former Tories, but with support for a devolved legislature and an elected Lords. No representation beyond a single councillor.

With the exception of the Conservatives and UKIP (neither of whom wins any seats anyway), the main UK parties do not contest seats in Northern Ireland, and do not stand for elections to the Northern Irish Assembly.[[note]]Nor can they, in many cases, because they're not registered to do so anyway, and the UK-wide party doesn't want to try it, resulting in the curious situation in the 2016 Assembly election of Labour [=wannabe-MLAs=] standing under the banner of the "NI Labour Representation Committee". It hearkened back, intentionally or not, to the Labour Party's origin as the "Labour Representation Committee," but didn't work.[[/note]] Instead, a series of regional parties holds sway here.\\\

'''Current leader:''' Mary Lou [=McDonald=] (TD, Dublin Central).[[note]]A legislator in the Republic of Ireland. See our article on the UsefulNotes/IrishPoliticalSystem.[[/note]] [[labelnote:And...]]\\

One of the few SugarWiki/{{Heartwarming Moment}}s in Northern Irish history was the [[OddFriendship solid partnership and genuine friendship]] that developed between Paisley and [=McGuinness=], during their term as (respectively) First Minister and Deputy First Minister, before Paisley's death in 2014. They were so frequently photographed laughing together that they got nicknamed the "Chuckle Brothers". Imagine a hardline, right-wing Israeli MP developing a friendly working partnership with a leader of Hamas, and you'll get a sense of how unlikely this was.

Also responsible for developing a rather questionable renewable heating scheme in Northern Ireland. The scheme was set up in such a cocked-up way that businesses paying into it managed to get more money out just for heating empty buildings. There have also been allegations that family members and associates of DUP members were set to benefit from this scheme and may even have been complicit in its development. This is set to cost the Northern Ireland budget hundreds of millions of pounds over two decades, and the DUP's unwillingness to admit any responsibility or wrongdoing, or even show the slightest bit of humility, led to Sinn Féin collapsing the coalition government in Stormont in early 2017. The government was finally restored just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic to hit, before promptly being collapsed ''again'' following the 2022 elections -- this time by the DUP trying to subvert an anti-Brexit majority in the Assembly.\\

Found themselves in a KingmakerScenario following the 2017 election, as the support of their ten [=MPs=] gave the Conservatives enough votes to pass legislation as a minority government. Given the unwillingness of ''any'' other party in the Commons to prop up the Conservatives, this was their only option. How this would influence the UK government's impartiality in negotiations over Northern Ireland, however, was a potentially thorny issue. Subsequently were returned to minor-party status with the 2019 election when the Conservatives won an overall majority, no longer relying on DUP support to pass legislation.\\\

!!! [[AC:Smaller UK-wide Parties]]

The Greens used to differ from other left-wing parties with regard to science, where they embraced many 'alternative' (and scientifically disproved) ideas such as homeopathy, partially as a result of their manifesto being completely democratic, even to people not versed in either science or politics. Nowadays, their only 'anti-science' policies are opposition to nuclear power and scepticism of GM crops -- though many of their members still favour 'alternative' medicines. Their position on Europe is to take a 'reformist Eurosceptic' view: they would prefer to stay in the EU but want to see it massively reformed. The Scottish Greens are pro-independence (and have the backing of Music/FranzFerdinand), while the Northern Irish Greens purposely take no position on UsefulNotes/TheIrishQuestion. The English and Welsh Greens won the first Green seat at Westminster in 2010, then-leader Caroline Lucas beating Labour's Nancy Platts to win the seat of Brighton Pavilion in East Sussex. Lucas has represented the constituency since, but she has been the only Green MP despite the party getting well over one million votes nationally in 2015 and in the high hundreds of thousands in both 2017 and 2019. The Greens' colour, [[SarcasmMode surprisingly]], is green, and the Anglo-Welsh party's icon is a sunflower. The Scottish, Anglo-Welsh, and Irish branches of the Greens use their own variations on the theme.

A party which has attained victories primarily in Britain's elections for members of the European Parliament, but ironically want to change that situation by pulling the UK out of the EU altogether. Although founded as a "wide-spectrum" [[SingleIssueWonk single-issue party]] united by opposition to British membership of the European Union, they ended up metamorphosing into a populist, nationalist, anti-immigration grouping of disgruntled Thatcherite Conservatives disillusioned with their "home" party, and their general outlook is very similar to that of the right "[[Magazine/PrivateEye Sir Bufton Tufton]]" wing of the Conservative Party that was dominant in TheEighties but unofficially marginalised post-2005. In later years, however, they made a play for disgruntled Lib Dem and Labour voters, and in the 2015 election arguably emerged as the main opposition party in traditionally Labour areas, making second place in many safe Labour seats. The party's first European parliamentarians tended to make embarrassing jingoistic far-right gaffes, although a succession of leaders later made effective efforts to improve the party's image. Their party colour is purple, and their icon is a pound symbol (£) -- representing their opposition to the Euro -- with the party initials "UKIP" forming the bar across the middle. Following the defection of Douglas Carswell from the Conservatives in 2014 and his subsequent win for their party in the Clacton by-election, they gained their first MP; Mark Reckless also defected shortly afterwards, won his seat of Rochester & Strood in the by-election, but lost it in the subsequent general election. The party was the third largest in vote share in the 2015 general election (with the best part of four million votes), but won only one seat, Douglas Carswell's. In the 2016 devolved elections, they won seven seats in the Welsh Assembly, mostly from the regional vote which is based on proportional representation. Most of their votes come from disgruntled Conservative, Labour, and Lib Dem voters in regions that combine high levels of poverty, unemployment, and immigration. Several of these new UKIP [=AMs=] are former Tories, including the aforementioned Mark Reckless, though one AM has since resigned the whip due to an argument over who gets to be in charge, and indeed Mr Reckless has now ''returned'' to the Conservatives.\\

With the UK voting in a 2016 referendum to leave the European Union, thereby removing the party's entire reason for existence, they found themselves in the process of [[AndThenWhat wondering what on earth to do now]]. While many in the press talked up their chances of replacing Labour as the main opposition party (by seizing their working-class support in northern England, à la how the SNP obliterated Labour north of the border at the previous election), any chance of this was derailed by a disastrous few months in which long-standing leader Nigel Farage retired, only for his favoured successor to be unable to stand to replace him due to not filing the correct paperwork in time (and subsequently resigning from the party following a physical altercation with another MEP). Farage's eventual successor, Diane James, resigned from the leadership after just a few weeks, leaving Farage back in charge until ''another'' leadership election installed Paul Nuttall as leader. While Nuttall's appointment was widely praised by the press and claimed by some to be what the party needed to displace Labour at last, his attempt at getting into Parliament via a by-election in February 2017 (at Stoke-on-Trent Central) ended in failure after a campaign where he was accused of lying about being a survivor of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster Hillsborough disaster]] and committing electoral fraud, putting the party back to square one.\\\
After numerous reports of party infighting, their only MP, Douglas Carswell, eventually decided in 2017 that he'd had enough, and left the party to sit as an independent. This means UKIP now no longer had any representation in Westminster. Worse was to follow at the 2017 local elections, in which ''every UKIP councillor'' standing for re-election was defeated, and the party only managed to gain a single council seat from the other parties. In the June 2017 general election, as noted, UKIP's vote utterly collapsed nationwide, with UKIP voters returning to both the Conservatives and Labour in relatively even numbers. As such, they now have no Westminster representation, and were again forced to search for a new leader following Paul Nuttall's resignation the day after the election (he came a distant third in Boston and Skegness, the constituency estimated to have the highest proportional Leave vote of the entire country, going almost three to one for Leave in the referendum). This leadership election was won by Farage supporter Henry Bolton, seeing off a challenge from far-right extremist Anne-Marie Waters, who wanted to turn the party into the political arm of her anti-Islam organisation. Four months into Bolton's leadership, the party dissolved into outright civil war sparked off by a controversy over Bolton leaving his wife for a model who turned out to be a racist, with the party's ruling body passing a vote of no confidence in Bolton only for him to refuse to resign, and [=MEPs=] and councillors quitting the party ''en masse''. The party finally managed to get rid of Bolton after he lost a confidence vote amongst the wider membership, leaving the party facing its fourth leadership election in less than eighteen months, which eventually resulted in interim leader Gerard Batten being elected unopposed as permanent leader (with it being widely theorized that other potential candidates held off on contesting the leadership on the grounds that the party simply couldn't afford another leadership contest on top of the six-figure payout they faced having to make due to a libel suit). Batten's leadership initially saw an improvement in the party's polling ratings, as Theresa May's government increasingly came under fire for its indecisive handling of Brexit. However, everything went horribly wrong near the end of 2018, as Batten recruited several prominent members of the alt-right, along with former BNP and English Defence League activist Tommy Robinson, the latter of which in particular saw many prominent members, including Nigel Farage, quit the party in disgust to [[StartMyOwn form the Brexit Party]].\\

A group of independent [=MPs=] who were a ''little'' different from actual Independents (see below). The Independent Group formed in 2019 when a group of [=MPs=] resigned from both the Labour and Conservative parties over dissatisfaction with their current leadership and party policies. By resigning their party's whip, they automatically become Independent [=MPs=], but have chosen to form themselves into a like-minded aligned group... hence, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Independent Group"]].\\

This move attracted both support and criticism from all sides of the Commons.\\

Their policy programme took time to be fleshed out, with their primary unifying aspect being their opposition to Brexit and desire for a second referendum on the UK's EU membership. While the Group claimed they weren't a political party (unlike the SDP breakaway of the 1980s), the coincidentally quick appearance of a corporate back structure and branded logos indicated that things were swiftly going to move in that direction. And indeed, they formed into an actual party (re-branded as "Change UK") in time for the 2019 European Parliament elections.\\
\\

Other than wanting a 'clean' Brexit, no one really knows what they're about, as the party long refused to produce a manifesto or otherwise answer any policy questions whatsoever where the answers aren't 'Get out of Europe.'\\

[[BrokenBase Some people like this, some people don't.]]\\
\\

In the 2019 general election, the Brexit Party tried to avoid this by agreeing to an informal electoral pact with the Conservatives, apparently on the orders of Donald Trump, whereby the Brexit Party didn't stand in any constituencies that the Conservatives won in 2017. (Farage went ahead with this even after Boris Johnson declined his offer to make it official.) This appears to have paid off, with the Conservatives retaining most of their seats from 2017 and the Brexit Party draining votes from Labour in traditional Labour heartlands, allowing Conservative candidates to take the seat. While Farage announced his intention to rebrand the party as the "Reform Party" in order to help it succeed where UKIP failed in displacing the Labour Party as the main opposition, little has been heard from them since the general election, and questions remain as to the likely success of any rebrand considering they're even more of an explicit one-issue party than UKIP were. Currently the Reform Party is acting as an anti-Lockdown/anti-'woke' party, though with Farage having announced his (supposedly) final retirement from politics in early 2021, they still appear to be struggling for future direction.

Proof that the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Second World War]] didn't really teach some British people anything, they are an ultra-populist far-right party (so far-right they believe the Conservatives to be Marxist) and believe in withdrawal from the European Union, isolationism, strongly authoritarian anti-crime measures, "better rights" for "native" (i.e., white) Britons, and "voluntary repatriation" of what they regard as "non-native" Britons (i.e. deporting anyone who isn't white).[[note]]Nick Griffin indeed said that black Britons and Asian Britons "do not exist".[[/note]] They are usually elected in areas with high levels of racial tension. They are derided by other far-right groups such as the National Front for trying to make themselves appear respectable. They have been playing up their anti-immigration policies in order to gain popular support, but remain very niche and have no [=MPs=], although they had several councillors and had a few [=MEPs=] in the European Parliament from 2009 to 2014. Their colours are red, white, and blue, and the party's logo is a heart with a Union Jack pattern beneath.\\

* There are also several communist and socialist parties, mainly notable for their sheer number; most famously the '''Socialist Worker's Party''', but also including '''[[WeAreStrugglingTogether the Communist Party of Great Britain, the Communist Party of Britain, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), and the Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)]]'''. Totally insignificant from a practical point of view, having membership in the hundreds rather than thousands. Came in for a ''lot'' of ribbing in ''Film/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian'', where the Judean separatist movements and their in-fighting[[note]]The Judean People's Front, the Judean Popular People's Front, the People's Front for Judea, and the Judean Popular People's Front (the last is a single old man, and the rest are all splitters).[[/note]] were a parody of this. The CPGB actually won two seats back in 1945 before news of [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Stalin's]] [[ThePurge purges]] made communism unpopular, and they lost them both at the 1950 election and proceeded to collapse into irrelevance thanks to their following the Moscow party line (their support for the 1956 invasion of Hungary revolted nearly all more rational leftists and earned them the pejorative nickname "tankies") and eventually disbanded in 1991. Since 2010, many of these far-left groups have stood for election under the banner of TUSC (the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition). This is more a flag of convenience than a genuine party, though.\\

Notably, these parties had -- and to a degree still have -- an ''incredibly'' HighTurnoverRate of activists and members, especially the Moscow-backed CPGB. There are two reasons for this: first, they attracted young, intelligent, rebellious, free-thinking radicals... who were then expected to become rigidly obedient drones the moment they had their membership cards. Second, the CPGB's rank-and-file who did stay were told that the allegations of the party being reliant on "Moscow gold" from the KGB to survive was a filthy smear spread to discredit the British left... until they became senior enough to learn that it was completely true.

!!! Not really parties, but listed for completion:

A small part of political process, mostly being in the legislatures from being elected for local issues (such as Dr. Richard Taylor, who was elected an MP in 2001 and 2005 to save his local hospital),[[note]]Technically, Taylor was elected from a party called "Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern". During his time in office, he was basically the only elected from this "party" at any level; however, since 2015 (five years after Taylor left Parliament, losing to a Tory in 2010), they've won a number of seats in the local council in Wyre Forest as a vaguely centre-left party with a particular focus on NHS issues (and that bleeding hospital).[[/note]] leaving their own party in protest to some issue (such as Sylvia Hermon, who was an ex-UUP member; and Douglas Carswell, who was an ex-Conservative and ex-UKIP member), or being kicked out of their own party for misbehaviour (Michelle Thomson and Natalie [=McGarry=] had to withdraw from the SNP whip, Charlie Elphicke had to withdraw from the Conservative whip, and Simon Danczuk had to withdraw from the Labour whip, all four due to being the subject of police investigations; all four were still independents at the time of their next election and were barred by their former parties from standing again[[note]]Elphicke was temporarily re-admitted right before Theresa May was to undergo a vote of no confidence, then kicked out again a few months later[[/note]]). Genuine independents are rare in the House of Commons (Sylvia Hermon being the only MP directly elected as an independent in the [=2010s=]), and most of them are far more likely to be people who originally represented a party before having the whip removed.\\

The most common Lords version of independents,[[note]]Some instead choose to refuse affiliation all together, or renounce it while holding special offices, or have their affiliation withdrawn due to misdemeanours, and are classed as "non-affiliated" instead.[[/note]] and account for about 20% of the members of the upper house. Generally, they are composed of experts in certain fields (for example, back in TheEighties, the Lords brought in several veterinarians to help with the animal welfare debate) and people given a peerage as a form of [[UsefulNotes/KnightFever honour]] because they'd run out of knighthoods to give them/the things they'd done warranted more than a knighthood (e.g. the architect Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank), and have no official affiliation. Sit on the "crossbenches" in the Lords (between Government and Opposition, directly across from the Woolsack and Throne), unsurprisingly. Latter-day Commons Speakers who were awarded peerages tended to sit as crossbench peers.

This curious inclusion in the House of Lords is due to Anglicanism being the "established church" of England (i.e. it is partially funded by the Treasury and the Government has some input in the selection of bishops). Generally, they only vote on ecclesiastical matters, but modern secularism and their hand in immensely watering down a government bill in 2010 are gradually making this arrangement ... unpopular.

!!! And last, but certainly not least...

[[folder: The parties and elections]]

UKIP's first major electoral success occurred in the National Assembly of Wales elections in 2016, where they gained seven [=AMs=] from zero as a result of disaffected Conservative, Labour, and Lib Dem voters in regions that combine high unemployment, poverty, and immigration. Nationally, UKIP and the Green Party have had very little electoral success, despite levels of support that would suggest returning a handful of legislators (2015: 12.6% and 3.8% respectively); the first MP from either party to get elected to the Commons was the Green Party leader Caroline Lucas in 2010. However, they have been more successful in getting members elected to the European Parliament, although UKIP, in common with a few other minor parties in history, have had a party member defect to them. Until 2009, the BNP (2010: 1.9%) had never been elected to anything more significant than a few local council seats until electing two [=MEPs=] in 2009, though they now have none. Before anyone gets too worried about the implications, they actually received ''fewer'' votes than the previous election, but lower turnout, in part due to an ongoing political scandal affecting the main parties more than hardline BNP supporters, meant they received a higher proportion of the total. Given that it effectively disenfranchises a great deal of the population, this, along with the Liberal Democrats' low seats-to-votes ratio, is one of the most common arguments for proportional representation. This can be seen in the 2016 Welsh elections where the regional vote, which is based on proportional representation, is how UKIP gained its seven [=AMs=].

Sinn Féin is an abstentionist party, i.e. when its candidates win an election to the House of Commons, they refuse to take their seats as they would have to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown. Sinn Féin also fields candidates across the border in the Republic of Ireland (where they do take their seats, but have historically done far worse; the 2011 elections did see a large improvement, however, and their candidate finished third in the 2011 presidential election, which was a seven-person contest). It is one of two political parties to operate actively in both the UK and Ireland.[[note]]The other being the People Before Profit Alliance, which contests elections in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. Fianna Fáil are registered on both sides of the border but have never fielded candidates in Northern Ireland; meanwhile, the Green Party in Northern Ireland is officially a branch office of the Republic's Green Party, but is autonomous of it.[[/note]]

[[folder: Major defunct parties]]

* The '''Liberal Party''': (1859–1988) Successors to the Whigs, Radicals, and Peelites. One of the two major parties in the 19th and early 20th century (along with the Conservatives). Supported Home Rule for Ireland and the expansion of the electoral franchise. Destroyed by UsefulNotes/TheIrishQuestion, internal fighting, the rise of the Labour Party and the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI First World War]]. Precisely what was ultimately responsible is a subject of historical debate, with one analogy being that of a man being run over by a bus while having a heart attack. The remnants much later merged with the Social Democratic Party to form the modern Liberal Democrats. Of course, this being the UK, [[RebelliousRebel a remnant of the remnant continues to call itself the Liberal Party and claim a continuity with the earlier party]]. Said remnant is only popular in a few small places (read, the councils of Ryedale, Peterborough, and Liverpool, which have five, one, and three Liberal councillors respectively). Famous members included Prime Ministers William Gladstone, UsefulNotes/DavidLloydGeorge and, before he went back to the Tories, Winston Churchill.

* The '''Social Democratic Party''' (the SDP): (1981–1988) A mildly centre-left party formed in the early 1980s by members of the Labour Party who felt that the Labour Party was moving too far left to be electable. They got a few dozen Labour [=MPs=] and one Conservative MP, Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler, to join the party. The SDP almost immediately formed a close electoral alliance with the Liberal Party. For a time, this "SDP/Liberal Alliance" looked like they could win the 1983 election and forever alter the political landscape of Britain (Liberal leader David Steel even said "Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government" at their 1981 conference). But then UsefulNotes/TheFalklandsWar broke out, they came out with only 25 [=MPs=] (despite a vote share the Lib Dems have been unable to match since) and, after limping along a few more years, merged with the Liberal Party to become the Liberal Democrats. Like the Liberals, a remnant exists that claims continuity with the old SDP; it does even worse than the Liberal remnant.

----

[[folder: The House of Lords]]

[[folder: The Privy Council and Cabinet]]

The Privy Council also has a Judicial Committee, consisting of the Justices of the Supreme Court and a few other judges. Its domestic jurisdiction, once wide-ranging, is now limited to a few random tribunals which very few people have heard of or care about (the ecclesiastical courts? the High Court of Chivalry? ''The Disciplinary Committee of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons?''[[note]]This jurisdiction is still alive as of 2014 in [[http://jcpc.uk/decided-cases/docs/JCPC_2013_0030_Judgment.pdf a case]] involving evidential standards for "unfit to practice" hearings![[/note]]); the main exception is that it hears cases on appeal in admiralty -- that is, the law of seagoing vessels -- from certain courts. It may also give "advice" should the Government ask for it.[[note]]The last time this jurisdiction was used was in 2016 in ''[[https://www.jcpc.uk/cases/jcpc-2015-0079.html In the matter of the Baronetcy of Pringle of Stichill]]''; the Government refers to the JCPC a troublesome case on whether DNA evidence can be used to unseat three whole generations of a major Scottish clan, so that it can have a judicial determination.[[/note]] However, it serves as the highest court of appeal for Britain's Crown Dependencies (UsefulNotes/TheChannelIslands and the Isle of Man) and Overseas Territories (numerous, most notably UsefulNotes/{{Gibraltar}} and UsefulNotes/TheFalklandIslands), certain Commonwealth realms, certain Commonwealth republics, and the Sultanate of UsefulNotes/{{Brunei}}. When sitting for this purpose, jurists from the country in question are appointed to the Privy Council to hear the case. This procedure has been abolished in the more developed Commonwealth realms, although it existed more recently than you might think -- Australia abolished it so recently that one of the most famous Judicial Committee decisions, the "''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Tankship_(UK)_Ltd_v_Morts_Dock_and_Engineering_Co_Ltd Wagon Mound]]''" case of 1961, was actually an appeal from the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

By far the most important institution of British government following Parliament itself, and given that holds functions that are usually spread across multiple departments in other countries, it is perhaps one of the most powerful finance ministries in the world; indeed, the prime minister's ''official'' title, which gives them most of their perks, is 'First Lord of the Treasury'. Featuring two Cabinet ministers -- the Chancellor of the Exchequer and their deputy, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (although since the 2015 election the latter has been downgraded to "also attending Cabinet" rather than a full member). The Chancellor is usually either one of the most powerful [=MP=]s after the Prime Minister, and often TheStarscream (e.g. Gordon Brown), or someone supposedly more pliant and easy to control.[[note]]As in the case of Rishi 'Dishy Rishi' Sunak, a handsome, charming, and supposedly easy to manage replacement for the difficult and powerful Sajid Javid, the latter may quickly become the former. Sunak resigned as a result of the Chris Pincher scandal, leading to the Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi taking over. Then, after the Truss interregnum, Sunak became Prime Minister. Some trends are apparently too strong to defy[[/note]] Sets taxation policies.

[[AC:Current Foreign Secretary: [[UsefulNotes/DavidCameron David Cameron, The Lord Cameron]] ]]\\
Formerly the Foreign Office, which people often still call it today, it's run by the Foreign Secretary and its job is rather obvious. The bit about the "Commonwealth" is because Commonwealth countries -- and especially Commonwealth realms, which do, after all, have the same head of state as Britain -- are not technically "foreign"; witness how Britain has an ambassador to the U.S. but a high commissioner to Canada and India. The position of Foreign Secretary is one of the 'four great offices of state', but the department is possibly the most difficult to wrangle, as it's notorious for being the weirdest in the Civil Service. While more conventional these days, ambassadors and high commissioners were routinely (and not entirely inaccurately) accused of GoingNative and were frequently {{Bunny Ears Lawyer}}s. With a default setting of 'pragmatic', it routinely ignores the Foreign Secretary whenever it feels it can get away with it-- even in 2021, EU leaders in particular note the difference between the cosmopolitan and professional Foreign Office and the boorish and bullheaded political ideologues. In 2020, it merged with DFID (the Department for International Development)-- a move which is seen as politicising Britain's aid policy.

Before the devolution settlements of the 1990s, these were the people in charge of running the local affairs of the non-English parts of the UK.[[note]]Northern Ireland previously had a devolved government from 1921 to 1972, but this got into [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles some]] [[{{Pun}} trouble]], with the NIO taking control from 1972 to 1998.[[/note]] Many of their powers, particularly those of the Scotland Office, were removed after devolution, and nowadays the departments chiefly act as liaisons and lobbyists between the Westminster government and the devolved government, and have certain reserve powers to intervene if the devolved government falls apart.[[note]]As of yet, these have only been used in Northern Ireland-- to suspend the Northern Irish Parliament in 1972, suspend the Northern Irish Assembly in 2002, and call a snap election to the Northern Irish Assembly in 2017.[[/note]] Because of this, these offices are seen as less important than they were prior to devolution, and for several years the Scotland secretary would simultaneously run another department as well (Alistair Darling and Douglas Alexander were both simultaneously Secretaries of State for Scotland and Transport, and Des Browne doubled up with Defence).

The department responsible for convincing people that they want to stock British things in their country. Re-formed in 2016 (the department had been divided up since the 1980s) when the need for international trade deals (formerly negotiated by the EU on behalf of Britain) suddenly became a bit... more pressing. Also serves as President of the Board of Trade (a role held by the Business secretary prior to 2016).

For the whole UK -- responsible for human rights, data protection, and the Supreme Court. In England and Wales only, also gets to deal with all the prisons (after the Home Office didn't want to do this any more). The Justice secretary also holds the post of Lord Chancellor.

The ones responsible for benefits, employment, and health and safety. But only in England, Scotland, and Wales -- NI goes its own way on this. Gets a little bit of controversy for accusing everyone of being benefit cheats and for doing things like asking double-amputees to prove they're disabled.

Despite implying seniority over all other members of the Cabinet, both titles are purely honorific and carry no specific power or authority of their own and are often doubled up with another Cabinet-level post (George Osborne was both Chancellor and First Secretary in the second Cameron ministry). The post of deputy prime minister is currently held by Oliver Dowden under Rishi Sunak.

[[folder: Devolution]]

Northern Ireland previously had a devolved parliament with an actual prime minister from 1921 to 1972 (the term "first minister" hadn't been invented yet). Members of the Northern Irish Parliament were also known as [=MPs=] (sometimes abbreviated to "[=MPNI=]" or "[=MP(NI)=]" to avoid confusion), rather than the modern "[=MLA=]". The Northern Irish Parliament wielded a great deal more power than the current NI Assembly (and indeed its modern counterparts in Wales and Scotland) but was suspended in 1972 due to the worsening Troubles, and eventually abolished altogether in 1973, with Westminster ruling the country directly from then on. The current Northern Ireland Assembly was only officially established in 1998.\\

The Scottish Parliament, Welsh Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly, and the London Assembly are elected for fixed terms of four years.[[labelnote:Although...]]For all intents and purposes they are now operating for five years each. After the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition passed the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin fixing the term of the Westminster Parliament to five years]], the date of the following Westminster election (then 2015) coincided with the scheduled year of the next devolved elections. Westminster and devolved elections aren't allowed to happen in the same year, because apparently [[ViewersAreMorons this is confusing for the voters]]. But [[ViewersAreGeniuses referenda are seemingly okay to mix]]. Anyway. The four devolved governments were given a one-time choice of either shortening their term to three years and having elections in 2014, or extending for five years and having the elections in 2016. Doing the first option and taking the one-year cut would have solved the four-year problem until 2030 (assuming no early Westminster elections), but naturally when given the option of having a year more or a year less in power, you know which one a politician is going to choose. As it stands currently, devolved elections will ''always'' coincide with Westminster ones, necessitating extending the devolved government term to five years every time, unless either they decide to take the three-year option (unlikely at best), or Westminster calls an early election (difficult since the FTPA came in, but possible in certain conditions -- no-confidence votes; or temporarily/permanently repealing the Act, but this requires a two-thirds majority, which the current government do not have, and Labour are unlikely to give them). The calling of an early general election in 2017 alongside the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly passing legislation delaying their next elections until 2021 -- and then presumably every four years afterwards -- mitigated this issue somewhat.[[/labelnote]][[labelnote:That said...]]The calling of another early general election in 2019 has muddled the matter again. Wales has also passed legislation to permanently move to a five-year cycle from 2021, whereas the other administrations technically still operate on four-year terms. The Covid-19 pandemic also caused the London Assembly to delay its election until 2021. So the next elections for Scotland, NI, Wales and London are due in 2021. Assuming Westminster continues to operate full five-year terms, the 2029 elections will overlap with those in Scotland, NI and London, but not Wales (which, unless there are any more early general elections, will never overlap with Westminster again).[[/labelnote]]. All devolved legislatures have an element of proportional representation in the electoral process (or in the case of Northern Ireland, are ''entirely'' proportional) to ensure that the eventual composition of the elected assembly more nearly reflects the proportion of votes cast for the various parties; e.g. the Welsh Assembly has 60 members, 40 of whom are elected for geographical constituencies which match the 40 House of Commons seats which Wales has; the other 20 members are elected from regional lists to adjust the overall seat distribution in each region in line with the proportion of votes cast between the parties.\\

The devolution of Scotland has brought something called "the West Lothian question" to greater prominence.[[note]]The term dates from November 1977, when Tam Dalyell, Labour MP then representing the Scottish constituency of West Lothian, lampshaded the matter in a debate about Scottish devolution (which he opposed), and in response Enoch Powell referred to it as "the West Lothian question."[[/note]] This is the rather odd situation in which a Scottish MP can vote on English education policy, but not vice versa (despite Scottish education being devolved and there being no restriction on English [=MPs=] also running as [=MSPs=]): this was exactly how top-up fees got introduced in 2004; Scottish Labour [=MPs=], who wouldn't be affected by their introduction, voted overwhelmingly in favour for them, giving the party their majority (of five!) votes to push the legislation through. The Conservatives want Scottish [=MPs=] to be barred from these sorts of votes, while the SNP argue that that will create two tiers of [=MPs=], and as a UK party, they should vote on UK issues.\\

In most rural parts and some urban areas of England the districts are subdivided into civil parishes which are run by parish councils. Despite their depiction in the {{BritCom}} ''Series/TheVicarOfDibley'', they have nothing to do with the Church of England (which is also divided into parishes which are run by parochial church councils). Sometimes the two councils may have overlapping membership, but they are totally separate entities. Parish councils have little power, normally, but if they cover a small town, the local district or county council may devolve certain matters to them, e.g. public parks. Parish councils that cover towns are called town councils, and those that cover cities are, naturally enough, city councils; such councils are led by a town or city mayor. Some parishes have too small a population to have a council and instead have an annual parish meeting where the whole parish is invited to discuss local matters. Wales has similar bodies called community councils. The equivalent bodies no longer exist in Scotland or Northern Ireland.

A couple of years later, in June 2022, the wheels fell off after a long string of scandals, including the infamous "Partygate" (where raucous parties took place at 10 Downing Street while the rest of the nation, from the Queen downwards, was strictly abiding by Covid restrictions); it became increasingly obvious that Boris would say anything he needed to, no matter how [[BlatantLies obviously untruthful it was]], to get away with whatever he'd done this time, and that he had no loyalty to anyone but himself. Worse, he had become politically toxic, with both former Red Wall seats, taken in 2019, and Blue Wall seats in Tory heartlands that had been in Tory hands for centuries falling in by-elections to Labour and the Liberal Democrats -- and the main reason cited by former Tory voters was usually "Boris". Aside from his hardcore loyalists, most Cabinet ministers finally got sick of both this and being marched out to repeat a party line on the news that would often change halfway through the interview, resulting in their public humiliation. Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned within minutes of each other, with an astonishing domino effect -- over 40 ministers and aides resigned in the space of 24 hours, three Education Ministers resigned in as many days, and the newly minted Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, led a delegation of ministers to Downing Street within a day of taking his position to tell Boris to resign. Finally, Boris gave in and resigned with about as much grace as one could expect (that is, very little, [[NeverMyFault blaming everyone but himself]]), remaining as a caretaker until early September while the Tories began their traditional political knife-fight for the succession, with as many as 11 candidates initially standing. Eventually, Rishi Sunak reached the final round, much as was expected, as did UsefulNotes/LizTruss, which was not. Truss was announced as the winner on 5 September 2022.\\

Years of growing public disaffection with the two main parties, catalysed by the 2014 referendum in which Labour and the Conservatives worked together closely in Better Together (the official campaigning body in favour of a No vote to independence), meant that in the 2015 general election the SNP scored a massive {{landslide|Election}}, winning 56 of the 59 Scottish seats and essentially wiping out Labour's power in Scotland. Given the simultaneous collapse of the Liberal Democrats, they are now the third largest party in the Commons -- a drastic shift in the power balance, and almost unheard of for a party that only contests elections in one part of the UK.[[note]]It was still a less extreme case than what happened in [[UsefulNotes/CanadianPolitics Canada]] after that country's 1993 national election, wherein the Bloc Québécois, which analogously campaigns in favour of independence for that country's Quebec province, became '''Official Opposition'''. Otherwise the last time a similar event happened in the UK was in the 1880s–1910s when the Irish Parliamentary Party (which only fielded candidates in Ireland) was the third largest party in Westminster, with 85 [=MPs=] at its peak.[[/note]]\\

Left-of-centre party agitating for Cornish autonomy, in the style of Celtic region devolution. Nothing more than a handful of members of Cornwall County Council. Regarded by non-Cornish people as not much more than a joke.[[note]]Although Cornwall isn't exactly a political heavyweight, it does have a distinct cultural identity. The Cornish language, which is distantly related to Welsh and Breton, is one of the very few languages to have died out ''and been revived''; at the beginning of the 20th century nobody spoke it at all, but by 2008 there were an estimated 2000 people who speak it fluently. In 2009, UNESCO raised the status of the language from "Extinct" to "Critically endangered."[[/note]]

[[AC:Current Foreign Secretary: David Cameron, The Lord Cameron ]]\\

'''Wales:''' Mark Drakeford (First Minister of Wales and MS, Cardiff West).\\

Press coverage of the Labour Party was rather stacked against them (many UsefulNotes/{{British newspapers}} and their owners having much more incentive to support the Conservatives' right-wing views over Corbyn's radical socialism), often smearing Corbyn personally -- or, since Corbyn was so unbelievably mild-mannered, [[EpicFail trying and failing hilariously]] -- and bringing up the Labour Party's alleged antisemitism.[[note]]It is generally accepted that there was a problem, but that by numbers of people who said or did antisemitic things it was rather less widespread than portrayed. Furthermore, many in the media were very happy to give a pass to people from rival political parties being arguably more antisemitic, including Boris Johnson, who, as noted above, had written a book which engaged in blatant antisemitic stereotyping. Leaked documents have suggested that Corbyn's internal opponents in the Labour Party, who controlled its semiautonomous bureaucracy until at least 2018, may have deliberately failed to deal with antisemitism cases robustly, and Martin Forde's report confirmed that both pro- and anti-Corbyn factions weaponised antisemitism against each other. Which neatly segues into probably his biggest failing and why the general population couldn't see him as any more prime-ministerial than Ed Miliband: an inability to control his own underlings (the very people who are supposed to be on his side) and how badly that would translate to national and international politics, where his previously stated meek demeanour (to the point of coming across as at best easily manipulated) and frequent interviewing gaffes would find little mercy against people who would definitely ''not'' be on his side.[[/note]] Accordingly, many wrote off Labour, predicting a fall even to third-party status in the next election, with a common prediction being that most of their traditional working-class support would migrate to UKIP, leaving Labour to scrap with the Liberal Democrats for the more metropolitan segments of the voting population. Surprisingly, though, they made a net gain of 30 seats in the Commons and broke the Conservative majority in 2017, and the implication that Jeremy Corbyn might ''actually'' be able to win after all, confounded pollsters and more right-wing Labour [=MPs=] alike, further securing his position. However, the knives came out again following dire performances in the 2019 European and general elections.\\

As of February 2023, the Labour Party has been removed from the EHRC's 'special measures' as it has been assessed to be now providing sufficient protection from similar antisemitic bullying going forward. Emboldened by this, the standing down of charismatic SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, and a 20-point poll lead, Starmer stated that Corbyn would definitively not be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in his constituency of Islington North and threw down the gauntlet to his supporters on the Labour Left, especially Momentum. The gist of the message was 'get with the program or leave', intentionally striking a contrast with the Conservatives, who at the time had three former prime ministers on the backbenches[[note]]Boris Johnson would resign from Parliament and force a by-election that summer.[[/note]] (and a fourth, UsefulNotes/JohnMajor, being very active from outside Parliament and often at cross purposes to the leadership). While Corbyn retains a significant chunk of popularity on the Left of the party, that popularity was further dented by one of his erstwhile allies, Diane Abbott, publicly admitting that the key contention between Corbyn and Starmer was the fact that yes, Corbyn really was a Brexit supporter (which was taken as read, but never confirmed) while Starmer was passionately pro-European -- one of the few things he reliably has in common with most of the Labour Left in the twenty-first century. As for the relationship between him and Starmer, the fact that Starmer's wife is Jewish and they keep Jewish festivals probably didn't help either. Even prominent Corbyn allies have quietly said that they'd much rather he didn't challenge as an Independent in Islington North.\\

Created in 2016 from the Department for Energy and Climate Change, and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Responsible for business policy, consumer affairs, competition regulation, research, energy policy, intellectual property ... [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers and outer space]].

'''Northern Ireland leader:''' Michelle O'Neill (MLA, Mid Ulster).[[/labelnote]]\\

'''Northern Ireland Assembly leader:''' Paul Givan (MLA, Lagan Valley).[[/labelnote]]\\

* The '''Northern Ireland Assembly''' and Executive are run by a coalition government of five parties -- the DUP, Sinn Féin, the SDLP, UUP, and Alliance Party. The NI Assembly is designed to be run by a mandatory coalition of at least two parties (one nationalist, one unionist), to prevent either the unionist or nationalist 'sides' from excluding the other. Smaller parties (of sufficient size and representation) may also join the Executive if they wish. The DUP supplanted the UUP as the largest unionist party, and Sinn Féin supplanted the SDLP as the largest nationalist party, in the mid-2000s. This situation has remained unchanged since.

By far the most important institution of British government following Parliament itself; indeed, the prime minister's ''official'' title, which gives them most of their perks, is 'First Lord of the Treasury'. Featuring two Cabinet ministers -- the Chancellor of the Exchequer and their deputy, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (although since the 2015 election the latter has been downgraded to "also attending Cabinet" rather than a full member). The Chancellor is usually either one of the most powerful [=MP=]s after the Prime Minister, and often TheStarscream (e.g. Gordon Brown), or someone supposedly more pliant and easy to control.[[note]]As in the case of Rishi 'Dishy Rishi' Sunak, a handsome, charming, and supposedly easy to manage replacement for the difficult and powerful Sajid Javid, the latter may quickly become the former. Sunak resigned as a result of the Chris Pincher scandal, leading to the Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi taking over.[[/note]] Sets taxation policies.

[[AC:Current Cabinet Office Minister: Jeremy Quin (MP, Horsham)]]\\

Current Chief Secretary to the Treasury: John Glen (MP, Salisbury)]]\\

[[AC: Current Home Secretary: Suella Braverman (MP, Fareham)]]\\

[[AC:Current Foreign Secretary: James Cleverley (MP, Braintree)]]\\

[[AC:Current Defence Secretary: Ben Wallace (MP, Wyre and Preston North)]]\\

[[AC:Current Business Secretary: Grant Shapps (MP, Welwyn Hatfield)]]\\

[[AC:Current Culture Secretary: Michelle Donelan (MP, Chippenham)]]\\

[[AC:Current Environment Secretary: Therese Coffey (MP, Suffolk Coastal)]]\\

[[AC:Current Health Secretary: Steve Barclay (MP, North East Cambridgeshire)]]\\

[[AC:Current Justice Secretary: Dominic Raab (MP, Esher and Walton)]]\\

Despite implying seniority over all other members of the Cabinet, both titles are purely honorific and carry no specific power or authority of their own and are often doubled up with another Cabinet-level post (George Osborne was both Chancellor and First Secretary in the second Cameron ministry). The post of deputy prime minister is currently held by Justice Secretary Dominic Raab under Rishi Sunak.

Parliamentary debates and question times are far more rowdy than the (modern) United States Congress, with creative insults and heckling being the order of the day -- the late Creator/RobinWilliams once memorably described it as "Congress with a two drink minimum". However, it's pretty much all verbal, and {{Floor Fight}}s are very rare. The chamber is presided over by the Speaker or one of his/her deputies. The Speaker is a [[LawfulNeutral non-partisan figure]] -- once elected speaker, they renounce their party affiliation, and at a general election they will stand as "The Speaker seeking re-election". It is convention that the major parties do not contest the Speaker's constituency, so it is highly unlikely that they will ''not'' be re-elected.[[note]]In the 2001 and 2005 elections, when Speaker Michael Martin (previously Labour) sought re-election in his constituency in Glasgow, Scotland, the Scottish National Party, whose constitution compels it to field candidates in every Scottish constituency, challenged him (though they weren't a major party at the time).[[/note]] The Deputy Speakers do not have to leave their party, but still they must remain impartial and do not take part in partisan politics -- although they may take part in politics relating to their constituency. The Speaker can be a very powerful figure, especially in cases when the government has a thin majority, as was demonstrated by former Speaker Sir John Bercow (much to the irritation of the governing Conservative Party which, ironically, he had been a member of).\\

During debates in the Commons, all remarks are addressed to the Speaker; speaking directly to your opposite number and using words like "you" gets you a slapped wrist. Particularly controversial media issues may be raised in Parliament, including [[http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/vo050117/debtext/50117-03.htm#50117-03_spnew10 this gem]] [[Series/BrassEye from a Conservative MP]]. The current Speaker (as of 2019) is Sir Lindsay Hoyle, MP for Chorley, who before represented that constituency on behalf of the Labour Party from 1997. The Speaker, in the event of a tie, will nearly always vote to keep debate open and will almost never vote for a bill, as doing so would create a majority where one did not exist; the main exception is if the bill is a confidence or supply measure -- i.e., if the bill fails, the government collapses and either a new PM and new government must be chosen or new elections must be held -- in which case the Speaker will generally vote in favour.

The first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system slightly favours the two main parties and heavily disadvantages the Liberal Democrats (and small parties in general), reflecting the two main parties' concentrations of support in certain areas (urban and working-class areas for Labour, affluent and rural areas for the Conservatives), and the Lib Dems having a fairly even support spread nationwide. In theory, the Lib Dems could even beat the Conservatives into second and Labour could remain the ''largest'' party with ''twice'' as many seats as the Lib Dems. The voting system can cause political parties to ''lose'' seats even though their popular vote increases (or, more rarely, vice versa), and indeed has sometimes. This happens to the minor parties more than Labour and the Conservatives, although Labour actually managed to lose an election that way: in 1951, candidates from UsefulNotes/ClementAttlee's Labour beat UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill's Conservatives by almost a quarter-million votes collectively, but ended up with ''twenty-six fewer'' seats. The same happened to the Conservatives in the June 2017 election: despite their popular vote share increasing by several percentage points to levels unseen since the 1980s, they managed to lose their overall majority because Labour experienced a larger skyrocket in vote share.\\

Proposals have been made to switch to a more proportional system, with ultimately little success -- the main argument against the change was that it would almost always ensure weak, minority governments or coalitions. Due to the Liberal Democrats (in favour of electoral reform) forming a coalition government with the Conservatives after the 2010 election, a referendum was promised on the voting system as part of the coalition agreement. On 5 May 2011, coinciding with local elections, the nationwide referendum was held on whether to switch from the existing first-past-the-post system to alternative vote (AV), which if passed was expected to represent smaller parties like the Lib Dems and the Greens more fairly. There were vocal campaigns both for and against the switch to AV. Due partly to a legendarily terrible "Yes"-side campaign that will be autopsied for years to come, it was defeated resoundingly, leading to the coalition becoming a lot more adversarial ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06terMUGHo0 summary, in musical form]]). Given the levels of support that parties such as the Liberal Democrats, Green Party and UKIP tend to receive nationwide result in disproportionately few (if any) seat returns, and the obvious disgruntlement it causes them, it is unlikely this issue has gone away just yet.\\

It is worth noting that because a general election is fought over 650 small constituencies, which change little (if at all) between elections, small political parties can gain ground by concentrating all their efforts on one constituency. This is how the Green Party won their only seat in Brighton Pavilion in 2010 (the first FPTP election a party called Green won ''in the world''), and why UKIP didn't win any despite having more support nationwide. Any parliamentary constituency can tend to become a two-horse race with a bunch of also-rans, but exactly which of the parties are the two frontrunners depends on the constituency. Scottish seats tend to be SNP–Labour (in urban areas) or SNP–Lib Dem (in rural and island areas), with some Tory–SNP constituencies now appearing following backlash from independence uncertainty. Southern England tends to be a field of Lib Dem–Tory battlegrounds outside of urban Labour areas, and some of the deepest rural areas were shaping up as UKIP–Tory battlegrounds prior to UKIP's vote collapse in 2017.

Formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, indicating their position on UsefulNotes/TheIrishQuestion (and now the 'Scottish Question'), although this isn't always emphasised -- especially given that 2019 polling indicates that most of their voters would be happy to give up Northern Ireland (and possibly Scotland) to "get Brexit done." The party which currently has the PM and the Cabinet (executive branch). The traditional party for rural voters, suburban voters, the aspirational working class/NouveauRiche types, and the wealthy. They have tended to take a more populist approach to politics in recent years, especially during the periods of leadership of UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher and UsefulNotes/DavidCameron, and until the 2016 referendum, were usually perceived as a centre-right party with a middle-class focus and classical liberal economic tendencies.[[note]]Especially under Thatcher and Cameron, the Tories have enacted wide-ranging cuts to attempt to close the deficit.[[/note]] Having moved towards the middle for about ten years in the 21st century (though with some right-wing traditionalist opinions such as on fox-hunting and benefits), following the 2016 EU referendum, they've moved sharply back to the right under UsefulNotes/TheresaMay and UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson (forced on May by the powerful pro-Brexit 'Economic Research Group' of backbenchers, and embraced by Johnson), courting former Labour working-class voters. The popular opinion between 1997 and 2015 was that they and Labour had almost converged. With the Brexit referendum and the ascension of Jeremy Corbyn, emblem of the Labour Party's left wing, that has since changed, even with the rise of Corbyn's more centrist successor, Sir Keir Starmer.\\

While Cameron tried, and largely succeeded, in detoxifying the party's reputation, a faint but nasty smell of Islamophobia and general racism remained and post-2016, has been driven into overdrive, particularly after 21 members of the party's moderate wing walked out of the party in protest in 2019 at UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson's policies. Since Johnson's former newspaper columns include references to African citizens of Commonwealth states as "picaninnies with watermelon smiles" and to Muslim women wearing burqas as resembling "letterboxes", you can see why. It was also noted how hypocritical it was that Labour was accused of antisemitism when comparably serious instances of bigotry in the Conservatives were barely brought up in the media. Boris Johnson had even written a book, ''Seventy-Two Virgins'', which flat-out engaged in antisemitic stereotyping, referring to people of Jewish descent fiddling election results, despite which [[{{Hypocrite}} Chief Rabbi Mirvis]] [[SelectiveObliviousness praised him as a long-standing friend of the Jewish community!]] This disdain was traditionally held by northerners and the working class, but after the EU referendum of 2016, increasingly younger and urban voters as well. By contrast, in the 2019 election, many of said working-class and/or northern voters opted to vote Conservative (though this was also helped by Farage's Brexit Party, possibly on Trump's orders assisting them, see below), flipping constituencies that had been Labour strongholds since before UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.\\

A couple of years later, in June 2022, the wheels fell off after a long string of scandals, including the infamous "Partygate" (where raucous parties took place at 10 Downing Street while the rest of the nation, from the Queen downwards, was strictly abiding by Covid restrictions); it became increasingly obvious that Boris would say anything he needed to, no matter how [[BlatantLies obviously untruthful it was]], in order to get away with whatever he'd done this time, and that he had no loyalty to anyone but himself. Worse, he had become politically toxic, with both former Red Wall seats, taken in 2019, and Blue Wall seats in Tory heartlands that had been in Tory hands for centuries falling in by-elections to Labour and the Liberal Democrats -- and the main reason cited by former Tory voters was usually "Boris". Aside from his hardcore loyalists, most Cabinet ministers finally got sick of both this and being marched out to repeat a party line on the news that would often change halfway through the interview, resulting in their public humiliation. Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned within minutes of each other, with an astonishing domino effect -- over 40 ministers and aides resigned in the space of 24 hours, three Education Ministers resigned in as many days, and the newly minted Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, led a delegation of ministers to Downing Street within a day of taking his position to tell Boris to resign. Finally, Boris gave in and resigned with about as much grace as one could expect (that is to say, very little, [[NeverMyFault blaming everyone but himself]]), remaining as a caretaker until early September while the Tories began their traditional political knife-fight for the succession, with as many as 11 candidates initially standing. Eventually, Rishi Sunak reached the final round, much as was expected, as did UsefulNotes/LizTruss, which was not. Truss was announced as the winner on 5 September 2022.\\

Labour lost its majority in the general election of 6 May 2010, and Brown was already planning to resign when the Liberal Democrats began flirting with forming a coalition with both Labour and the Conservatives. Although they made it clear they would only consider a coalition with Labour if Brown resigned, upon learning Brown was already going to resign, they formed a coalition with the Conservatives, citing the pragmatism of greater numbers for passing policy.[[note]]Any Labour–Lib Dem deal in 2010 would still have been short of a majority by 11 seats, and therefore would have required support from the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens and parties from Northern Ireland.[[/note]] Brown's successor was Ed Miliband, who bested [[SiblingRivalry his brother David]] (and three other candidates who had little to no chance of victory) in a tight leadership election. [[Series/DeadRingers Jon Culshaw]] was reportedly happy, as [[FanNickname Mili-E]] sounds exactly like Culshaw's impression of UsefulNotes/TonyBlair. However, he too suffered a crushing defeat in the 2015 election. At the time this was reported to be from a combination of Labour's lack of a believable alternative to the Conservatives' economic policies and the public's apparent inability to see Miliband personally as prime minister.\\

Press coverage of the Labour Party was rather stacked against them (many UsefulNotes/{{British newspapers}} and their owners having much more incentive to support the Conservatives' right-wing views over Corbyn's radical socialism), often smearing Corbyn personally -- or, since Corbyn was so unbelievably mild-mannered, [[EpicFail trying and failing hilariously]] -- and bringing up the Labour Party's alleged antisemitism.[[note]]It is generally accepted that there was a problem, but that it was nowhere near as widespread as portrayed, along with the fact the media was very happy to give a pass to people from rival political parties being arguably more antisemitic, including Boris Johnson, who, as noted above, had written a novel which engaged in blatant antisemitic stereotyping. Leaked documents have suggested that Corbyn's internal opponents in the Labour Party may have deliberately failed to deal with antisemitism cases robustly, and the Forde Report confirmed that both pro- and anti-Corbyn factions weaponised antisemitism against each other. Which neatly segues into probably his biggest failing and why the general population didn't see him as PM material like Ed Miliband before him: an inability to control his own underlings (the very people who are supposed to be on his side) and how badly that would translate to national and international politics, where his previously stated meek demeanour (to the point of coming across as at best easily manipulated) and frequent interviewing gaffes would find little mercy against people who would definitely ''not'' be on his side.[[/note]] Accordingly, many wrote off Labour, predicting a fall even to third-party status in the next election, with a common prediction being that most of their traditional working-class support would migrate to UKIP, leaving Labour to scrap with the Liberal Democrats for the more metropolitan segments of the voting population. Surprisingly, though, they made a net gain of 30 seats in the Commons and broke the Conservative majority in 2017, and the implication that Jeremy Corbyn might ''actually'' be able to win after all, confounded pollsters and more right-wing Labour [=MPs=] alike, further securing his position. However, the knives came out again following dire performances in the 2019 European and general elections.\\

The former was because of Corbyn's ambiguity over Brexit. He was in favour of a "jobs-first Brexit", whatever that meant, and only committed to a second referendum as a last resort -- and that under duress. This was on the rather thin grounds that he wanted to unite the country again after years of polarisation over Europe (translation: he didn't want to lose Labour seats in pro-Leave or pro-Remain areas). This left pro-Leave voters unimpressed, and infuriated the parliamentary party, the membership, and younger/more liberal voters, all of whom were ''very'' pro-Remain. Labour promptly got hammered by the resurgent Lib Dems, even losing Islington, ''home of Corbyn's own constituency''. While Corbyn kept his seat in the following general election, many others didn't in a brutal election defeat that left Labour with barely 200 seats (their fewest since 1935) and the Conservatives with their largest majority since 1987. Even worse, the Conservatives smashed the traditional "Red Wall" of Labour seats, (North Wales, northern England and the Midlands), some of which had consistently voted Labour for over a century, by appealing to working-class Leave voters and with help from the Brexit Party acting on the orders of Donald Trump. Corbyn promised to step down, but delayed to try and give himself time to smooth the path for a like-minded successor (the idea being that the problem was not the message, but the messenger -- who himself had been unfairly smeared).\\

The resultant post-mortem and political knife-fight was brief, but brutal, with former Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer winning the 2020 leadership election on the first ballot and gaining control of the NEC. Starmer is a contrast to Corbyn: a relative newcomer, having been only elected as an MP in 2015, his background was as a QC (a very senior defence lawyer) specialising in Human Rights. However, he had a previous association with government as Director for Public Prosecutions (national-level equivalent of a District Attorney, and most senior lawyer in the government after the Attorney General and Solicitor General). Starmer's nearly two-to-one victory over Rebecca Long-Bailey, who was long considered to be Corbyn's heir apparent, has been interpreted as a mandate for a shift back to the political centre -- a number of Corbyn's more popular policies and some of his more moderate allies were retained, but the rest were politely but firmly removed, with Starmer's allies taking control of the NEC and the position of General Secretary, while Long-Bailey was ejected from the Shadow Cabinet after an antisemitism related screw-up on Twitter and (perhaps more importantly) refusing to take the offered opportunity to apologise, delete the Tweet, and keep her job.[[note]]The gist is that she enthusiastically retweeted an interview with long-term Labour supporter [[{{Series/Silk}} Maxine Peake]], who perpetuated a perceived antisemitic conspiracy theory: essentially, that when US police departments trained with the Israeli Defence Forces (which is true) they were taught the specific chokehold with which Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd (which is not, and Peake later apologised and recanted). When Starmer told her to delete the tweet, she instead edited it to say that she didn't agree with everything in the interview, then refused again to take it down. He then fired her.[[/note]] Members on the Labour Left claim that Starmer was just waiting for an excuse to fire her and that it was a tempest in a teacup. Almost everyone else agreed that it was relatively minor, but pointed out that Starmer had reputedly been very happy with Long-Bailey's work, and had accordingly offered her an out. Once she refused that, Labour's still lingering whiff of antisemitism (particularly around the Corbynite left) meant that she'd made herself a serious political liability.\\

As of February 2023, the Labour Party has been removed from the EHRC's 'special measures' as it has been assessed to be now providing sufficient protection from similar antisemitic bullying going forward. Emboldened by this, the standing down of charismatic SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, and a 20-point poll lead, Starmer stated that Corbyn would definitively not be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in his constituency of Islington North and threw down the gauntlet to his supporters on the Labour Left, especially Momentum. The gist of the message was 'get with the program or leave', intentionally striking a contrast with the Conservatives, who have three former prime ministers on the backbenches (and a fourth, UsefulNotes/JohnMajor, being very active from outside Parliament and often at cross purposes to the leadership). While Corbyn retains a significant chunk of popularity on the Left of the party, that popularity was further dented by one of his erstwhile allies, Diane Abbott, publicly admitting that the key contention between Corbyn and Starmer was the fact that yes, Corbyn really was a Brexit supporter (which was taken as read, but never confirmed) while Starmer was passionately pro-European -- one of the few things he reliably has in common with most of the Labour Left in the twenty-first century. As for the relationship between him and Starmer, the fact that Starmer's wife is Jewish and they keep Jewish festivals probably didn't help either. Even prominent Corbyn allies have been quietly saying that they'd much rather he didn't challenge as an Independent in Islington North.\\

[[AC:Current Leader of the House of Commons: Penny Mordunt (MP, Portsmouth North)\\

If a party can command a majority, it is often considered the ruling party. Their elected leader, chosen by the party through varying methods,[[note]]Labour and the Lib Dems by the single transferable vote, the Tories by run-off voting.[[/note]] then chooses a cabinet of which they serve as ''primus inter pares'' (first among equals). These men and women are responsible for various departments of government; there are currently 27 cabinet members (including the Prime Minister) who between them hold 42 positions -- during the Labour governments of Blair and Brown, Harriet Harman acquired the nickname "Three Hats Harman" for having three separate posts. They're often referred to as "The X Secretary", but their actual title is "The Secretary of State for X." Cabinet membership is not subject to parliamentary approval and may not even be along party lines (although, these days, it nearly always is), so it chops and changes frequently, with much attendant press speculation.\\

The appellation "far-right", by the way, applies strictly to their social, foreign, and law and order policies; their economic policy is somewhat standard and, as long as you're white, you'd probably get the same financial assistance from the state as you would under Labour. One of the only political parties to be banned from most university campuses, due to their policies. They are almost universally hated and are considered AcceptableTargets, as demonstrated when their leader Nick Griffin went on ''Question Time''. For everyone except him, {{Hilarity Ensue|s}}d.