Individual members have little or no power, how accurate is this statement? (25marks). Some people believe that individual members are not important in party politics, as they have little or no power, but different party members have different responsibilities than others. In the Labour party the members, union and MP's can vote for the leader of the party, they all have 33% of the vote so they all have equal amount of power in that aspect of party politics. The election of the leader is very important part of political parties as people now vote more for a prime minster than governing party, for example conservative’s won over Labour because David Cameron was seen as more enthusiastic and inspirational then Gordon brown, where he was seen as dull and boring.
They also are ineffective at representing their constitution because out of 650 MPs, only 147 of them are female, and even fewer are ethnic minorities which means they are not effectively representing the population. Secondly, MPs are effective because they scrutinise and hold the government to account with questions. They can scrutinise the opposition, or if they are rebels for example, Nadine Dorries, they can scrutinise their own party. Recently, MPs have become even more under the Speaker John Berkow who has allowed increasing amounts of urgent questions, 25 in his first year. There is also the 10 minute question time, and ballot box at the end of Question Time.
However, some people argue that the FPTP voting system is not proportional as the percentage of the vote received doesn’t equate to the amount of seats a party gets, hence the 2011 referendum on AV. Those arguing that the HoC is outdated raise the points that whilst it does represent constituencies, it in no way represents all minority groups equally. In the UK, 10% of the population is made up of black or ethnic minorities but there is only a 5% representation in the HoC. This is similar to the lack of representation of women, women make up over 50% of the population but a
Using the sources and your own knowledge, explain what is meant by ‘democracy’? Democracy is a system of government where all eligible members of a state, vote for a leader for their country. There are 2 main types of democracy, direct and representative. Direct democracy is where the people decide on the outcome directly however this type of democracy wouldn’t work in countries such as the UK as it would be too hard to get everyone together to vote and too difficult to make sure everyone is happy with the final outcome. The other type of democracy is representative democracy where all eligible people come together to vote on a representative e.g.
They are dependent on a coalition government because so far they have never had a majority in Parliament. Without the Conservatives choosing to form a coalition with them in order to create a majority, the Liberal Democrats would never have been able to come into power. Furthermore they’re becoming increasing unpopular in power due to breaking promises and being accused of ‘turning Tory’. This suggests that they have no political strength by themselves and that many potential voters will turn to alternatives, such as the Labour party, who could ultimately gain popularity due to the failures of the Liberal Democrats; therefore the UK is still a two party system favouring the Conservatives and Labour party. However on the other hand it is argued that the UK could not possibly be a two party system because the Conservatives wouldn’t have been able to come into power without the Liberal Democrats.
Select Committees in the House of Commons are the modern way of parliamentary scrutiny. The House of Commons is now a committee based legislature and detailed scrutiny of government conducted by parliament occurs inside committee rooms. Select Committees, which are usually made
They also have a number of hereditary peers (although there will no longer be any hereditary peers appointed. There have been many calls to make the House of Lords into an elected chamber as people say that the fact that it is unelected reduces the democracy of the United Kingdom and that it is unfair to have an unelected as the peers may not actually represent the views of the people. However, there are also many arguments as to why the House of Lords should remain unelected. The first and possibly most convincing argument is the fact that an elected second chamber would actually be completely pointless as it would be exactly the same and the House of Commons. This means that instead of making the House of Lords elected, it would probably be more practical just to get rid of it all together and just have the House of Commons.
On the other hand, First Past the Post is noticeable for its simplicity and being straight forward. Additional Member System is an electoral system which each elector votes separately for a party and for a representative. One criticism of AMS is it allows extremist parties to get to power and govern the country. For example, in the Scottish Parliament 2011 elections, in FPTP Green Party would have received no seats but under the Additional Member System they were able to get 2seats. Although this is a good thing because it allows smaller parties to govern it gives extremists parties the chance to govern.
As your freedom of speech can be heavily hampered if you do not operate within the law; or you are voicing racist or offensive opinions, or your speech is threatening to “breach the peace” this is too say, what you are saying could be grossly offensive to some groups or individuals. The United Kingdom is definitely a democracy though (referring back to the definition) as in the UK we have free and fair (and regular) elections, and there are always 2 or more (3 main) parties to vote for. This prevents the UK from moving from a democracy into a dictatorship, as there are always other options to give your vote. The democracy also calls for competitive elections in which every adult is allowed to vote. There are further features of a Liberal Democracy which need to be held by the UK for it too fall into the category; Elected representatives and the government should be held to account by the people, something which is true within the UK as members of parliament are held accountable to the people, if they don’t do what they promise the people will not re-elect them, they are also held to account by legislature.
This would actually increase the level of democracy in effect but may completely defy the objective of politics. If elections were every 2 years, parties could not make any long term goals for the country in fear of losing the next general election. All policies would be short term and therefore not made for any good running of the country and just to gain popularity in the short term. This in turn may not enhance democracy, but lead it to a failing economy and government and may even lead to anarchism. Another potential way of increasing and enhancing democracy would be a compulsory vote.