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), who 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.
James Maxton was a British left-wing politician, and leader of the Independent Labour Party. He was a pacifist who opposed both world wars. A prominent proponent of Home Rule for Scotland, he is remembered as one of the leading figures of the Red Clydeside era. He broke with Ramsay MacDonald and the second minority Labour government, and became one of its most bitter critics. As the leader of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), he disaffiliated the ILP from the mainstream party in 1932. Afterwards, he became an independent dissident outside front-line politics.
The Speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the House of Commons, the lower house and primary chamber of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The current speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, was elected Speaker on 4 November 2019, following the retirement of John Bercow. Hoyle began his first full parliamentary term in the role on 17 December 2019, having been unanimously re-elected after the 2019 general election.
The Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) is the parliamentary group of the Labour Party in the British House of Commons. The group comprises the Labour members of parliament as a collective body. Commentators on the British Constitution sometimes draw a distinction between the Labour Party and the Conservative and Liberal parties. The term Parliamentary Labour Party refers to the party in Parliament, whereas the term Labour Party refers to the entire Labour Party, the parliamentary element of which is the PLP.
The 1935 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 14 November. It resulted in a second landslide victory for the three-party National Government, which was led by Stanley Baldwin of the Conservative Party after the resignation of Ramsay MacDonald due to ill health earlier in the year. It is the most recent British general election to have seen any party or alliance of parties win a majority of the popular vote.
Arthur Greenwood was a British politician. A prominent member of the Labour Party from the 1920s until the late 1940s, Greenwood rose to prominence within the party as secretary of its research department from 1920 and served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health in the short-lived Labour government of 1924. In 1940, he was instrumental in resolving that Britain would continue fighting Nazi Germany in World War II.
The Leader of His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition, more commonly referred to as the Leader of the Opposition, is the person who leads the Official Opposition in the United Kingdom. The position is seen as the shadow head of government of the United Kingdom and thus the shadow prime minister of the United Kingdom.
John Richard Attlee, 3rd Earl Attlee, styled Viscount Prestwood between 1967 and 1991, is a British Conservative Party peer and member of the House of Lords. He is the grandson of Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister, who was the first Earl Attlee.
William Allen Jowitt, 1st Earl Jowitt, was a British Liberal Party, National Labour and then Labour Party politician and lawyer who served as Lord Chancellor under Clement Attlee from 1945 to 1951.
The Norway Debate, sometimes called the Narvik Debate, was a momentous debate in the British House of Commons from 7 to 9 May 1940, during the Second World War. The official title of the debate, as held in the Hansard parliamentary archive, is Conduct of the War. The debate was initiated by an adjournment motion enabling the Commons to freely discuss the progress of the Norwegian campaign. The debate quickly brought to a head widespread dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war by Neville Chamberlain's government.
John Dugdale was a British newspaper journalist and politician. Well-connected with the Labour Party establishment, he worked as Private Secretary to Clement Attlee and was appointed a Minister in his post-war government.
The Churchill war ministry was the United Kingdom's coalition government for most of the Second World War from 10 May 1940 to 23 May 1945. It was led by Winston Churchill, who was appointed prime minister of the United Kingdom by King George VI following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain in the aftermath of the Norway Debate.
Wilfrid Andrew Burke was a British Trade union organiser and politician who achieved high office in the Labour Party and served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Burnley for 24 years. He was briefly in the Attlee government as Assistant Postmaster-General. After leaving the government he concentrated on party work, fighting Bevanites and serving as Chairman of the National Executive Committee.
In the United Kingdom, confidence motions are a means of testing the support of the government (executive) in a legislative body, and for the legislature to remove the government from office. A confidence motion may take the form of either a vote of confidence, usually put forward by the government, or a vote of no confidence, usually proposed by the opposition. When such a motion is put to a vote in the legislature, if a vote of confidence is defeated, or a vote of no confidence is passed, then the incumbent government must resign, or call a general election.
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.
On 15 January 2019, a motion of no confidence in the government of Theresa May was tabled in the House of Commons. On 16 January, the House rejected the motion by a vote of 325 to 306.
In July 2022, a motion of confidence in the second Johnson ministry was tabled in the House of Commons. The motion, debated on 18 July, was laid by the government itself after it had refused to allow time for a Labour Party no-confidence motion. The Government won the vote on 18 July, but the Prime Minister resigned in September.
