A few questions regarding your government . . .

Posted by: Justin on 04 April 2005

As I understand it (having just read a brief summary) the "United Kingdom" consists of three full countries and a bit of a fourth, England, Wales, Scotland and part of Ireland. Great Britain consists of a subset of the United Kingdom, and includes Wales, Scotland and England. Is that right?

Leaving aside the bit of Ireland (if possible), what sort of a compact holds these three countries together into Great Britain and/or the United Kingdom. Does a seperate document control the union (is that "Union") of Great Britain and the union of the United Kingdom? Is it some form of a Constitution, a treaty, etc?

Does the House of Commons control the goings-on of Wales? of Scotland? How does that work? Do the Welch elect members to the House of Commons? Do the Scottish? And if not (one of the other), do they pay taxes to England, to Great Britain . . .to the United Kingdom? Who has the power to press the young men of Scotland into a war waged by Great Britain? Does Scottland own property that is beyond the touch of Great Britain?

I live on Ohio, but I'm an American. I would never identify myself as an Ohioan. What do the Welsh call themselves? What purpose does the House of Lords serve?

that's a start.

Judd
Posted on: 06 April 2005 by DIL
If you think the British system is bad, try Sweden. OK, so I'm a brit living over here, so probably don't understand all the ins and outs, but in elections you vote for the party of your choice. We have an odd ball collection of Socialist, Christian, Left - the Communists until a few years ago - the Health Care Party (They may be a local phenomina.) etc. Croneyism then takes over and 'seats' are awarded to politicians on a proportional (PR)basis at party level. This means that you cannot go to visit 'your' member of parliament and give them a piece of your mind, 'cos you haven't voted for an individual. (I think that this is actually the truth with a bit of modification, since you can vote for an individual, but I'm not sure how this all balances out.) Governtments are invariably some form of coelition. Oh, and the politician riff raff are just as bad as in the UK, if not worse. Start at the PM and work down. If there are words coming out of their mouth, they are probabyl lying. You would probably not wish to employ any of them other than to oil a squeeky gate, and that task would probably be above many of them.

Any Swede's on the forum who wish to tidy up any factual errors, or even give the system a vote of confidence are welcome...

/dl
Posted on: 06 April 2005 by Berlin Fritz
quote:
Originally posted by Justin:
I don't understand this bit baout forming a government between two parties. Are you saying that if party A wins 45%, party B wins 40% and party C wins 15%, parties B and C can join forces and elect a PM even though Party A won the election (and therefore, ought to be able to elect a PM)?

The British Wartime Coalition Government under Sir Winston for instance !

Fritz Von He grew up in the States too Big Grin

Judd
Posted on: 06 April 2005 by Justin
quote:
Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
quote:
I don't understand this bit baout forming a government between two parties. Are you saying that if party A wins 45%, party B wins 40% and party C wins 15%, parties B and C can join forces and elect a PM even though Party A won the election (and therefore, ought to be able to elect a PM)?


Building on what JonR said, if party A wins 45% of the SEATS in the House of Commons, Party B 40% of the seats and party C 15%, then we have a "Hung Parliament", ie no one party has an absolute majority.

In the above example, ANY TWO of the parties could agree to join forces and form a government.

Cheers

Don


yes, this was the answer I was looking for (well, not "looking for", but you know what I mean). The long and short of it is that multiple parties who have managed only pluralities may form a government together.

Thanks JonR and Don for the explanations.

judd
Posted on: 07 April 2005 by Don Atkinson
Judd,

Glad we were able to help.

You can now see from the many posts above, that Tony Blair could wind up as our next Prime Minister (yet again) with very little personal support from the population in the UK.

You have to be 18 to vote. So I guess only 75% of the population form the electorate.

A low turn out (we don't have compulsary voting) might see less than 50% of the electorate actually vote

Labour could win with as little as (about) 40% of the votes cast

About 50% of Labour voters might prefer someone other than Blair as PM - but we don't get to select the PM, the winning MPs do that.

With a UK population of 60 million, this means Blair could wind up as PM with as few as 4.5 million of the population actively supporting him (in fact - it could be as litle as about half the Labour MPs, say 200 MPs, but thats a little unfair).

Even Bush enjoys more popular support than this......

cheers

Don
Posted on: 07 April 2005 by cunningplan
quote:
Even Bush enjoys more popular support than this......


Don
As I recall didn't Bush win in 2000 only because of the electoral college votes, and not the popular vote.

Regards
Clive
Posted on: 07 April 2005 by JonR
quote:
Originally posted by cunningplan:
Don
As I recall didn't Bush win in 2000 only because of the electoral college votes, and not the popular vote.


....and it was good ol' brother Jeb, the governor of that crucial state Florida, wot won it! Eek

Judd, another point worth making to support Don's example above of the 'hung parliament', in that scenario party C would hold what is known as the 'balance of power'. This is because neither party A, nor party B can govern with an outright majority unless they can successfully negotiate party C's support.

This is often cited as one of the disadvantages of proportional representation - that it can hand ultimate power to smaller third parties.

Regards,

Jon