The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest institutions in the world, its origins lie in the early 11th century and the emergence of bicameralism in the 13th century.
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as members of Parliament (MPs). MPs are elected to represent constituencies by the first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster in London. Parliament possesses legislative supremacy and thereby holds ultimate power over all other political bodies in the United Kingdom and the Overseas Territories. While Parliament is bicameral, it has three parts: the sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The three parts acting together to legislate may be described as the King-in-Parliament. The Crown normally acts on the advice of the prime minister, and the powers of the House of Lords are limited to only delaying legislation.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy where executive power is delegated by legislation and social conventions to a unitary parliamentary democracy. From this a hereditary monarch, currently King Charles III, serves as head of state while the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, currently Sir Keir Starmer since 2024, serves as the elected head of government.
The Conservative and Unionist Party, commonly the Conservative Party and colloquially known as the Tories, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Labour Party. It is the Official Opposition, having lost the 2024 general election. The party sits on the right-wing to centre-right of the political spectrum. It encompasses various ideological factions including one-nation conservatives, Thatcherites, and traditionalist conservatives. There have been twenty Conservative prime ministers.
The Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 are two Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which form part of the constitution of the United Kingdom. Section 2(2) of the Parliament Act 1949 provides that the two Acts are to be construed as one.
The politics of Scotland operate within the constitution of the United Kingdom, of which Scotland is a country. Scotland is a democracy, being represented in both the Scottish Parliament and the Parliament of the United Kingdom since the Scotland Act 1998. Most executive power is exercised by the Scottish Government, led by the First Minister of Scotland, the head of government in a multi-party system. The judiciary of Scotland, dealing with Scots law, is independent of the legislature and the Scottish Government. Scots law is primarily determined by the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government shares some executive powers with the Scotland Office, a British government department led by the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Sir Edward Julian Egerton Leigh is a British Conservative Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Gainsborough, previously Gainsborough and Horncastle, since 1983.
John Rhodes Horam, Baron Horam is a Conservative politician in the United Kingdom. He represented three parties in Parliament – originally Labour, he defected to the SDP on its foundation in 1981, then to the Conservatives in 1987 – and served as a Minister in both Labour and Conservative Governments. On 4 September 2013, he was created a working life peer as Baron Horam of Grimsargh in the County of Lancashire. He is a founder and vice chair of the Common Sense Group of Conservative Parliamentarians.
The House of Lords Act 1999 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed the House of Lords, one of the chambers of Parliament. The Act was given Royal Assent on 11 November 1999. For centuries, the House of Lords had included several hundred members who inherited their seats ; the Act removed such a right. However, as part of a compromise, the Act allowed ninety-two hereditary peers to remain in the House. Another ten were created life peers to enable them to remain in the House.
Angela Evans Smith, Baroness Smith of Basildon is a British politician and life peer serving as Lord Privy Seal and leader of the House of Lords since 2024. A member of Labour Co-op, she was Member of Parliament (MP) for Basildon from 1997 to 2010.
The reform of the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, has been a topic of discussion in UK politics for more than a century. Multiple governments have attempted reform, beginning with the introduction of the Parliament Act 1911 by the incumbent Liberal Government, which stated:
...whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation
Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results.
Caroline Fiona Ellen Nokes is a British Conservative Party politician. She was first elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Romsey and Southampton North in Hampshire in the 2010 general election. Elected as a Conservative, Nokes had the Conservative whip removed on 3 September 2019 and sat as an independent politician until the whip was restored to her on 29 October.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which, for the first time, set in legislation a default fixed election date for general elections in the United Kingdom. It remained in force until 2022, when it was repealed. Since then, as before its passage, elections are required by law to be held at least once every five years, but can be called earlier if the prime minister advises the monarch to exercise the royal prerogative to do so. Prime ministers have often employed this mechanism to call an election before the end of their five-year term, sometimes fairly early in it. Critics have said this gives an unfair advantage to the incumbent prime minister, allowing them to call a general election at a time that suits them electorally. While it was in force, the FTPA removed this longstanding power of the prime minister.
The 2019 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 12 December 2019, with 47,567,752 registered voters entitled to vote to elect 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The governing Conservative Party led by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, won a landslide victory with a majority of 80 seats, a net gain of 48, on 43.6 per cent of the popular vote, the highest percentage for any party since the 1979 general election, though with a narrower popular vote margin than that achieved by the Labour Party over the Conservatives at the 1997 general election. This was the second national election to be held in 2019 in the United Kingdom, the first being the 2019 European Parliament election.
The European Union Referendum Act 2015 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that made legal provision for a consultative referendum to be held in the United Kingdom and Gibraltar, on whether it should remain a member state of the European Union or leave the bloc altogether. The Bill was introduced to the House of Commons by Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary on 28 May 2015. Two weeks later, the second reading of the Bill was supported by MPs from all parties except the SNP; the Bill subsequently passed on its third reading in the Commons on 7 September 2015. It was approved by the House of Lords on 14 December 2015, and given Royal Assent on 17 December 2015. The Act came partly into force on the same day and came into full legal force on 1 February 2016.
Reform UK is a right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in November 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating a no-deal Brexit, it won the most seats at the 2019 European Parliament election in the UK, but did not win any seats at the 2019 general election. The UK withdrew from the European Union (EU) in January 2020. A year later, in January 2021, the party was renamed Reform UK. During the COVID-19 pandemic the party advocated against further lockdowns. Since 2022, it has campaigned on a broader platform, in particular pledging to reduce net migration, supporting low taxation, and opposing the government's net-zero energy policy. Following Nigel Farage's resumption of the party leadership in early June during the campaign for the 2024 general election, opinion pollsters and analysts reported a sharp increase in support for the party. In the election it gained five Members of Parliament (MPs) with the third highest popular vote at 4,114,287, and 14.3% of the vote share.
Rishi Sunak's tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom began on 25 October 2022 when he accepted an invitation from King Charles III to form a government, succeeding Liz Truss, and ended upon his resignation on 5 July 2024. He was the first British Indian and the first Hindu to hold the office. His premiership was dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, the cost-of-living crisis, and the Rwanda asylum plan. As prime minister, Sunak also served simultaneously as First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union.
A State Opening of the Parliament of the United Kingdom took place on 7 November 2023 when King Charles III opened the fourth session of the Parliament elected in 2019, which was the last before the 2024 general election. Charles III delivered the King's Speech, his first as monarch, and set out the UK government's legislative programme for the following parliamentary session.
