Political parties of the United Kingdom

CAMBODIA: Australian overseas development agency AusAID has pledged further financial assistance to support the rehabilitation of Cambodia’s partly-modernised metre-gauge network. AusAID’s contribution of at least A$1m will support the relocation and compensation of families affected by the US$141m railway modernisation. The upgrading work is being co-ordinated by the Asian Development Bank in partnership with the Cambodian government and AusAID. A 30-year operating concession was agreed in June 2009 with the Toll Royal Railways joint venture of Australian logistics group Toll and the Cambodian Royal Group of Companies, and freight services between Phnom Penh and Touk Meas commenced in October 2010. However, these were suspended in March this year when TRR said it was putting operations on hold because of delays in the infrastructure enhancement works. On August 29, TRR Chief Executive David Kerr announced that the concessionaire intended to resume revenue services and invest further in refurbishment and procurement of rolling stock. TRR also confirmed that upgrading work had recommenced on both the 256 km Southern line linking Phnom Penh with the port of Sihanoukville, and the Northern line running from the capital to Sisophon, close to the Thai border. TRR has signed a letter of intent with Richz Electronic Services of Malaysia to act as a ‘strategic partner for the provision of locomotive components and spare parts’ and technical assistance in the rebuilding of Alstom locomotives in Cambodia. TRR is also working with the government to ensure ‘transparent processes are established and followed’ when tenders are called for the purchase of new container wagons and locomotives rated at 1500 kW to 2200 kW, Kerr said on September 20.

Political parties of the United Kingdom

Ukhan Vadym

Group 21

Teacher:

Brit N.M.

Uman-2013

Content

-Introduction…………………………………………………………………………

-Political system of the United Kingdom………………………………..

-Chapter I «Political system of the United Kingdom»……………..

-Chapter II «The main parties of the United Kingdom»………….

-Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………..

Introduction

Chapter I : «Political System of the United Kingdom»

Parliament - legislature

Prime Minister, Cabinet, Government Departments & Civil Service - executive

Courts - judiciary

The development of the British constitution, which is not a codified document, is based on this fusion in the person of the Monarch, who has a formal role to play in the legislature (Parliament, which is where legal and political sovereignty lies, is the Crown-in-Parliament, and is summoned and dissolved by the Sovereign who must give his or her Royal Assent to all Bills so that they become Acts), the executive (the Sovereign appoints all ministers of His/Her Majesty's Government, who govern in the name of the Crown) and the judiciary (the Sovereign, as the fount of justice, appoints all senior judges, and all public prosecutions are brought in his or her name).

Although the doctrine of separation of power plays a role in the United Kingdom's constitutional doctrine, the UK constitution is often described as having "a weak separation of powers" A. V. Dicey, despite its constitution being the one to which Montesquieu originally referred. For example, in the United Kingdom, the executive forms a subset of the legislature, as did—to a lesser extent—the judiciary until the establishment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister, the Chief Executive, sits as a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, either as a peer in the House of Lords or as an elected member of the House of Commons (by convention, and as a result of the supremacy of the Lower House, the Prime Minister now sits in the House of Commons) and can effectively be removed from office by a simple majority vote. Furthermore, while the courts in the United Kingdom are undoubtedly amongst the most independent in the world, the Law Lords, who were the final arbiters of judicial disputes in the UK sat simultaneously in the House of Lords, the upper house of the legislature, although this arrangement ceased in 2009 when the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom came into existence. Furthermore, because of the existence of Parliamentary sovereignty, while the theory of separation of powers may be studied there, a system such as that of the UK is more accurately described as a "fusion of powers".^{[citation needed]}

Until 2005, the Lord Chancellor fused the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary, as he was the ex officio Speaker of the House of Lords, a Government Minister who sat in Cabinet and was head of the Lord Chancellor's Department which administered the courts, the justice system and appointed judges, and was the head of the Judiciary in England and Wales and sat as a judge on the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords, the highest domestic court in the entire United Kingdom, and theJudicial Committee of the Privy Council, the senior tribunal court for parts of the Commonwealth. The Lord Chancellor also had certain other judicial positions, including being a judge in the Court of Appeal and President of the Chancery Division. TheLord Chancellor combines other aspects of the constitution, including having certain ecclesiastical functions of the established state church, making certain church appointments, nominations and sitting as one of the thirty-three Church Commissioners. These functions remain intact and unaffected by the Constitutional Reform Act. In 2005, the Constitutional Reform Act separated the powers with Legislative functions going to an elected Lord Speaker and the Judicial functions going to the Lord Chief Justice. The Lord Chancellor's Department was replaced with a Ministry of Justice and the Lord Chancellor currently serves in the position of Secretary of State for Justice.

The judiciary has no power to strike down primary legislation, and can only rule on secondary legislation that it is invalid with regard to the primary legislation if necessary.

Under the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, Parliament can enact any primary legislation it chooses. However, the concept immediately becomes problematic when the question is asked; "If parliament can do anything, can it bind its successors?". It is generally held that parliament can do no such thing.

Equally, while statute takes precedence over precedent-derived common law and the judiciary has no power to strike down primary legislation, there are certain cases where the supreme judicature has effected an injunction against the application of an act or reliance on its authority by the civil service . The seminal example of this is the Factortame case, where the House of Lords granted such an injunction preventing the operation of the Merchant Shipping Act 1988 until litigation in the European Court of Justice had been resolved.

The House of Lords ruling in Factortame (No. 1), approving the European Court of Justice formulation that "a national court which, in a case before it concerning Community law, considers that the sole obstacle which precludes it from granting interim relief is a rule of national law, must disapply that rule", has created an implicit tiering of legislative reviewability; the only way for parliament to prevent the supreme judicature from injunctively striking out a law on the basis of incompatibility with Community law is to pass an act specifically removing that power from the court, or by repealing the European Communities Act 1972.

The British legal systems are based on common law traditions, which require:

· Police or regulators cannot initiate complaints under criminal law but can only investigate (prosecution is mostly reserved for the Crown Prosecution Service), which prevents selective enforcement, e.g. the 'fishing expedition' which is often specifically forbidden.

· Prosecutors cannot withhold evidence from counsel for the defendant; to do so results in mistrial or dismissal. Accordingly, their relation to police is no advantage.

· Defendants convicted can appeal, but only fresh and compelling evidence not available at trial can be introduced, restricting the power of the court of appeal to the process of law applied.

Chapter II: «The main parties of the United Kingdom»

The Big Three parties

The Conservative Party (305 MPs^note , 25 MEPs, 15 MSPs, 13 AMs): Formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, indicating their position on The Irish Question, although hardly anyone ever remembers this. The party which currently has the PM and most of the Cabinet (Executive Branch). The traditional party for rural voters, suburban voters, middle classes, the aspirational working class/Nouveau Riche types, and the wealthy. For a long time associated with the "ruling class" and the "establishment", they have tended to take a more populist approach to politics in recent years, especially during the Margaret Thatcher years and under Cameron's leadership, and are usually perceived these days as a centre-right party with a middle-class focus and classical liberal economic tendencies.^note They've moved towards the middle in recent years, although they still have some right-wing traditionalist opinions. The popular opinion between 1997 and 2010 was that there was very little difference between them and Labour.

They are traditionally popular in the South-East of England and rural areas. The party colour is blue, and their icon appears to be a child's drawing of a tree, supposedly an attempt by Cameron to emphasise the party's environmentalist credentials; from 1975 to 2006 it was a torch of liberty. They are popularly known as the "Tories", a term that originally was an insult against Irish cattle thievesand which was the name of the modern party's forebear. The current leader is David Cameron, who has modernised the party, but the most famous member is probably the current Mayor of London,Boris Johnson, famous for his appearances on the show Have I Got News for You. Has a substantial Hatedom they gained under Margaret Thatcher that they've never got rid off, to the point where the Tories are seriously seen by a substantial amount (mainly northerners and the working class) of the population as evil incarnate.

The Conservatives won the largest share of the popular vote and the most seats in the Commons in the 2010 general election, but did not have an overall majority; they formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats to produce a comfortable majority of eighty. It should be noted that the Conservatives are not particularly popular in Scotland, with there currently being twice as many pandas in Scotland than there are Tory M Ps.

The Labour Party (258 MPs, 13 MEPs, 37 MSPs, 26 AMs): Started off as a socialist, working man's party (hence the name) but became increasingly concerned with more liberal middle-class issues in the late 1980s and moved closer to the centre under Neil Kinnock and especially Tony Blair.^note They're now generally regarded as a centrist/centre-left social democratic party. In the mid 1990s, Blair dubbed this new vision for the party "New Labour", a piece of branding designed to distance Labour from its crazed infighting and somewhat far-left early 1980s incarnation which the image-obsessed Blair thought had a negative perception amongst voters; this label has actually came to be used more as a term of abuse by the party's enemies rather than a badge of honour, and the party itself has dropped it under its current leader, Ed Milliband. There was between 1994 and 2010 a dangerous divide between the Blairites, named after Tony Blair, and Brownites, named after Gordon Brown, and no one was quite sure what the difference was; the general consensus was that Brown is slightly more socialist and rather more Eurosceptic.

Officially a left-wing socialist party, they are now generally regarded as a centre to centre-left social-democratic party. However, they've been accused of flirtation with right-wing policies, especially with regard to civil liberties — to the point a historically very conservative Tory triggered a by-election in 2006 to protest a counter-terrorism bill — and anything Peter Mandelson got his hands on, which mostly appeared to be desperate attempts at populism. They are traditionally popular in the North of England, Scotland, and South Wales, and among trade unionists. The Labour party's current icon is the rose (a traditional European socialist symbol), and the party colour, used in election materials and identification of Labour constituencies on maps, is red.

You'll see a number of Labour members listed as "Lab/Co-Op". This means that they are also sponsored by the Co-operative Party, the political arm of the UK Co-operative movement (as in the supermarket chain Co-Op). The Co-op Party differ very little from Labour, apart from an emphasis on fair trade, and don't run candidates themselves. Labour lost its majority in the general election of May 6, 2010, and Brown resigned when he could not broker a deal with other parties. Their current leader is Ed Miliband, having bested his brother David (and three other candidates who had little to no chance of victory) in a tight leadership election. Jon Culshaw was reportedly happy, as Mili-E sounds exactly the same as Jon's impression of Tony Blair.

The Liberal Democrats: (57 MPs, 11 MEPs, 5 MSPs, 5 AMs) Traditionally a centrist, liberal (in the European sense) party, they are widely perceived as being slightly to the left of post-Blair Labour, and are sometimes treated as simply a "trendier" version of Labour. Formed from the merger of the old Liberal Party — itself a descendent of the original Whig party — which saw its vote collapse after the rise of the Labour party, and the Social Democratic Party, which was formed of former Labour MPs who quit the party during their openly Marxist phase in the '80s. Notable for having a very favourable educational policy and for getting rid of their alcoholic leader in 2006, then the one after him within two years.

Conclusions

References

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 8931