The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy. This means that it has a monarch (a king or a queen) as its Head of State.The present British monarch is Queen Elizabeth 2, who succeeded to the throne in 1952. The monarch has very little power and can only reign with support of Parliament, which consists of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Parliament and the monarch have different roles in the government of the country. In reality, the House of Commons is the only one that has true power, it introduces new bills. Then they go to the House of Lords for approval and finally the monarch signs them. Only then they can become laws. The House of Commons is made up of 650 elected members, known as Members of Parliament, each of whom represents an area of the UK. The political parties choose candidates in elections. The party, which wins majority of seats in the House of Commons, forms the Government and its leader usually, becomes Prime Minister. The largest minority party becomes the Opposition. The Prime Minister chooses about twenty MPs from his or her party and forms his or her Cabinet Ministers. Each minister is responsible for a particular area of government.
The House of Lords consists of more than 1,000 hereditary lords and peers. It has very little power. The two main political parties in Great Britain are the Conservative and the Labour party. Now the Conservative Party is in power. Among other political parties there is the Liberal party and the Social-Democratic party.
