Cultura e civilizzazione Inglese

Features of the British System of Government

There are features of the British system of government which make it different from other countries and which are not 'modern' at all; Britain is almost alone among modern states in that it does not have 'a constitution' — there are rules, regulations, principles and procedures for the running of the country but there is no single written document which can be appealed to as the highest law.

The principles and procedures by which the country is governed and from which people's rights are derived come from a number of different sources; some of them are written down in laws agreed by Parliament, some have been spoken and then written down and some have never been written down at all.

Moreover, there is no single written document which asserts people's rights — some rights which are commonly accepted in modern democracies have been formally agreed by Parliament in certain laws.

The style of politics

Despite modern innovations such as the

Televising of Parliament, political life in Britain is still influenced by the traditional respect for privacy and love of secrecy.

In both Parliament and government, there is a tendency for important decisions to be taken at lunch, or over drinks, or in chance encounters in the corridors of power. These features, together with long years of political stability, have led to a habit of genuine cooperation among politicians of different parties — both normally see the practical advantage of cooperation; a very notable example is the system of 'pairing' of MPs.

The party system

Britain is normally described as having a 'two-party system' because members of just two parties occupy more than 85% of all of the seats in the House of Commons and one of them, by itself, controls the government. One reason for the existence of this situation is the electoral system and the origin of British political parties — were first formed inside Parliament.

and only later extended to the public. Although they differed broadly in their general outlooks, the two parties did not exist to promote single, coherent political philosophies; the main reason for their existence was to gain power by forming an effective coalition of groups and opinions.

British political parties:

• Conservative Party: developed from the group of MPs known as the Tories in the early nineteenth century and still often known informally by that name. Right of centre, it stands for hierarchical authority and minimal government interference in the economy. It likes to reduce income tax and gives high priority to national defence and internal law and order. In government until 1997, it pursued aggressive reform of education, welfare, housing, and many public services designed to increase consumer choice and/or to introduce "market economics" into their operation. This party is referred to the richer sections of society, plus a large minority of the working classes.
• Labour Party:

formed at the beginning of the twentieth century from an alliance of tradeunionists and intellectuals —> left of centre: stands for equality, for the weaker people in society and more government involvement in the economy, more concerned to provide full social services than to keep income tax low + emphasis on community ethics and equality of opportunity rather than equal distribution of wealth, it has also loosened ties to trade unions. This party is referred to working class, plus a small middle-class intelligentsia.

liberal democratic party = formed in the late 1980s from a union of the Liberals and the Social Democrats —> centre or slightly left of centre: in favour of greater unification with the EU, more emphasis on the environment than other parties, believes in giving greater powers to local government and reform of the electoral system. This party is referred to all classes, but more from middle class.

It is very difficult for smaller parties to challenge the

dominance of the bigger ones. The fact that the party system originated inside Parliament has other consequences; parties do not extend into every area of public life in the country and another consequence is that it is usually a party's MPs who have most control over party policy —> this means that their members who are not MPs can have an effect on policy in a number of ways: first they elect the party leader, second they can make their views known at the annual party conference and third, the local party has the power to decide who is going to be the party's candidate for MP in its area at the next election —> these powers are limited by one important consideration, the appearance of unity.

Party conferences are always televised so they tend to be showcases whose main purpose is not genuine debate but to boost the spirits of party members and show the public a dynamic, unified party.

The modern situation

The traditional confidence in the British political system has weakened.

After all, the general direction of public policy has been the same since 1979, suggesting stability and a high level of public confidence. Two developments may help to explain it:

• The first concerns the perceived style of politics - in recent years it is their public relations advisers, whose job is to make them look good in the media, who have become their closest advisers ('spin doctor' has entered the British vocabulary).
• The second concerns the style of democracy as a constitutional significance like free speech or the law of the ID card.

In modern Britain, it is not only the authorities with which the principle of free speech can sometimes conflict. It can also conflict with the values of a certain section of society.

As long as everybody in a country shares the same attitudes about what is most important in political life and about people's rights and obligations, there is no real need to worry about inconsistencies or.

THE MONARCHY

The appearance

The position of the monarch in Britain illustrates the contradictory nature of the constitution; the Queen has almost absolute power, and it all seems very undemocratic.

In Britain there is no legal concept of 'the people' at all.

As far as the law is concerned, she can choose anybody she likes to run the government for her and the same people to fill some hundred or so other ministerial positions and if she gets fed up with her ministers, she can just dismiss them —> they are all 'servants of the

Crown. She also has great power over Parliament, it is she who summons a parliament, and she who dissolves it; nothing that Parliament has decided can become a law until she has given it the royal assent —> it is the Queen who embodies the law in the courts.

In Britain, it is 'the Crown’ a reference to the legal authority of the monarch.

The reality

In practice, the reality is very different = the Queen cannot just choose anyone to be Prime Minister; she has to choose someone who will command majority support in the House of Commons —> this is because the law says that 'her’ government can only collect taxes with the agreement of the Commons.

In practice, the person she chooses is the leader of the strongest party in the Commons. Similarly, it is the Prime Minister who decides who the other government ministers are going to be.

The Prime Minister will talk about ‘requesting’ a dissolution of Parliament when he or she wants to hold an election.

The glamorous lives of 'the royals' provide a source of entertainment. The future of the monarchy

The British monarchy as an institution has not been a burning issue in British politics for several hundred years. There is almost no public debate about the existence of the monarchy itself. Very few people in Britain would use 'monarchist' or 'republican/anti-monarchist' as a defining feature of their political beliefs; there is, however, much debate about what kind of monarchy Britain should have —> various marital problems in the Queen family lowered the prestige of royalty in many people's eyes.

The one aspect of the monarchy about which most people feel consistently negative is how much it costs; people continue to believe that the royal family gets too much money. Nevertheless, the monarchy remains broadly popular.

THE GOVERNMENT

When we talk about government we refer to all the politicians who run government departments or have

other special responsibilities, such as managing the activities of Parliament —> there are about a hundred members, with various ranks each with their own titles and called “ministers”. The other meaning of the term ‘the government’ is referred only to the most powerful of these politicians, namely, the Prime Minister and the other members of the cabinet —> there are about twenty people in the cabinet, most of them are the heads of the government departments. Partly as a result of the electoral system Britain has ‘single-party government’ = all members of the government belong to the same political party. Coalition government is traditionally regarded as a bad idea, the habit of single-party government has helped to establish the tradition known as collective responsibility = every member of the government shares in responsibility for every policy of the government, even if he or she did not take any part in making it. By convention, no

A member of the government can criticize the government.