Politics & International Relations
General Elections UK
General Elections in the UK are national elections held to elect Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. They typically occur every five years, but can be called earlier under certain circumstances. The party that wins the majority of seats in the House of Commons forms the government, and the leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister.
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eBook - ePub- Julian Knight, Michael Pattison(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
When you think about British elections your mind probably turns to a general election, with the high-profile national politicians going head to head and the airwaves crackling with all things political. However, the UK has lots of different elections in which you have a right to vote. Here’s a quick guide to the UK’s election scene:- General elections: These elections are considered the biggies, with seats up for grabs in the UK parliament. Traditionally, these elections have the biggest turnouts and receive the most media coverage. Prime ministers (PMs) used to be able to call elections whenever they wanted, but under a new law introduced in 2010 general elections now occur once every five years, setting in stone five-year fixed-term parliaments.
- Devolved elections: The Scottish parliament and the Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies are big deals to the millions of people living in these parts of the UK. These bodies have lots of powers and in some ways are more important to people living within their compass than the UK parliament. Elections to these bodies take place once every four years and the system used is partly first past the post and partly proportional representation (check out the later sections ‘Coming Up On the Rails: The First-Past-the-Post System ’ and ‘Examining Proportional Representation’, respectively).
- Local government elections: From county, parish and community councils to mayors, across the UK almost every year a new set of elections is held. These elections may not have the glamour of a general or devolved election but they’re important, because local government is responsible for many of the nation’s public services, as well as raising council taxes and business rates and approving or turning down planning applications. Chapter 17 has more on the inner workings of local government.
- European parliamentary elections: In some ways European elections shouldn’t be last in this list of elections, because many of the laws governing the life of Britons come from the European Union (EU). Turnout tends to be low – usually only between 30 and 40 per cent of people registered to vote bother to do so – and they take place once every five years, under a complex system called the D’Hondt method (see ‘Dividing in the D’Hondt method ’, later in this chapter). The last European election was in 2014, and so the next is scheduled for 2019.
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Learning Press(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 8 Elections in the United Kingdom There are five types of elections in the United Kingdom : United Kingdom general elections, elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies, elections to the European Parliament, local elections and mayoral elections. Elections are held on Election Day, which is conventionally a Thursday. General elections do not have fixed dates, but must be called within five years of the opening of parliament following the last election. Other elections are held on fixed dates though in the case of the devolved assemblies and parliaments, early elections can occur in certain situations. Presently, six electoral systems are used: the single member plurality system (First Past the Post), the multi member plurality system, party list PR, the single transferable vote, the Additional Member System and the Supplementary Vote. Eligibility The electoral register in 2000 listed 44,423,440 people registered to vote in the United Kingdom, of whom 36,994,211 were in England. Anyone who is a national of the United Kingdom (including British overseas territories and all forms of British nationality but excluding British protected persons), the Republic of Ireland or a Commonwealth country, who is legally resident in the United Kingdom, and who is 18 or over on the date of the election is eligible to vote, provided they are on the electoral register, unless they are currently a member of the House of Lords, imprisoned for a criminal offence, declared mentally incapable of making a reasoned judgement, or have been convicted of corrupt or illegal practices in connection with an election within the previous five years (the 15 year period starts not from the date when the voter moves abroad but rather the date the voter no longer appears in the electoral register).
eBook - ePub- G.D.H. Cole(Author)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE PARTIES AND ELECTIONS DOI: 10.4324/9781003405917-29 T HE people of Britain are commonly reputed to be experts at the parliamentary game and are even apt to look down on others who are less expert. The British Parliament has been called, not quite accurately, the ‘mother of Parliaments’; and certainly the British people are well accustomed to accepting the verdict of their General Elections, if not as the voice of God, at any rate as entitled to their respect and acquiescence. British elections, we are told, are ‘free’, and by means of them the electors choose the Governments they want and reject those they dislike or distrust. It is true that Rousseau described the British people as free but once every seven years; but he deemed them to be free at least so often—though in his day the freedom, as far as the right to vote was concerned, extended only to a small fraction of the whole. For what it is worth, it extends pretty widely now—in effect, to all, or to practically all adults of both sexes—though usually not more than four out of every five think it worth while to vote. In the General Election of 1955 the poll was smaller than that. Less than 77 per cent voted in the constituencies contested—more in some places but fewer in others—whereas in 1951 82·5 per cent voted, and in 1950 84 per cent. In 1945 only 76 per cent voted; but on that occasion the register of electors was abnormally bad because of the war. Anything over 80 per cent is reckoned a quite good poll: the 84 per cent of 1950 was unusually high. Between the wars, general election polls ranged from 80·6 per cent in 1924 and 74·6 per cent in 1935 to a mere 58·9 per cent in 1918, when the register was a great deal worse than in 1945. Before the first war, with a much smaller and exclusively male electorate, the proportions voting were higher—92·9 per cent in January 1910, 88·8 per cent in 1906, and 87 per cent in December 1910
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