The United Kingdom: institutions, politics, economy and society

The United Kingdom is the country that examiners expect you to know best, and the one about which candidates write the most clichés. It is neither a sleepy monarchy nor a country that ``left Europe'' in 2016 and stopped there. It is a parliamentary democracy without a written constitution, a union of four nations with very different politics, an economy that combines one of the world's great financial centres with deep regional inequality, and a society that has been reshaped by immigration and is still arguing about class.

This chapter gives you the facts and the vocabulary you need to use the UK in an essay or a summary: how power works, what happened in the general election of July 2024 and since, what Brexit has and has not changed, and the main economic and social debates. Every figure is given with its source and its year, because a figure without a date is worthless in an essay.

11.1 A constitution without a single document

The UK has no codified constitution. Its constitution is made of statutes (the Bill of Rights of 1689, the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, the Human Rights Act 1998, the devolution Acts of 1998), of court decisions, and of conventions: rules that nobody can enforce in court but that everybody follows. That the monarch gives Royal Assent to every bill passed by Parliament, or that the Prime Minister sits in the House of Commons, are conventions.

The Crown

King Charles III became King on the death of Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022 (royal.uk). The monarch is head of state of the UK and of several other Commonwealth realms, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. His powers are almost entirely exercised on the advice of ministers: he appoints as Prime Minister the person who can command the confidence of the House of Commons, opens Parliament with the King's Speech, which is written by the government, and gives Royal Assent to bills. The last refusal of Royal Assent dates back to 1708.

Parliament

Parliament has two chambers. The House of Commons has 650 Members of Parliament (MPs), each elected in a single-member constituency under the first-past-the-post system: the candidate with the most votes wins, even without a majority. The House of Lords is unelected; most of its members are life peers appointed for their career or on the nomination of party leaders. Since the Parliament Acts, the Lords can only delay most bills, not block them: the Commons has the last word.

Government

The Prime Minister is not elected as such. The party that wins a majority of seats in the Commons forms the government, and its leader becomes Prime Minister. If the party changes its leader between two elections, the country changes its Prime Minister without a general election. This happened in 2016, 2019, twice in 2022, and again in July 2026 (see section 2). The Prime Minister chooses the Cabinet, the senior ministers who are collectively responsible for government policy: they must defend it in public or resign.

Courts

Since 2009, the highest court has been the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which replaced the judicial committee of the House of Lords. In 2019 it ruled that Boris Johnson's prorogation (suspension) of Parliament was unlawful: a striking example of judges policing the limits of executive power without any written constitution.

11.2 Parties and elections: from the 2024 landslide to a fragmented map

For most of the twentieth century, British politics was a contest between two parties, Conservative and Labour. First-past-the-post rewards large parties whose voters are spread efficiently, and punishes small parties whose voters are scattered. The general election of 4 July 2024 showed both sides of that rule more clearly than any election before it.