United Kingdom uk or U. K

The Palace of Westminster, seat of both houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom



Organisational chart of the UK political system

The UK has a parliamentary government based on the Westminster system that has been emulated around the world: a legacy of the British Empire. The parliament of the United Kingdom meets in the Palace of Westminster and has two houses: an elected House of Commons and an appointed House of Lords. All bills passed are given Royal Assent before becoming law.

The position of prime minister,^{[note 14]} the UK's head of government,^[190]belongs to the person most likely to command the confidence of the House of Commons; this individual is typically the leader of the political party or coalition of parties that holds the largest number of seats in that chamber. The prime minister chooses a cabinet and its members are formally appointed by the monarch to form Her Majesty's Government. By convention, the monarch respects the prime minister's decisions of government.^[191]

The cabinet is traditionally drawn from members of the prime minister's party or coalition and mostly from the House of Commons but always from both legislative houses, the cabinet being responsible to both. Executive power is exercised by the prime minister and cabinet, all of whom are sworn into the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, and become Ministers of the Crown. The current Prime Minister isBoris Johnson, who has been in office since 24 July 2019. Johnson is also the leader of the Conservative Party. For elections to the House of Commons, the UK is divided into 650 constituencies,^[192] each electing a single member of parliament (MP) by simple plurality. General elections are called by the monarch when the prime minister so advises. Prior to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 required that a new election must be called no later than five years after the previous general election.^[193]

The Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats (formerly as the Liberal Party) have, in modern times, been considered the UK's three major political parties,^[194] representing the British traditions of conservatism, socialism andliberalism, respectively, though^[195] the Scottish National Party has been the third-largest party by number of seats won, ahead of the Liberal Democrats, in all three elections that have taken place since the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Most of the remaining seats were won by parties that contest elections only in one part of the UK: Plaid Cymru(Wales only); and the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin (Northern Ireland only^{[note 15]}). In accordance with party policy, no elected Sinn Féin members of parliament have ever attended the House of Commons to speak on behalf of their constituents because of the requirement to take an oath of allegiance to the monarch.