Are We Witnessing the Demise of the "Westminster Model" in the Uk?

‘The main reason for conservative dominance in the years 1951 to 1964 was labour disunity’ Assess the validity of this view. (June 2011)

Firstly the House of Lords reform where the voting rights of most hereditary peers was abolished. This makes the UK less undemocratic rather then more democratic. This is due to the fact that the House of Lords as a whole is an unelected chamber and therefore undemocratic, however by removing the voting rights of some

Direct democracy is a form of government in which all laws are created by a general vote of society. This means that political decisions are put forward to the people as they are the ones who are going to be directly affected by the outcome of the decision. An example of direct democracy used occasionally in society is referendums. A referendum is a general vote by the electorate on a single political question which has been referred to them for a direct decision. Within this essay I am going to be arguing whether direct democracy should be used more widely by weighing up the

In the USA, the President and the houses are elected separately, however in the UK, the Prime Minister is elected, primarily, as an MP- it is the leader of the winning party who gets the role of Prime Minister. However, in recent years, election campaigns have become really personalised- focussing more on the party leader’s personality, strengths and weaknesses rather than the party’s policies, promises and ideas as a whole. The lead up to the next general election demonstrates this: the party leaders of the three major parties have become the ‘face’ of their party’s election campaign. The media concentrates more on the party leader rather than the party as a whole- just like in USA. For the first time in British history, there is going to be live debates between the three leaders-again just like the run up to the American general elections. These points highlight that the UK is beginning to adopt some American, presidential traditions, it can be said that this is a strong sign that presidentialism is growing in the UK.

There is an argument that the government has the power and right to change laws and represent people without necessarily having to be elected. This can also be known as ‘Democratic deficit’. An example of democratic deficit is the House of Lords. The members in the House of Lords aren’t elected but they get to make laws and represent the people. The members in House of Lords are usually given their seats hereditarily so many people found it unfair that they’re not elected into the Parliament but they can make decisions and laws

The first thing to look at is the various types of democracy used in the UK. There are many examples of the various types of democracies with the first being direct democracy. A recent example of what a direct democracy can do is the Scottish Referendum taking place throughout Scotland. This allows the people of Scotland to take the decision of independence in to their own hands. This is a great example

Under a minority government, no party has ultimate control of making policies, it instead rules on consensus with the other parties, conversely, in a majority government, a single-party dominates the legislative process. Though complex agreements between opposition parties, the governing party can maintain confidence. For example, countries including Canada use contract parliamentarism, where opposition parties agree to support the government in return for policy on other concessions (Akash et al., 2010, p. 216). While this promotes collective responsibility, parties are still able to decide their own position on most matters. Therefore, parties collaborate to protect minority agreements that “often survive a full parliamentary term” (Akash et al., p. 216). This can result in motions being passed that cover a broad variety of different topics that ultimately can address issues that all parties see lacking in

Elective Dictatorship is the term used to describe the government and the Prime minister to be seen as having powers over the country that seem excessive. A government appointing as an elected dictatorship is likely to have a large majority over all other parties in the House of Commons. This essay will analise the arguments for and against the UK having an elected dictatorship. It will conclude that a proper dictatorship is never possible because the UK’s constitution is a democratic one and there are counter balances to accessive Prime ministerial powers. However when a government has a very large majority it can use its control over the House of Commons to make decisions that can seem to some as being dictatorial.

In this essay I will assess the outcomes of Additional Member system, First Past the Post system and the Closed Party List system. The F-P-T-P system is used to elect the members of House of Commons and local government in England and Wales. Voters select candidates, and do so by marking his or her name with an ‘X’ on the ballot paper. This reflects the principle of ‘one person, one vote’. The Additional Members system is used in Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly, and Northern Ireland Assembly and Greater London assembly. It is a mixed system made up of F-P-T-P and party-list elements. The Regional party list (or the closed party list) is used to elect the

In this paper, I intend to analyse the extent to which the current Labour administration shows the characteristics of a presidential government. To do this, the term ‘presidential' must first be defined. A definition of a presidential government that is generally accepted by political analysts is ‘a system of government in which the powers of the president are constitutionally separate from those of the legislature.' The British system of government is parliamentary and does not match the definition of presidential. Therefore, the question must be answered by looking at the individual features of a presidential government and comparing them with aspects of the Labour

Westminster is the location of the Houses of Parliament, where the majority of political decisions (other than those for devolved states) are made for the nation. The current Westminster electoral system is First Past the Post (FPTP) which is used for general elections every 5 years (due to the new fixed-term parliaments brought in by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.) The FPTP system is constituency based, each person votes for a representative for their constituency and whichever party wins the most constituencies gains governmental power. First Past the Post works on the basis of a plurality of votes, that is, that the winning party need only gain the most votes out of all parties to gain power, they do not need an overall

The Labour government of 1974-1979 also won two elections, the 1974 February election and the 1974 October election, however both were won by a minority. The February election was won by 4 seats and the October election was won by 42 seats. The reason for the slim win is to do with inflation. The Labour governments of 1974-1979 were in office at a bad time because Britain had started to suffer from huge inflation because of the oil price rise in 1973, and so voters didn’t have a clear decision on which they were going to vote for. This shows that at the moment the 1964-1970 Labour Government was more successful by far because of their majority of 110 seats in the 1966 election.

The dispersion of power in the UK varies greatly, each country having a different seat on the level-pegging of power over one another - in particular, policy areas, due to the various referendums, including ones already mentioned. This is called an asymmetrical devolution system.

As stated by Holmes, in the 1980s, there was a lot of chaos in the party as Margaret Thatcher had moved the party to the extreme right amongst other things, making her members of parliament keen to replace her. She was replaced by John Major in 1990 who won four successive elections. Between 1900 and 2000, the conservatives were in power two-third of the time. The period in time when they were not in power, was in 1997 were they lost the election and also in 2001.At that point time, the conservative leaders were (William Hague and Iain Duncan smith) who struggled to win back votes of the people. The policies that were left by Margret Thatcher were not favoured by the people. In 2003, Michael Howard (right winger) revived the conservatives but the conservatives were defeated by the liberal democrat party in the 2005 general election. (Holmes pg276-277)

There have been many constitutional reforms since 1997 that is progressive towards a more democratic system, however it is not a complete democracy and there are still parts of the constitution could be improved. In 1997 Labour government came to power, with tony blair as prime minister, later Gordon Brown came to power between 2007 to 2010 have made a series of constitutional reforms. This was due to the fact that many practices of british politics were out of date, and therefore sought to modernise the constitution. Another main issue was that the central parliament, Westminster has too much power and therefore the labour party sought to decentralize