User talk:Andeggs/Temp2

The politics of the United Kingdom are based upon a unitary state and a constitutional monarchy. Its system of government (known as the Westminster system) has been adopted by other countries, such as Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Jamaica.

The constitution is uncodified, being made up of constitutional conventions, statutes and other elements.

Monarch
The head of state and theoretical source of executive, judicial and legislative power in the UK is the British monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II. However, sovereignty in the UK no longer rests with the monarch, since the English Bill of Rights in 1689, which established the principle of Parliamentary Soverignity. Despite this the Monarch remains Head of State, akin to a President in European (but not American) political tradition and regularly performs ceremonial functions.

Originally the monarch possessed the right to choose any British citizen to be her Prime Minister and could call and dissolve Parliament whenever he or she wished. However, in accordance with the current 'unwritten constitution', the Prime Minister is the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons and Parliament is dissolved at the time suggested by him or her. The monarch retains the ability to deny giving a bill Royal Assent, although in modern times this becomes increasingly more unlikely, as it would cause a constitutional crisis. Queen Anne was the last monarch to exercise this power, which she did on 11 March 1708 with regard to a bill "for the settling of Militia in Scotland". Other royal powers called royal prerogative, such as patronage to appoint ministers and the ability to declare war, are exercised by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, with the formal consent of the Queen.

Today the Sovereign has an essentially ceremonial role restricted in exercise of power by convention and public opinion. However the monarch does continue to exercise three essential rights: the right to be consulted, the right to advise and the right to warn. Prime ministers have weekly confidential meetings with the monarch. The longer the monarch reigns the greater the degree of his or her experience and knowledge becomes, and so the meetings become more and more useful.

In formal terms, the Crown in Parliament is sovereign even though in practical terms the political head of the UK is the Prime Minister (Tony Blair since 2nd May, 1997). However, the real powers of position of the Monarch in the British Constitution should not be downplayed. The monarch does indeed retain some power, but it has to be used with discretion, for instance with the 1996 sacking of the Australian Prime Minister. She fulfils the necessary constitutional role as head of state, and with the absence of a distinct separation of powers in the American model and a strong second chamber, acts as a final check on executive power. If a time came to pass, for instance, when a law threatened the freedom or security of her subjects, the Queen could decline royal assent, free as she is from the eddies of party politics. Furthermore, armed removal of Parliament or Government would be difficult, as the Monarch remains commander-in-chief of the armed forces, who swear an oath of allegiance to her.

Ministers
The Government performs the Executive functions of the United Kingdom. The monarch appoints a Prime Minister, guided by the strict convention that the Prime Minister should be the member of the House of Commons most likely to be able to form a Government with the support of the House. The Prime Minister then selects the other Ministers which make up the Government and act as political heads of the various Government Departments. About twenty of the most senior government ministers make up the Cabinet.

As in other parliamentary systems of government, the executive (called "the government") is drawn from and is answerable to Parliament - a successful vote of no confidence will force the government either to resign or to seek a parliamentary dissolution and a general election. In practice members of parliament of all major parties are strictly controlled by "whips" who try to ensure they vote according to party policy. If the government has a large majority, then they are very unlikely to lose enough votes to be unable to pass legislation. In November 2005, the Blair government suffered its first defeat, on a proposal to extend the period for detaining terrorist suspects to 90 days. However, before this, the last bill proposed by a government that was defeated in the House of Commons was the Shop Hours Bill in 1986, one of only three in the 20th century. Governments with a small majority, or coalition governments, are much more vulnerable, and sometimes have to resort to extreme measures, such as "wheeling in" sick MPs, to get the necessary majority. Margaret Thatcher in 1983 and Tony Blair in 1997, for example, were swept into power with such large majorities that even allowing for dissent within their parties, they were assured of winning practically all parliamentary votes, and thus were able to implement radical programmes of legislative reform and innovation. On the other hand, Prime Ministers such as John Major who enjoy only slender majorities can easily lose votes if relatively small numbers of their backbench MPs reject the whip and vote against the Government's proposals. As such, Governments with small majorities find it extremely difficult to implement controversial legislation and tend to become bogged down cutting deals with factions within their party or seeking assistance from other political parties.

See: List of British Governments


 * Queen
 * Elizabeth II
 * 6 February 1952
 * Prime Minister
 * Tony Blair
 * Labour
 * 2 May 1997
 * Deputy Prime Minister
 * John Prescott
 * Labour
 * 2 May 1997
 * Chancellor of the Exchequer
 * Gordon Brown
 * Labour
 * 2 May 1997
 * Lord Chancellor
 * Charles Falconer
 * Labour
 * June 2003
 * Speaker
 * Michael Martin
 * Labour
 * 23 October 2000
 * }
 * Speaker
 * Michael Martin
 * Labour
 * 23 October 2000
 * }
 * }

Government departments
See Departments of the United Kingdom Government The civil service is a permanent politically neutral organization which supports Government Ministers in carrying out their executive duties. Its constitutional role is to support the Government of the day regardless of which political party is in power. Unlike in some other democracies, senior civil servants remain in post upon a change of Government.

The central core of the civil service is organised into a number of Departments of State. Each Department is led politically by a senior Minister, supported by a small team of junior Ministers. In most cases the senior Minister is known as a Secretary of State and is a member of the Cabinet. Administrative management of the Department is led by a head civil servant known in most Departments as a Permanent Secretary. The majority of the civil service staff in fact work in executive agencies, which are separate operational organisations reporting to Departments of State.

"Whitehall" is often used as a synonym for the central core of the Civil Service. This is because most Government Departments have headquarters in and around the former Royal Palace of Whitehall.

Legislative
Parliament is the centre of the political system in the United Kingdom. It is the supreme legislative body (parliamentary sovereignty), and Government is drawn from and answerable to it. Parliament is bicameral, consisting of the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

House of Commons
The UK is divided into parliamentary constituencies of broadly equal population (decided by the Boundary Commission), each of which elects a Member of Parliament to the House of Commons. There is only one independent MP currently in the House of Commons, and two MPs from minor parties. There almost always is a party with an outright majority of MPs in the House. In modern times, all Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition have been drawn from the Commons, not the Lords. Alec Douglas-Home resigned from his peerages days after becoming Prime Minister in 1963, and the last Prime Minister before him from the Lords left in 1902 (the Marquess of Salisbury).



One party usually has a majority in Parliament, because of the use of the First Past the Post electoral system, which has been conducive in creating the two party system that exists in electoral politics, at least in general election to this day. The monarch normally asks a person commissioned to form a government simply whether it can survive in the House of Commons, something which majority governments can do. In exceptional circumstances the monarch asks someone to 'form a government' with a parliamentary minority in the event of no party having a majority, that requires the formation of a coalition government. This option is only ever taken at a time of national emergency, such as war-time. It was given in 1916 to Andrew Bonar Law, and when he declined, to David Lloyd George. It is worth noting that a government is not formed by a vote of the House of Commons, merely a commission from the monarch. The House of Commons gets its first chance to indicate confidence in the new government when it votes on the Speech from the Throne, ie, the legislative programme proposed by the new government.

House of Lords
The House of Lords was previously a hereditary, aristocratic chamber. Major reform has been partially completed and it is currently a mixture of hereditary members, bishops of the Church of England and appointed members (life peers, with no hereditary right for their descendants to sit in the House). It currently acts to review legislation formed by the House of Commons, with the power to propose amendments, and exercises a suspensive veto — it can delay legislation it does not approve of for twelve months. However, the use of vetoes is limited by convention and the operation of the Parliament Acts — the Lords may not veto the "money bills", or major manifesto promises (see Salisbury convention). Persistent use of the veto can be overturned by the Parliament Act by the Commons. Often governments will accept changes in legislation in order to avoid both the time delay, and the negative publicity of being seen to clash with the Lords.

The House of Lords is currently also the final court of appeal within the United Kingdom, although in practice only a small subset of the House of Lords, known as the Law Lords, hears judicial cases. However, the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 outlines plans for a Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to replace the role of the Law Lords.

Judiciary
The Lord Chancellor is the head of the judiciary in England & Wales. He appoints judges and magistrates for criminal courts on behalf of the Sovereign. The Lord Chancellor also possesses executive and legislative roles in the British government, which is a peculiarity amongst many liberal democracies in the world today.

See Courts of the United Kingdom

Devolved powers
In addition to the House of Commons, Scotland now has its own parliament and Wales and Northern Ireland have assemblies. (Although the Northern Ireland Assembly is currently suspended.) England, however, has no devolved government between UK Government and local government following the failure of the governments previously proposed regional assemblies - this has led to the formation of democratic reform groups such as The Campaign for an English Parliament. Some members of the devolved bodies are elected by a form of proportional representation. Although the new devolved governments have some legislative and other powers, they do not have anywhere near the power of the UK parliament. There are also fundamental differences between them. For example, the Scottish Parliament has the power to legislate, whereas the Welsh Assembly Government only has the power to spend the budget formerly allocated to a government department known as the Welsh Office. In addition, as devolved systems of government, they have no constitutional right to exist and can have their powers broadened, narrowed or changed by an Act of the UK Parliament.

Thus, the United Kingdom is said to have a unitary state with a devolved system of government. This contrasts with a federal system, in which sub-parliaments or state parliaments and assemblies have a clearly defined constitutional right to exist and a right to exercise certain constitutionally guaranteed and defined functions and cannot be unilaterally abolished by Acts of the central parliament.

The present policy of the UK Government is to increase national and regional devolution. The opportunity to elect a regional tier of elected government was to be offered to some of the regions of England, was accepted by referendum in London, but was rejected in a referendum in North East England and is now less likely to be offered elsewhere. A movement to obtain some degree of home rule also exists in Cornwall, a petition of over 50000 signatures was collected endorsing the call for a Cornish Assembly. However, the UK government is not known to be considering any form of devolution to Cornwall.

It has been said that the process of devolution represents the gradual return of autonomy to the last remaining territories colonised by England that are still under its' control. It is ironic that though they were the first to be conquered and colonised, they would be the last to regain self determination.

For further information on Scotland's political system, see the main article.

Northern Ireland
Politics in Northern Ireland is particularly complex, due to the history of Northern Ireland, particularly 'The Troubles'. Until the 1960s the three main parties in Great Britain were mirrored in Northern Ireland, with the Ulster Unionist Party serving as the regional wing of the Conservative Party whilst the small Ulster Liberal Party served a similar role for the Liberal Party. The Northern Ireland Labour Party was not as strongly tied to the UK Labour Party but the differences were not obvious. Also in existence were the Nationalist Party and Sinn Féin, both of whom were committed to the political unification of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

From the late 1960s until the mid-1990s, Northern Ireland was plagued by civil unrest and paramilitarism, known as the Troubles. In the process the political parties were greatly disrupted. The Ulster Unionist Party discontinued its links with the Conservative Party in protest at the Sunningdale Agreement. The Ulster Liberal Party remained a part of the now Liberal Democratic Party but faced with marginal support it chose to form a sibling relationship with the Alliance Party. The Northern Ireland Labour Party folded amidst a widespread realignment of political parties; with the British party in theory entering into an alliance, through the Socialist International with the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party and retaining its policy (until recently) of refusing Northern Ireland residents membership of the party. Many other political parties have sprung up representing different strands of unionism, nationalism or cross-community politics, but few have lasted any substantial period of time.

More recently there have been calls for the mainstream British parties to organise and stand in elections in Northern Ireland. The Conservative Party has done so since the late 1980s but its support has been minimal whilst the Liberal Democrats have continued to endorse Alliance candidates.

The current government of Northern Ireland was established as a result of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), properly known as the Belfast Agreement.

The collapse of the assembly created by the GFA accelerated the polarisation of Northern Ireland's politics, with the SDLP's eclipse by Sinn Féin (both of which are in favour of the agreement) in 2001 being mirrored by the anti-GFA DUP overtaking the UUP in the November 2003 poll for a new Assembly (which has yet to meet).

The main parties in Northern Ireland are:


 * Democratic Unionist Party (a hard-line Unionist party)
 * Sinn Féin (an Irish Republican party with links to the Provisional Irish Republican Army)
 * Ulster Unionist Party (a conservative unionist party)
 * Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) (a social democratic irish nationalist party)
 * Alliance Party (a liberal, cross-community party)
 * Progressive Unionist Party (a centre-left unionist party with links to loyalist paramilitaries)
 * UK Unionist Party (a tiny party that serves as a vehicle for Robert McCartney, a unionist)
 * Conservative Party (part of the UK Conservative Party)

There are many smaller parties both past and present, reflecting the turbulent changes in Northern Ireland politics. Most can be identified as either unionist or nationalist, though a few seek to eschew any position on the "Border Question" (and invariably receive much less support). As a result the question of left-wing or right-wing politics is not as pertinent; although existing parties can be defined at some point on the political spectrum, few seek to promote a left or right wing agenda.

Elections and parties
Unlike many European nations, the United Kingdom uses a first-past-the-post system to elect members of Parliament, or MPs. Therefore, elections and political parties in the United Kingdom are affected by Duverger's Law, which causes the agglomeration of related political ideologies into a few large parties with many small parties rarely winning respresentation. Historically, the United Kingdom had two major political parties, though currently three parties dominate the political landscape. Originally, the Conservatives and the Liberals dominated British politics, but the Liberal Party collapsed in the early twentieth century and was largely replaced by the Labour Party. In the 1980s, the Liberals merged with the Social Democratic Party and have recently experienced a resurgence as the Liberal Democrats, enough so to again be considered a major party. In addition to the three major parties, many minor parties contest elections. Of these, few except for regional parties such as the Scottish National Party and Democratic Unionist Party win seats in Parliament.

In the most recent election, the Labour Party won reelection on a reduced majority, with both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats making gains at the expense of Labour.

Electoral systems
Various electoral systems are used in the UK:


 * The First Past the Post system is used for general elections, and also for some local government elections in England and Wales (previously in Scotland).
 * The Bloc Vote system is also used for some local government elections in England and Wales (previously in Scotland).
 * The Additional Member System was introduced after devolution in 1999 for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and London Assembly.
 * The Single Transferable Vote system is used to elect the Northern Ireland Assembly and Northern Ireland's local councils. It will also be used for the next elections to councils in Scotland.
 * The party list is used for European Parliament elections.
 * The Supplementary Vote is used to elect directly-elected mayors, such as the Mayor of London.

In the last few elections, voter mandates for Westminster in the 40% ranges have been swung into 60% parliamentary majorities. No government has won a majority of the popular vote since the National Government of Stanley Baldwin in 1935. Twice since World War II the party with fewer popular votes actually came out with the larger number of seats (in 1951 and February 1974). One reason for all the quirks is that Britain has many political parties, making it possible to win individual constituencies on less than 50% of the vote due to the opposition votes being divided.

Electoral reform has been considered for general elections many times, but after the Jenkins Commission report in October 1998, which suggested the Alternative vote top-up for general elections was effectively ignored by the government, there have been no further government proposals for reform. It is highly unlikely that electoral reform will happen unless there is a significant change in the balance of power and Labour loses its large majority.

Low turnout is a concern, as the percentage of the electorate who voted in the last general election was just 61%.

History of political parties
UK political parties originated in 1662 in the aftermath of the English Civil War, with the creation of the Court Party and the Country Party, soon becoming known as the Tories (now the Conservative party, still commonly referred to as 'the Tories') and the Whigs (now the Liberal Democrats, though the term 'Whig' has become obsolete). The two remained the main political parties until the 20th century.

The term 'Tory' originates from the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678-1681 - the Whigs were those who supported the exclusion of the Roman Catholic Duke of York from the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland, and the Tories were those who opposed it. Both names were originally insults: a "whiggamor" was a cattle driver, and a "tory" was an Irish term for an outlaw.

Generally, the Tories were associated with lesser gentry and the Church of England, while Whigs were more associated with trade, money, larger land holders (or "land magnates"), expansion and tolerance. Both were still committed to the political system in place at that time. Neither group could be considered a true political party in the modern sense.

The Rochdale Radicals were a group of more extreme reformists who were also heavily involved in the Cooperative movement. They sought to bring about a more equal society, and are considered by modern standards to be left-wing. After becoming associated with repression of popular discontent in the years after 1815, the Tories underwent a fundamental transformation under the influence of Robert Peel, himself an industrialist rather than a landowner, who in his 1835 "Tamworth Manifesto" outlined a new "Conservative" philosophy of reforming ills while conserving the good.

Though Peel's supporters subsequently split from their colleagues over the issue of free trade in 1846, ultimately joining the Whigs and the Radicals to form what would become the Liberal Party, Peel's version of the party's underlying outlook was retained by the remaining Tories, who adopted his label of Conservative as the official name of their party.

The term 'Liberal Party' was first used officially in 1868, though it had been in use colloquially for decades beforehand. The Liberal Party formed a government in 1870 and then alternated with the Conservative Party as the party of government throughout the late 19th century and early 20th century.

The Irish Parliamentary Party was set up to replace the Home Rule League in 1882. It remained the third-largest party in British politics until 1918, often holding the balance of power.

In 1900, the Labour Representation Committee was established and it changed its name to The Labour Party in 1906. After the First World War, this led to the demise of the Liberal Party as the main liberal force in British politics. The existence of the Labour Party on the left of British politics led to a slow waning of energy from the Liberal Party, ending with it taking third place in national politics. After performing poorly in the elections of 1922, 1923 and 1924, the Liberal Party was superseded by the Labour Party as the party of the left.

Following two brief spells in minority governments in 1924 and 1929-1931, the Labour Party had its first true victory after World War II in the 1945 "khaki election". Throughout the rest of the twentieth century, Labour governments alternated with Conservative governments. The Conservatives were in power for most of the time, with the Labour Party suffering the "wilderness years" of 1951-1964 (three straight General Election defeats) and 1979-1997 (four straight General Election defeats).

During this second period, right-winger Margaret Thatcher, who became leader of the Conservative party in 1975, made a fundamental change to Conservative policies, turning the Conservative Party into a staunch right-wing party. In the General Election of 1979 she defeated James Callaghan's troubled Labour government after the winter of discontent.

For most of the 1980s, and the 1990s under her successor John Major, Conservative governments pursued policies of privatisation, anti-trade-unionism, and Monetarism, now known collectively as Thatcherism.

The Labour Party elected left-winger Michael Foot as their leader after their 1979 election defeat, and he responded to disatisfaction with the Labour Party by pursuing a number of radical policies developed by its grass-roots members. Several right-wing MPs formed a breakaway group in 1981, called the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a move which split Labour and is widely believed to have made Labour unelectable for a decade. The SDP formed an alliance with the Liberal Party which contested the 1983 and 1987 general elections as a centrist alternative to Labour and the Conservatives. After some initial success, the SDP did not prosper, and was accused by some of splitting the anti-Conservative vote.

The SDP eventually merged with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats in 1988. Support for the new party has increased since then, and the Liberal Democrats (often referred to as LibDems) in 1997 and 2001 gained an increased number of seats in the House of Commons.

Labour were badly defeated by the Conservatives in the general election of 1983 and Michael Foot was replaced by Neil Kinnock as leader of the Labour Party. Kinnock expelled the far left-wing Militant Tendency group, and moderated many of the party's policies. He was replaced by John Smith after Labour's narrow defeat in the 1992 general election.

Tony Blair became leader of the Labour party after John Smith's sudden death from a heart attack in 1994. He continued to move the Labour Party back towards the right by loosening links with the unions and embracing many of Margaret Thatcher's policies. This, coupled with the professionalising of the party machine's approach to the media, helped Labour win the 1997 General Election with a historic landslide result. The Labour Party has moved from being a democratic socialist party to being a neo-liberal party, giving it three landslide victories but greatly reducing its membership and its support in the electorate.

Current electoral landscape
The Labour Party consolidated its position in 2001, winning a full second term - a first-time achievement for the Labour Party.

This led to a crisis of confidence in the Conservative Party, which had become complacent with its position as the 'natural party of government' after its 18 years of power. The party's drift to the right lost it nearly all its working-class voters, and its ageing membership (average age 65) and vote (third party among the under 45s) mean that avoiding extinction became a higher priority than winning an election. However, with Labour's recent drop in popularity in 2003-2004 coinciding with Conservatives appointing Michael Howard as leader, the Conservatives appeared to have begun to recover their position as serious challengers to the Labour government. However, Tony Blair's party secured a majority for the third time in May 2005, albeit with a greatly reduced majority. In late 2005, the Conservatives replaced Michael Howard with David Cameron, who has brought about a revival of the party's fortunes by trying to improve its old-fashioned image.

Major issues in current British national politics, in descending order of voter concern (as of MORI poll April 2004), are:


 * Defence / Terrorism
 * Race relations / immigration
 * The NHS
 * Education
 * Law and order
 * Pensions and benefits
 * The state of the economy
 * European integration and the single currency
 * Housing and house prices
 * Taxation

There are also specific regional issues, not listed above, for which, see below.

Non-parliamentary political parties
Two parties have no seats in Parliament, but multiple seats in the European Parliament and a number of seats on local councils.


 * Green Party
 * United Kingdom Independence Party

The Greens also have two seats in the Greater London Authority; UKIP elected two members to the GLA, but they subsequently quit the party. Veritas has one MEP, its founder and former leader Robert Kilroy Silk, though he was elected for UKIP (which he later left). The Scottish National Party and Scottish Socialist Party have seats in the Scottish Parliament, and Plaid Cymru have seats in the Welsh Assembly, as well as each having a number of council seats. A number of other parties have local councillors including the British National Party (BNP), the Liberal Party (in Kidderminster), Mebyon Kernow (Cornish nationalist party) in Cornwall, and the Communist Left Alliance (in Fife).

Sub-UK parties
Other, smaller, political parties that do not contest elections across the UK and generally seek autonomy or independence for their nation or region are:


 * Cornish Nationalist Party
 * Mebyon Kernow (Sons of Cornwall)
 * Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationalist Party)
 * Scottish Green Party
 * Scottish National Party (advocating independent Scottish statehood within the EU)
 * Scottish Socialist Party (campaigning for a socialist Scottish republic)

Several local parties contest only within a specific area, a single County, Borough or District. Examples include the Better Bedford party, one of the dominant parties in Bedford Borough Council, led by Bedford's current Mayor, Frank Branston. The most notable local party is Health Concern, which controls a single seat in Parliament.

The fringe parties
Other political parties exist, but generally do not succeed in returning MPs to Parliament. There is a tendency on the far left and right for a proliferation of tiny groups (also known by the French term 'groupuscules'), sometimes characterized by extremely rigid ideologies and built around personalities, that are constantly splitting to create new groups.

Among them is the BNP, a successor party to the National Front.

Independents
There are also a few independent politicians with no party allegiance. This normally occurs only when an MP decides to break with his party in mid-session. Since 1950 only two MPs have been elected as genuine independents, though others have been elected after breaking away from their party:
 * Martin Bell represented the Tatton constituency in Cheshire between 1997 and 2001. He was elected following a "sleaze" scandal involving the sitting Conservative MP, Neil Hamilton -- Bell, a BBC journalist, stood as an anticorruption independent candidate, and the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties withdrew their candidates from the election.
 * Dr. Richard Taylor MP was elected for the Wyre Forest constituency in the 2001 on a platform opposing the closure of Kidderminster hospital. He later established Health Concern, the party under which he ran in 2005.

Local government
The UK is divided into a variety of different types of Local Authorities, with different functions and responsibillities, which are further subdivided in rural areas and some urban areas into parishes.

Local Authorities are responsible for such matters as administering education, public transport, and the management of public spaces. Local authorities are often engaged in community politics.

Parishes have councils too and some are known as city or town councils. These councils are either made up of elected parish councillors, or in very small parishes, they use direct democracy.

There are two common systems of local government in the U.K.: the old-style two-tier and newer single-tier system. The older (and far more complex) two-tier system consists of district councils and County Councils. The District Councils are responsible for rubbish collection, granting planning permission and council housing. County Councils are responsible for education, social services, some public transport, etc..

Unitary Authorities, which are in use throughout the whole of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and in some areas in England, have a single tier of local government, and combine District and County Council functions into one body.

In Greater London, a unique two-tier system exists, with power shared between the London borough councils, and the Greater London Authority which is headed by an elected mayor.

Unitary authorities often share common public safety authorities with other neighbouring councils. For example, Luton shares services with Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire and Milton Keynes shares services with Buckinghamshire.

European Union
The United Kingdom is a member of the European Union (EU). As such, UK citizens elect Members of the European Parliament to represent them in the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. The UK elects 78 MEPs.

In recent years, there have been divisions in both major parties as to whether the UK should form greater ties within the EU, leave things as they are, or reduce the EU's supranational powers. Opponents of greater European integration are known as Eurosceptics, supporters Pro-Europeans. Divisions over Europe run deep in both major parties, and though the Conservative Party was seen to split over this issue whilst in Government up to 1997, it is the Labour Party which now faces conflicting views within Cabinet over UK involvement in the Euro and the new European Constitution.

British nationalists have long campaigned against EU integration. The strong showing of the eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2004 European Parliament elections has shifted the debate over UK relations with the EU.

International organization participation

 * African Development Bank
 * Asian Development Bank
 * Australia Group
 * Bank for International Settlements
 * Commonwealth of Nations
 * Caribbean Development Bank (non-regional)
 * Council of Europe
 * CERN
 * Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council
 * European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
 * United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (associate)
 * United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
 * United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
 * European Investment Bank
 * European Space Agency
 * Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
 * European Union
 * Food and Agriculture Organization
 * G5, G6, G7, G8
 * G10
 * Inter-American Development Bank
 * International Atomic Energy Agency
 * International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
 * International Civil Aviation Organization
 * International Chamber of Commerce
 * International Criminal Court
 * International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
 * International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
 * International Development Association
 * International Energy Agency
 * International Fund for Agricultural Development
 * International Finance Corporation
 * International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
 * International Hydrographic Organization
 * International Labour Organization
 * International Monetary Fund
 * International Maritime Organization
 * Inmarsat
 * International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Intelsat)
 * International Criminal Police Organization–Interpol
 * IOC
 * IOM (observer), ISO, ITU, MONUC, NAM (guest), NATO, NEA, NSG,
 * Organization of American States (observer)
 * Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
 * Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
 * OSCE,
 * Permanent Court of Arbitration
 * SPC
 * United Nations
 * United Nations Security Council (permanent member)
 * UNAMSIL
 * UNCTAD
 * UNESCO
 * UNFICYP
 * UNHCR
 * UNIDO
 * UNIKOM
 * UNMIBH
 * UNMIK
 * UNOMIG
 * UNRWA
 * UNTAET
 * UNU
 * UPU
 * World Confederation of Labour
 * World Customs Organization
 * Western European Union
 * World Health Organization
 * World Intellectual Property Organization
 * World Meteorological Organization
 * World Trade Organization
 * Zangger Committee