In the U.K., parliamentary
elections should be held at every
five years. It is practically the prerogative
of the
Prime Minister to call an election within this period. The British parliamentary constituencies are called
single member seats in which the
plurality of the votes is needed for someone to get elected into
parliament. The various Parliaments in the U.K. have nicknames: thus, the one in London is called
Westminster and the one in Northern Ireland
Stormont. The members of the cabinet are appointed by
the monarch upon the advice of the
Prime Minister.
The major work in the Houses of Parliament is done by the Commons. Here, the day usually starts with the
question time when the MPs have an opportunity to inquire about diverse issues. The British Constitution is
flexible, which means that it is relatively easy to modify it. British political life has been dominated by a two-party system since the beginnings. Originally, it was the
Tories and the Whigs; then with the decline of the latter, the
Conservative Party emerged as one of the two major political forces in the second half of the 19th century. At the very end of the 19th century, the Independent
Labour Party was born and it became soon one of the major political parties besides the
Conservative Party in the 20th century. Among the greatest Prime Ministers, Winston
Churchill and Margaret
Thatcher came from the
Conservative Party, while Tony
Blair from the
Labour Party. The current PM is Gordon
Brown.