The United Kingdom is a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch. A king or queen is the head of state, and a prime minister is the head of government. The people vote in elections for Members of Parliament (MPs) to represent them.
Constitution: The United Kingdom doesn't have a single, written constitution (a set of rules of government). But it doesn't mean that the UK has an ‘unwritten constitution’. In fact, it is mostly written – but instead of being one formal document, the British constitution is formed from various sources including statute law, case law made by judges, and international treaties. There are also some unwritten sources, including parliamentary conventions and royal prerogatives.
Monarchy: Politics in the United Kingdom takes place within the framework of a constitutional monarchy, in which the monarch (Queen Elizabeth II) is the head of state and the prime minister is the head of the UK government.
Prime Minister and Cabinet: The Cabinet is a formal body made up of the most senior government ministers chosen by the prime minister. Most members are heads of government departments with the title 'Secretary of State'. Formal members of the Cabinet are drawn exclusively from the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
The UK is a parliamentary democracy. It means that: *members of the government are also members of one of the two Houses of Parliament (the House of Commons and the House of Lords) – although there are rare exceptions to this rule *government is directly accountable to Parliament – not only on a day-to-day basis (through parliamentary questions and debates on policy) but also because it owes its existence to Parliament: the governing party is only in power because it holds a majority in the House of Commons, and at any time the government can be dismissed by the Commons through a vote of ‘no confidence’
The UK Parliament is a ‘sovereign parliament’: the legislative body has ‘absolute sovereignty’, in other words