Political system
Great Britain is a parliamentary monarchy. There are two chapters. One is the Queen, and the other is Parliament. Almost all power in the country belongs to the Parliament, as the Queen is only a formal ruler. In other words, Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state, but Parliament has Supreme power. The official residence of the Queen is Buckingham Palace in London. Although she has other residences in Britain. The Queen also has several Ministers who are responsible for her Royal acts. An interesting fact is that in the UK there is no written Constitution, and there is only a set of laws created by Parliament.
The post of Minister is currently held by the honourable Theresa may, who leads the government with the support of the Cabinet and Ministers. The Cabinet consists of high-ranking members of the government and every week they meet to consider the most important problems in the country, as well as some international Affairs. There are over a hundred Ministers, all of whom are elected from 2 houses - the house of Commons and the House of Lords. The most important and powerful Is the house of Commons, which consists of 650 members of Parliament. The Main functions of the house of Commons are legislation and government cases. The house of lords consists of approximately 1,200 peers. The head of the House of lords is the Lord Chancellor. This Chamber has no real power, but has the function of being an Advisory Board, the Interesting thing about The house of lords is that this chamber is hereditary.
The party which wins the most seats in the General Election forms the government in Britain. The leader of the winning party becomes Prime Minister. As leaders of their political parties and leaders of the country, Prime Ministers are powerful because they have the majority support in Parliament and they can choose their own ministers and government. The PM, chooses a committee of ministers called the Cabinet. This is made up of a selection ol senior MPs from the House of Commons and some members of the House of Lords. Each member of the Cabinet is a minister responsible for a government department: for example, the Secretary of State for Education and Science is responsible for all the schools, universities and teachers in Britain. The Cabinet of ministers runs the country. The Cabinet meets at the Prime minister's house — 10 Downing Street. The cabinet works as a team and all ministers must accept the decisions of the «group». The team of ministers must always agree in public because they are collectively responsible for the decisions they make. If a minister cannot agree with all the others, he usually resigns from the cabinet. Cabinet meetings are held in private and the details must remain secret for at least 30 years. Margaret Thatcher tried to change this style of the Cabinet and was forced to resign when the other ministers could not agree with her. Cabinet ministers cannot, however, do as they please! They are responsible to Parliament and must answer questions from backbenchers from the House of Commons. Even the Prime Minister must answer questions every Tuesday and Thursday in the Commons — this is called Prime minister's Question Time. Everyone wants to know what has been decided behind the closed doors of the Cabinet Room.
In fact, any law must go through several stages in which The house of Commons and the House of Lords work together. Finally, the law will be adopted by the Parliament. Under the current British Constitution, Executive power is in the hands of the Royal family, but this power is conditional and is exercised only with the assistance of the Prime Minister. The monarch may also be assisted by the Cabinet as a member of the privy Council. In addition, they also exercise power directly as heads of government departments.
There are also several important political parties in Britain, such as the Conservative party, the labour party, the Liberal party, the Social democratic party and others. Each political party has its own leader who takes part in the elections. The winner becomes a member of Parliament. The party, which has the majority of seats in Parliament usually forms the Government, with the Prime Minister at the head. The Prime Minister's first duty is to assemble the Cabinet.