Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Wednesday 2/4

  1. Labor Party (LP) formed around the 1900s as an alliance of trade unions, independent socialist groups, and worker cooperatives.
  • More divided and diverse than the Conservative (CON) Party
  • Unions dominated party and provide the most members and funding
  • During Collective Consensus LP was a moderate party, but after its breakdown, LP moved to the left and was identified as a party of irresponsible reform and disruption
  • Became more moderate during the 90s ("New Labor" Party) and won control of parliament in 1997 election
  • In April 1996, LP rejected appeals from old-line trade union leaders and rejected 77 year-old commitment to nationalize industries
  • Common ownership replaced with equality of opportunity within the marketplace; reinstated competition
  • Under Blair, LP stayed in center of spectrum and won majority again in 2001 and 2005
2. Liberal Democratic Party (LD)
  • alliance of 2 old parties; moderate on spectrum
  • gained LP and CON members after collective consensus when parties became more extreme
  • won have used public dissatisfaction with CON to gain voters
  • look for issues to place themselves to the left of Labor (environment is one such issue)
  • ask for income tax increase to fund health and education
3. Regional Parties (Outside of England)
  • resent English domination of government
  • in 2005 Regional Parties won 18 seats in the House of Commons
4. Constitution
  • No written constitution--it's unwritten: made of acts of parliament, treaties, judicial decisions, customs, and conventions
  • vagueness makes it flexible/easy to change, but gives few concrete guarantees to citizens like our bill of rights does
  • civil liberties are protected by tradition with some legislation
  • parliament changes the constitution by adding new acts/bills
  • standing government can change the constitution to a lesser extent by taking executive action with new precedents
  • historically unitary government, not federalist
  • central govt has all political power, may devolve power to subnational units
  • executive branch leadership selected from legislature
  • no clear separation of powers
  • executive and legislative branches more overlapping, opposition parties serve as the only check in power
  • independent courts, but courts don't have judicial review
  • parliament has unlimited legislative power
  • no court can declare an act of parliament unconstitutional
  • courts determine whether laws conflict with treaties
  • the Law Lords serve as Britain's highest court of appeals (9 Lords)
  • parliamentary elections must be at least once every 5 years, Prime minister decides when
5. Executive Branch
  • Queen/King/monarch is head of executive branch and part of the crown-in-parliament, commander-in-chief of armed forces, and temporal of the Church of England
  • most functions have gone to the Prime Minister (PM)
  • Monarch has to give royal assent to bills in parliament (since 1707, the queen has never said no)
  • queen may also refuse PM's request to dissolve parliament
  • PM names his cabinet and writes the queen's "speech from the throne" (like state of the union address)
  • PM is the head of govt and majority party in the House of Commons, political party manager, and must retain confidence of his party
  • uses patronage to assign members of parliament to 20 cabinet ministries and 100 other front bench positions
  • PM speaks in debates in parliament
  • appears for house questioning once a week, chairs cabinet meetings, spokesperson for cabinet, deals with other foreign leaders and policy

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