3. POLITICS – ATTITUDES, POLITICAL PARTIES, THE ELECTIONS
Constitution
- 1215 – Magna Carta
o Rule of law
o The Monarch accountable to the law
- 1689 – Bill of Rights (different from that of the US)
o Further limited the power of the Monarch
o Regular Parliaments
o Free election
Uncodified constitution: The constitution of the UK is not written down in a single legal document, and
some may not be written down at all.
Elections
- General election: MPs (Members of Parliament)
- Local election (Representative)
- Devolved Assembly (Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland representatives)
- By-election (when a position gets free due to death or stepping down)
- Referendums (two-way voting about an important question, such as Brexit)
General election
- Electing MPs
- Constituency: a specific area where people choose their
shared representatives (=választókerület)
o They vote for candidates aspiring to be their MPs.
o They DO NOT vote for the Prime Minister
- Single member constituency: They choose only one.
- Every 5 years
- First Pass the Post: a principle of counting votes
o Candidate with the most votes MP
o The rest of the votes do not matter.
- Candidate list: deposit £500 to the Returning Office
o If you get at least 5% of the votes, you get it back,
otherwise it’s lost.
- Do you need to indicate an affiliation? No, but you can.
- Ad-screentime for politicians limitations Ballot paper
- Canvassing: Going door to door, trying to persuade personally
- Polling day: the day of the elections
o Always on a Thursday, but not a public holiday
o You can cast your vote between 7 am – 10 pm
- Not one person – but the party with the most representatives – wins The Monarch appoints the
leader of this party as Prime Minister and asks them to form a government.
Voting rights
- 18+
- Register in Electoral Registry at 16
- Universal suffrage except:
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