the british parliament essay

British Parliamentary System Advantages and Disadvantages

Parliamentary system: introduction, advantages of the british parliamentary system, disadvantages of the british parliamentary system, parliamentary system advantages and disadvantages: conclusion, works cited.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of parliamentary democracy? Find the answer here! This essay presents a criticism of parliamentary system as a form of government.

A parliamentary system is a form of governance in a nation from where the executive branch obtains its power (Rodner 54). The executive is accountable to the House of Commons in Britain. Hence, the two are interrelated. It is important to note that the head of state is different from the head of government. Thus, it is different from the presidential form of democracy. It is usually practised in monarchies and parliamentary republics. A parliamentary system could be a bicameral system that consists of two chambers, or a unicameral house (Rodner 58). This essay focuses on discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the British Parliamentary system.

In order to understand the advantages of the British Parliamentary system, it is important to highlight its components (Rodner 59). First, the executive is linked with the legislature. Second, the executive organ is composed of the prime minister and cabinet ministers. Finally, it has a separate head of state and head of government (Rodner75). The above features give the system many advantages. One of the main advantages of this system is unity (Rodner 79).

This is for the reason that the executive and the legislative organs support each other. According to Rodner (83), unity is key because the legislative arm can pass a vote of no confidence if it is not contented with the performance of the executive branch. The process of making and amending laws is easier and faster (Rodner 85). The executive arm has the majority party in the parliament, meaning that it has the majority votes. This implies that it is easier to pass legislations without much resistance from the opposition (Rodner 85).

Moreover, the British Parliamentary system draws the attention of ethnic communities, making the leadership very effective in achieving national and regional goals (Gamble 404). Gamble (406) states that power is spread evenly on the platform of the British Parliamentary system. The prime minister is as important as the monarch because voters focus on voting for party ideas, but not for persons. Gamble (409) contends that the system also allows serious debates in parliament that could lead to changes of power without holding elections. Elections in Britain can be held anytime, especially if the assembly passes a vote of no confidence vis-a-vis the executive (Gamble 411). Parliamentary system in Britain is associated with less corruption (Gamble 411).

In fact, leaders who do not perform as expected are removed from offices. The system is also advantageous for the reason that the nation functions without a formal constitution (Bevir and Rhodes 216). Through the parliamentary arrangement, relatively small political parties grow and achieve national outlooks with a lot of ease (Bevir and Rhodes 218). For example, some leaders are indirectly elected by different districts that vote for representatives of the legislative body. Bevir and Rhodes (220) argue that in the British Parliamentary system, there is a dual relationship between the Upper House and the Lower House.

This is for the reason that both cooperate to promote the developments of the state. It is vital to state that proponents of parliamentary system argue that all political parties are included in the executive, including the minority parties (Bevir and Rhodes 224). This implies that diverse views are incorporated during the law-making process. Notably, the system has made the monarch and members of the House of Lords depend on the parliament (Bevir and Rhodes 226).

This has resulted in the promotion of accountability and transparency of the government towards citizens’ representatives. The system has developed a progressive and innovative electoral system that ensures efficiency during elections (Bevir and Rhodes 229; Lijphart 165). It allows the executive to implement its manifestos through the legislature (Bevir and Rhodes 131). This is because the executive and the legislative organs are interrelated.

The British Parliamentary system has allowed a relatively peaceful change from monarchical to a liberal democracy (Bevir and Rhodes 232). This has improved efficiency in the running of the country’s affairs. It has also allowed flexibility of legislative structures (Bevir and Rhodes 234). For example, the bicameral house is composed of the Upper House and the Lower House, which consults each other to avoid conflicts during implementation of government policies.

The British Parliamentary system has many advantages compared with other systems of governments. Despite the many advantages, it has been characterised by many disadvantages. First, the executive power is not separated from the legislature (Oliver 154; Lijphart 167). As a result, laws that are not good have been passed. Although the parliament can pass a vote of no confidence, there are limited checks and balances (Oliver 156; Lijphart 168).

This has been the case because the majority party forms the government and would always aim at protecting the government. Cabinet members are appointed from the upper house, which interferes with the functions of the upper house with regard to monitoring what the executive does (Oliver 156; Lijphart 169). Nonetheless, the informal constitution that is used in Britain can be changed at anytime by the executive and the legislative arms through a bill or an amendment (Prosse 479).

It would be important to note that the powers that are inherited are undemocratic and could cause constitutional crises (Prosse 483). Reserve powers are derived from conventions, and issues could arise when employing them. The absolute powers of the executive and the legislature have contributed to an autocratic form of government that is controlled by the prime minister (Prosse 483). This has interfered with effective functioning of other organs.

Prosse (485) supports the fact that the prime minister is not elected directly and has little autonomy, interferes with his or her decision-making process. In addition, voting of the prime minister that is done strategically might not represent the voters’ interests (Prosse 487). It is crucial to note that the British Parliament is as a result of historical processes that derived power from an absolute monarch (Prosse 487).

In conclusion, the British Parliamentary system has advantages and disadvantages. It has been used as an example that has achieved a lot across the world. It is typified by the dependence of the executive on the parliament. Prime minister and the monarch are answerable to the House of Commons, promoting accountability and transparency as aforementioned. The fact that the system lacks a clear distinction between the legislature and the parliament makes the two collaborate. Voting that is done on the basis of party manifestos implies that citizens’ interests would be addressed. However, the system utilises informal constitution that is based on multiple sources of the law. Thus, it can be manipulated by the legislature and the executive.

Bevir, Mark, and Rod Rhodes. “Studying British government: reconstructing the research agenda.” The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 1.2 (1999): 215-239. Print.

Gamble, Andrew. “Theories of British politics.” Political Studies 38.3 (1990): 404-420. Print.

Lijphart, Arend. “ Patterns of democracy: governance forms and performance in 36 countries .” New Haven, CT: Yale university press. (1999). Print.

Oliver, Dawn. “Constitutional reform in the United Kingdom.” Oxford, United Kingdom: OUP Oxford. (2004). Print.

Prosser, Tony. “Understanding the British constitution.” Political Studies 44.3 (1996): 473-487. Print.

Rodner Brazier. “ Constitutional practice: The foundations of British Government .” Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford university press. 1999. Print.

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British Parliament

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 20, 2023 | Original: August 10, 2017

Parliament is the legislative body of the United Kingdom and is the primary law-making institution in Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy. The history of the legislative body—which meets in the Palace of Westminster in London—shows how it evolved almost organically, partly in response to the needs of the country’s reigning monarch. Parliament traces its roots back to the earliest meetings of English barons and commoners in the 8th century.

Parliament’s Humble Beginnings

The present-day Parliament is a bicameral (“two chambers”) legislature with a House of Lords and a House of Commons . These two houses, however, weren’t always joined, and had their earliest beginnings in the Anglo-Saxon council governments of the 8th century.

The Witan was a small council of clergymen, land-owning barons and other advisors chosen by the king to discuss matters of state, taxation and other political affairs. As it expanded to include more advisors, the Witan evolved into the magnum concilium or Great Council.

On a local level, “moots” were meetings of local bishops, lords, sheriffs and, importantly, commoners who were representatives of their counties or “shires.”

These institutions functioned—with varying degrees of success—as law-making bodies and law enforcement agencies throughout England during the Middle Ages . The two bodies didn’t regularly convene, but they paved the way to the bicameral legislature that exists today.

Magna Carta

The first English Parliament was convened in 1215, with the creation and signing of the Magna Carta , which established the rights of barons (wealthy landowners) to serve as consultants to the king on governmental matters in his Great Council.

As in the early Witans, these barons were not elected, but rather selected and appointed by the king. The Great Council was first referred to as “Parliament” in 1236.

By 1254, the sheriffs of the various counties in England were instructed to send elected representatives of their districts (knowns as “knights of the shire”) to consult with the king on issues related to taxation. Four years later, at the English university town of Oxford, the noblemen who served in Parliament at the time drafted the “Provisions of Oxford,” which called for regular meetings of the legislative body, composed of representatives from each of the counties.

In 1295, Parliament evolved to include nobles and bishops as well as two representatives from each of the counties and towns in England and, since 1282, Wales. This became the model for the composition of all future Parliaments.

Richard II Deposed

Over the course of the next century, the membership of Parliament was divided into the two houses it features today, with the noblemen and bishops encompassing the House of Lords and the knights of the shire and local representatives (known as “burgesses”) making up the House of Commons.

During this time, too, Parliament began to take on more authority within the English government. In 1362, for example, it passed a statute decreeing that Parliament must approve all taxation.

Fourteen years later, the House of Commons tried and impeached a number of the king’s advisors. And, in 1399, after years of internal struggle for power between the monarchy and Parliament, the legislative body voted to depose King Richard II, enabling Henry IV to assume the throne.

Parliament’s Power Expands

During Henry IV’s time on the throne, the role of Parliament expanded beyond the determination of taxation policy to include the “redress of grievances,” which essentially enabled English citizens to petition the body to address complaints in their local towns and counties. By this time, citizens were given the power to vote to elect their representatives—the burgesses—to the House of Commons.

In 1414, Henry IV’s son, Henry V , assumed the throne and became the first monarch to acknowledge that the approval and consultation of both houses of Parliament was required to make new laws. Still, all was not perfect in England’s fledgling democracy.

More than 100 years later, in 1523, philosopher and writer Sir Thomas More , a Member of Parliament (M.P. for short), was the first to raise the issue of “ freedom of speech ” for lawmakers in both houses during deliberations. A half-century hence, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in 1576, Peter Wentworth, M.P., made an impassioned speech arguing for the same right; he was sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower of London .

Wentworth, a Puritan , later clashed with Elizabeth I over issues related to freedom of religion during his time as an M.P., and he was jailed for these acts as well. It was this persecution that led the Puritans to leave England for the New World in the 1600s, helping to settle the 13 colonies that eventually became the United States.

English Civil War

For much of the 17th century, the United Kingdom experienced a great deal of change and political turmoil. Arguably, the one constant was Parliament.

From 1603 to 1660, the country was mired in a drawn-out civil war and, for a time, military leader Oliver Cromwell assumed power under the title Lord Protector. The ruling monarch at the time, Charles I , was executed in 1649.

Cromwell is best known for conquering Scotland (1649) and Ireland (1651) and bringing them, unwillingly, under the dominion of the United Kingdom. Still, those two nations had their own Parliaments, made up of Cromwell supporters.

Parliament continued to retain some power during this period of change. However, M.P.s who were thought to be loyal to Charles I were excluded from the legislature in 1648, creating the so-called “Rump Parliament.”

The Monarchy Abolished

In 1649, the House of Commons took the unprecedented step of abolishing the monarchy and declaring England a commonwealth.

Four years later, though, Cromwell disbanded the Rump Parliament and created the Nominated Assembly, a de facto legislature. Cromwell died in 1658 and was replaced by his son Richard. The son was deposed a year later, and Britain’s government effectively collapsed.

Charles I’s son, Charles II , was restored to the throne in 1660, reaffirming the monarchy’s place in British history.

New Parliamentary elections were held. And the M.P.s elected effectively held their seats for the next 18 years, during which no general election was called.

The Stuart Kings

The so-called “Stuart Kings”—Charles II and his brother James II, who succeeded him in 1685—maintained a similar relationship with the legislature as their father had in the 1640s. However, religion was a major issue dividing English government and society.

When Parliament passed the “Test Act,” which prevented Catholics from holding elected office, the legislature was at odds with King James II, himself a Catholic. After years of political in-fighting during the Glorious Revolution , Parliament deposed James II in 1689 and his eldest daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange ascended to the throne.

During their brief rule, Parliament was once again elevated to having law-making powers. In fact, when Mary and William died (in 1694 and in 1702, respectively), the legislature established new protocols for succession, and named George of Hanover king.

Parliament in Recent History

Over course of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, Parliament and its powers evolved—just as the United Kingdom itself did.

Scotland formally became a part of the United Kingdom in 1707, and thus sent representatives to the Parliament at Westminster . By the late 1700s, Ireland was also part of the United Kingdom (the six counties in the north of the island—known collectively as Ulster—remain part of the U.K. today), and land-owners there elected their own representatives to both houses of Parliament.

Through a series of legislative acts, known as the “Reform Acts,” a number of changes were made to the composition and legislative process in Parliament. The Reform Act of 1918 gave women the right to vote, and the first woman was elected to the body that same year.

However, Countess Constance Markievicz of Ireland was a member of Sinn Fein, the political party seeking independence for the island nation, and thus refused to serve.

Meanwhile, the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 established greater powers for the House of Commons, which has 650 elected members, compared to the House of Lords, which has 90 members appointed via peerage (a system of titles for noblemen).

House of Lords

Today, the two houses of Parliament—the House of Lords and the House of Commons—meet in the Palace of Westminster in London, and are the only body in the United Kingdom’s constitutional monarchy government with the authority to create legislation and make laws.

The current monarch, King Charles III , still serves a ceremonial role as head of state, and the country’s executive branch is headed by the Prime Minister.

While the House of Lords can debate all bills that don’t deal directly with financial matters for the country, it is the House of Commons that holds the ultimate sway when it comes to whether legislation ultimately becomes law.

However, the House of Lords does play a role in government accountability, through its questioning of cabinet ministers and the formation of special committees to address important matters of state. Its members are now mostly appointees, not peers who inherit their seats in the House of Lords.

House of Commons

Today, all legislation must be approved by the House of Commons in order for it to become law. The House of Commons also controls taxation and the government’s purse strings. 

The public in the United Kingdom elects each of the 650 members of the House of Commons. And in a system somewhat different from that of the United States, government ministers (including the Prime Minister) must regularly answer questions in the House of Commons.

The Birth of English Parliament. Parliament.uk . A brief history of the UK Parliament. BBC News . The Civil War. HistoryofParliament.org . Stuarts. HistoryofParliament.org . Reform Era. HistoryofParliament.org . Legislative Procedure in the House of Commons. University of Leeds . Timeline: Constitutional crises in English and British history. Reuters .

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The UCLA Library has an extensive collection of the British Parliamentary Papers that include primary sources for history, foreign policy, economics, labor, law, sociology, and agriculture of Great Britain, India, New Zealand, Canada, and North America. There are three kinds of materials containing legislative information in our collection: the House of Commons Sessional Papers, the Parliamentary Debates, and the Journals. In the Charles E. Young Research Library parliamentary papers are available in print, microform, and electronic formats. This guide will help you locate the most important set of documents for your research.

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Article Contents

1. the referendum, 2. minority government, 3. divided parties, 4. the failure of parliamentary rules, 5. ‘parliament versus people’—the descent into populism, 6. analysis: what happened and where next, acknowledgements.

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Brexit and Parliament: The Anatomy of a Perfect Storm

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Meg Russell, Brexit and Parliament: The Anatomy of a Perfect Storm, Parliamentary Affairs , Volume 74, Issue 2, April 2021, Pages 443–463, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsaa011

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The Westminster parliament lies at the heart of UK democracy. Yet its role and powers became increasingly controversial during the ‘Brexit’ process, following the 2016 referendum decision to leave the European Union. Fierce arguments were framed as ‘parliament versus people’, which fed a populist narrative and raised fundamental questions about where UK sovereignty should lie. This article charts the stages of parliament’s Brexit ‘perfect storm’, tracing its causes to four factors: the design of the referendum, a period of (unfamiliar) minority government, deeply divided political parties, and the weakness of parliamentary rules in facilitating a solution. In the end, the Brexit argument was primarily one inside the Conservative Party, but parliament got the blame.

The UK is famously the most parliamentary of democracies. Its unique status is based not just on being a ‘parliamentary democracy’ in the typical sense, of the executive depending on parliamentary confidence for its survival ( Sartori, 1994 ), but beyond that on the central UK constitutional tradition of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ ( Goldsworthy, 2001 ). This makes parliament the highest authority, with no written constitution to bind its powers.

It was thus highly unusual, and potentially highly destabilising, that parliament’s role came to be intensely contested during the UK’s recent crisis over ‘Brexit’. Following a narrow referendum vote in June 2016 that the UK should leave the European Union (EU) (secured by 52% of votes to 48%), parliament became the forum for increasingly bitter policy battles, leaving the executive and legislature divided in a way most uncharacteristic of parliamentary systems. Throughout this process, the correct site of constitutional sovereignty became widely disputed. Flashpoints included repeated defeats of the government’s Brexit proposals in the House of Commons, and fierce procedural wrangles over control of the parliamentary agenda. Rarely used parliamentary tools, such as emergency debates, or those normally seen as ‘toothless’, such as private members’ bills, were deployed against the government in anger—to significant effect. Amidst these bitter disputes, one Prime Minister (Theresa May) was forced to resign, and her successor (Boris Johnson) attempted to shut down parliament using the prerogative power of prorogation—only for his direction to the Queen to be overturned by the UK Supreme Court. When members of parliament (MPs) reconvened following the court’s intervention, anti-parliamentary rhetoric reached new levels, with the Attorney General controversially suggesting that ‘This Parliament is a dead Parliament … [that] has no moral right to sit’. 1 Shortly afterwards, the UK embarked on a general election (the first December election since 1923), marked by a rhetoric of ‘parliament versus people’. Its result was a landslide win for the same Prime Minister that had unlawfully shut parliament down.

This article explores how such a strange and unsettling period developed, and what it teaches us about the place of parliament in the UK system of government—to date, and potentially in the future. It suggests that four key political and constitutional features, all of them unusual in a UK context, contributed to creating this ‘perfect storm’. The four features—the referendum, a period of minority government, deep divisions within the governing party, and parliament’s own mechanisms for handling a minority situation—are used to structure the main body of the article. The article ends by reflecting on where this leaves the UK—with the ‘perfect storm’ having fuelled an unprecedented level of populist rhetoric and public hostility to parliament. It suggests that the UK system, including its parliament, was ill-adapted to accommodate key recent changes. Overall, the behaviour of both prime ministers—in the context of a deeply divided Conservative Party—greatly fuelled the situation. In the process, the divisions over Brexit raised increasingly existential questions about sovereignty in the UK system, which remain raw and unresolved.

The starting point for parliament’s battles over Brexit was obviously the referendum, held on 23 June 2016—which itself had a substantially longer history. Referendums are relatively unfamiliar in UK politics, though their use has gradually grown ( Independent Commission on Referendums, 2018 ). These ‘direct democracy’ mechanisms clearly sit somewhat awkwardly alongside the UK’s tradition of representative democracy, introducing an element of popular sovereignty that could potentially conflict with parliamentary sovereignty. The Brexit referendum, as this section explores, had some unusual features that significantly exacerbated such conflicts.

The UK first joined the (then) European Community in 1973, via parliamentary decision rather than referendum. A public poll was later held in 1975 which strongly supported continued membership. In subsequent years, gradually greater EU integration was coupled with increasingly vocal ‘Euroscepticism’, and regular demands for referendums on the transfer of new powers to EU institutions—ironically often framed as seeking to defend parliamentary sovereignty ( Gifford and Wellings, 2017 ). From its emergence in the 1990s, the UK Independence Party, which favoured EU withdrawal, placed increasing pressure on the Conservative Party—exacerbating the latter’s long-running internal splits over the EU. Eventually, under pressure from his Eurosceptic backbenchers, Prime Minister David Cameron committed to holding an ‘in-out’ referendum ( Smith, 2017 ).

Although professing a degree of Euroscepticism, Cameron went into the referendum firmly favouring continued EU membership and was highly visible in the ‘Remain’ campaign. This was the referendum’s first unusual feature, in both domestic and international terms. Recent prior referendums in UK politics, most notably on devolution in the 1990s, had offered the public a change strongly advocated by ministers. 2 In contrast, in bringing forward legislation to provide for the 2016 poll, the government’s official position favoured continued EU membership. Ministers had merely conceded the principle that ‘the decision … should be taken by the British people’. 3 Labour and the Liberal Democrats accepted this, despite also both being firmly committed to continued membership of the bloc. On 9 June 2015, the EU (Referendum) Bill thus passed its Commons second reading by 544 votes to 53.

A referendum was thereby held on a proposition for change anathema to both the Prime Minister and the majority of MPs. Had the question of EU membership been put directly to the House of Commons, it would almost certainly have had strong support—including among Conservatives ( Heppell et al. , 2017 ). Although collective Cabinet responsibility was lifted for the campaign, allowing individual ministers to support either side, the government’s official position was to back ‘Remain’. Rather than promoting change, the referendum’s principal purpose was thus to clear the air and end a lingering political argument. After the result, the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (2017 , p. 12), though chaired by a leading Brexit supporter, was highly critical of this staging of what it dubbed a ‘bluff call’ referendum, where government ‘initiated the process … despite being against the suggested proposal, and with the aim of using a negative result to shut down the debate about the question’. The decisions of both the Prime Minister and parliament had clearly been influenced by consistent polling prior to the referendum which indicated that only a minority of the public supported leaving the EU ( Curtice, 2016 ).

A second notable feature of the referendum was that it asked the public to decide on a broad principle, rather than a detailed manifesto for change. Of course, the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU would by necessity be subject to negotiation with other Member States, so a fully agreed prospectus was impossible. However, the government’s strong preference for the status quo meant that there was very little consideration of how the change option would work. As again identified by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (2017 , p. 4), ‘There was no proper planning for a Leave vote so the EU referendum opened up much new controversy’. The government offered no clear prospectus, and in the absence of this there was little strategic incentive for the Leave campaign to elaborate on its catchy slogan to ‘take back control’. Issues which became central to the subsequent debates—most obviously how to manage the position of Northern Ireland, which shares a land border with the EU—were hence barely mentioned during the campaign.

These two characteristics were unusual not only in domestic, but also in international, terms. In previous UK referendums where ministers had supported change, its details were generally already clear. Prior to the previous UK-wide referendum in 2011, on changing the voting system for the House of Commons, there had been differences of view between the two government coalition partners. But the risk of arguments over implementation in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote was removed by parliament having legislated prior to the referendum to set out fully how the new system would work (ultimately the public voted ‘No’). This approach was consistent with that typically used internationally for constitutional referendums. Such votes are often required as part of the constitutional reform process, but this is generally a multi-stage process, where the legislature, as well as the voters, must endorse the change ( Independent Commission on Referendums, 2018 ). Additionally, of course, in most places, constitutional change comprises a clearly defined amendment to a constitutional document. Hence both its precise wording and the in-principle support of politicians are already in place before the public are presented with a change proposition.

Instead, with Brexit, the ‘new controversy’ opened up by the referendum result was left for others to resolve. The decision had, in effect, been constructed as a two-part question: first, whether the UK should leave the EU, and then, if so, on what terms. The public had answered the first part of the question and it unexpectedly became the job of parliament and government (alongside EU partners) to answer the second.

Before this second part of the question could be addressed, post-referendum controversy emerged over sovereignty, as applied to the first part. Alongside providing no detail on implementation, the legislation had contained no explicit legal instruction on how ministers should act immediately following a Leave vote. The new Prime Minister Theresa May, who rapidly replaced David Cameron following his resignation on the day after the referendum result, took the outcome as politically, even if not legally, binding. She sought to act on public instruction, by using the executive’s prerogative powers to trigger the Article 50 provisions in the Treaty of European Union (which allow for departure of a Member State), thereby adopting an implicit logic of popular sovereignty. There was relatively little resistance to this from within parliament, but a legal challenge against the government did ultimately end in the Supreme Court. 4 The court concluded that if ministers triggered Article 50 without statutory approval that would breach the core principle of parliamentary sovereignty, as it implied repeal of a prior statute (the European Communities Act 1972). A new statute was hence required, bringing parliament into the process.

This episode sparked one of the most notorious rhetorical responses of the period, when on 3 November 2016 the Daily Mail front page painted three High Court justices as ‘enemies of the people’ for deciding that Brexit should be handed back to parliament. The clear expectation of some on both sides of the Brexit divide was that MPs might now overturn the result. The ruling hence presented parliamentarians with a difficult dilemma, forcing them to decide very explicitly whether or not they had ceded their sovereignty to the public.

The government responded by publishing the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill—a one-clause measure authorising the Prime Minister formally to request the triggering of Article 50. Debate at the bill’s Commons second reading was agonised, extending over two days with 189 speakers. 5 Many MPs expressed their own misgivings about the referendum result, but indicated that they felt it must be honoured. Some, representing constituencies where the balance of votes had favoured remaining in the EU, argued that they should be guided by constituency rather than national opinion, and voted against. A handful did the same notwithstanding both constituency and national opinion, preferring to follow their own judgement. The debate was marked, unusually, by numerous references to Edmund Burke—whose notions of ‘delegate’ and ‘trustee’ neatly reflected MPs’ representational dilemmas ( Judge, 2005 ). But both main parties whipped in favour of the bill, and it comfortably passed its second reading by 498 votes to 114. 6 No amendments were subsequently agreed in the Commons, and changes proposed by the House of Lords were easily overturned by MPs (after which peers immediately backed down). Nonetheless, in response to pressures from both chambers, ministers gave assurances that parliament would get a vote on the deal finally agreed with the EU.

Overall, therefore, the clear reservations of many parliamentarians about the Brexit decision were overshadowed by the referendum result, with most MPs on both the government and opposition side accepting that it must be respected. Parliament hence actively, if reluctantly, ceded its sovereignty to the public on the principle of Brexit. But the detail of how to implement the decision had yet to be agreed. While the executive had initially sought to act directly on public instruction, the principle of parliamentary sovereignty was somewhat uneasily restored—including through parliament’s right to input on this next crucial part of the question.

The tensions created by the unusual referendum were significantly exacerbated by the advent of minority government post-2017. While referendums are historically uncommon in UK politics, this occurrence was even less familiar and highly consequential.

The Conservatives had won the 2015 general election only narrowly, which clearly presented a potential challenge for delivering the unexpected Brexit result—although, as indicated above, Theresa May faced little immediate parliamentary resistance. Nonetheless, having triggered Article 50, she moved straight to proposing an early general election, aimed at boosting her parliamentary majority. This aspiration seemed, at the time, well justified by the polls ( Cowley and Kavanagh, 2018 ). May had previously repeatedly denied that she would take such a route, so was concerned about how to justify her change of position ( Seldon and Newell, 2019 ). She chose to cite difficulties in parliament. Speaking outside 10 Downing Street, May suggested that ‘At this moment of enormous national significance there should be unity here in Westminster, but instead there is division’ ( BBC, 2017 ). She argued that ‘In recent weeks Labour has threatened to vote against the final agreement we reach with the European Union’ and that ‘unelected members of the House of Lords have vowed to fight us every step of the way.’ The last of these statements had no clear basis in fact—the Lords having just completely capitulated over her bill. Targeting the opposition, meanwhile, was obvious election talk—but masked her primary problem. Opposition parties fairly routinely vote against government proposals; this remains unimportant, so long as the government has solid support from its own MPs ( King, 1976 ). The unspoken challenge was thus whether May could hold together her own deeply divided parliamentary party to support a Brexit deal.

As is now well known, the Prime Minister’s 2017 general election gamble backfired. Labour performed better than expected, and the result was a hung parliament and minority Conservative government. May agreed a ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement with the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), with whose support she would enjoy a notional Commons working majority of 13. In theory, this agreement extended to Brexit matters.

There had previously been just three brief post-war periods of minority government in the UK, only one of which directly followed a general election, in February 1974—and led to another election eight months later. While minority governments are relatively common internationally, their culture and the necessary strategies for governing were hence unfamiliar in both Whitehall and Westminster.

In anticipation of the hung parliament result in 2010, a report from the Constitution Unit and Institute for Government had concluded that a ‘key lesson’ for the UK from historical and international practice was ‘that when minority prime ministers seek to govern as if they had a majority the result is instability, partisanship … and likely failure. By contrast, minority administrations which adopt a more consensual approach, negotiating and making concessions with opponents … are more likely to remain in office’ ( Hazell et al. , 2009 , p. 7). This is in line with the comparative literature, which emphasises the importance of cross-party bargaining and concessions ( Strøm, 1990 ). Crucially, minority governments will normally steer clear of controversial policies likely to inflame their opponents, and avoid legislating on matters where they lack parliamentary majority support. But the referendum decision denied such options to Theresa May. Instead the two-year period specified in Article 50 now gave her a clear timetable to complete the Brexit process by 29 March 2019.

Westminster is typically seen as a classic ‘majoritarian’ institution ( Lijphart, 2012 ). This can feed a myth that British politics is an ‘elective dictatorship’, where the government is guaranteed its way in parliament. But such views have always been simplistic; even under majority government, far more negotiating goes on behind the scenes within the governing party over policy than is often appreciated ( Russell and Gover, 2017 ). Nonetheless key executive actors may fall for the myth, and slip into assuming that ministers can force their policy through. To do so in times of majority government is risky, but under minority government, it becomes positively reckless—as compromise with parliament becomes essential.

The post-2017 situation would have presented a challenge to any Prime Minister. But classically both ‘structure and agency’—that is, political constraints and individual personality—matter to leadership success ( Byrne and Theakston, 2019 ). Theresa May’s attitude to parliament as Home Secretary had been that ‘she wouldn’t make any concessions on anything’—strongly suggesting that she had bought the ‘elective dictatorship’ myth. 7 The first book-length analysis of her premiership concluded that she was ‘Renowned for her intransigence’ and ‘Renowned for her tribalism’ ( Seldon and Newell, 2019 , p. 601). Yet, as Hazell et al. (2009 , p. 70) concluded, prime ministerial ‘personality and leadership style’ are crucial to the success of minority government, and ‘An obdurate [Prime Minister] with a confrontational style is likely to alienate the opposition and have greater difficulty in passing the government’s legislative agenda’. This could almost have been written with Theresa May in mind. Her political style was fundamentally unsuited to minority government and, precisely as these authors warned against, she sought to govern as if she had an assured majority.

An added source of inflexibility came from the ‘red lines’ which May had set out prior to the 2017 election. During the Conservative leadership contest to succeed Cameron, she coined the seemingly meaningless phrase ‘Brexit means Brexit’—designed to reassure ‘hard’ Eurosceptics on her backbenches, given her own Remain position during the referendum. Her ‘Lancaster House’ speech of January 2017 then went further, setting out negotiating objectives that included extracting the UK from the EU Single Market and Customs Union ( Smith, 2017 ). These positions would make a cross-party deal all but impossible. Labour’s manifesto had promised to respect the referendum result, but supported a ‘close new relationship with the EU’, proposing ‘fresh negotiating priorities that have a strong emphasis on retaining the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union’ ( Labour Party, 2017 , p. 24). Had the Prime Minister pursued a bipartisan approach, this might potentially have offered both a comfortable Brexit majority in the Commons, and the quashing of opposition criticism. But it would have required changes to her negotiating objectives, and made splits in her own parliamentary party a certainty. In the end, by failing to appeal to other parties beyond the pro-Brexit DUP, May remained captive to her own Eurosceptic wing—adopting an even more rigid and confrontational style that would be typical under majority government.

Only in spring 2019, in the dying days of her period as Prime Minister, after being defeated on her Brexit deal in the House of Commons three times, did May open formal negotiations with Labour. Simultaneously, she softened her rhetoric to admit ‘that delivering Brexit “involves difficult choices for all of us”’ (quoted in Brusenbauch Meislova, 2019 , p. 3)—a message which she consistently failed to deliver earlier and which might have helped build a more constructive atmosphere both inside and outside parliament. By this point, her position inside her own Cabinet was fragile. Labour, having been locked out of discussions and facing its own internal divisions (see below), had shifted to adopt an increasingly Brexit-sceptical position focused on a further referendum. Hence battle lines had become too firmly drawn to be dismantled. The cross-party talks made little progress, and May’s Conservative colleagues forced her eventual resignation.

Returning to sovereignty, minority government significantly exacerbated the tensions that had occurred at the previous stage. May continued to try and harness executive power in order ostensibly to respect popular sovereignty. But with no clear mandate for the form that Brexit should take, and no solid Commons majority, she failed to acknowledge the constraints of parliamentary sovereignty—creating a growing schism between government and the majority in parliament. As discussed further below, her tribalism, and consistent failure to articulate the problems caused by her own backbenchers, instead led her to lay blame on an undifferentiated collective ‘parliament’. These tendencies became more pronounced as the crisis deepened, particularly in the endgame under Boris Johnson.

The legacy of the referendum, coupled with minority government, already guaranteed a difficult parliamentary situation. But circumstances were made far worse by the divided nature of the parliamentary parties—particularly, as already emphasised, on the government side. Had Conservative MPs voted cohesively, and the DUP supported May’s Brexit deal, it would have narrowly passed the House of Commons. Instead, it was overwhelmingly defeated on two occasions: by 432 votes to 202 on 15 January 2019 and by 391 to 242 on 12 March. A further attempt, on the original ‘Brexit day’ of 29 March 2019, narrowed the margin of defeat—but still resulted in a government loss by 344 votes to 286. May’s strategy of relying on her own backbenchers failed badly. In fact, the extent to which this was a root of the difficulties was significantly masked by expectations of instability under minority government.

Unlike the previous two factors, there is nothing very unusual about party dissent in the House of Commons—but the Conservative Party’s splits over Europe were particularly long lasting and deep ( Lynch and Whitaker, 2013 ). In the first parliamentary vote, 118 Conservative MPs defied the whip, as did 75 in the second vote. On the third occasion, the number of rebels had dropped to 34. Of these, 28, rather than being opponents of Brexit, were hard-line Eurosceptics.

May’s primary adversaries were the increasingly well-organised European Research Group (ERG). It operated close to a party-within-a-party and claimed support of 60–80 Conservative MPs. Without cross-party cooperation, their backing was clearly essential. But the constraints of the negotiations with the EU27 made this challenging. The question of Northern Ireland became central, with a determination to avoid a ‘hard border’ on the island of Ireland. May’s DUP allies fundamentally opposed any customs border down the Irish Sea, which resulted in her agreeing to the so-called ‘backstop’. This would keep the whole UK in a customs union with the EU until alternative arrangements could be found ( Wright, 2019 ) and was hence unacceptable to hard-line Eurosceptics. Several Brexit-supporting ministers departed her Cabinet in protest, starting with David Davis and Boris Johnson in July 2018. At this stage, it should already have been clear that Conservative backbench Eurosceptics would not be assuaged, and that without support from opposition MPs there would be no Commons majority. In the end, even the DUP opposed May’s deal.

Divisions inside Labour also complicated matters. The party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had been elected unexpectedly in a membership ballot in 2015 despite lacking support from the parliamentary party ( Heppell et al. , 2018 ). He was more Eurosceptic than the great majority of his party—which in one respect could have made him a viable negotiating partner for May; but he was otherwise unattractive, as a staunch left-winger who lacked trust from many on his own side. Labour MPs generally felt bound by the Leave result—a handful representing Leave-voting areas even rebelling to support the government. But most preferred some kind of compromise, either through a relatively ‘soft’ Brexit or subjecting the deal to approval in a further referendum. Hence views in the Parliamentary Labour Party were fragmented, and the leader could not reliably speak on its behalf.

The standard logic at Westminster, as in other contemporary parliaments, is that governments build parliamentary majorities through agreements between stable party blocks. Had the Conservative block remained stable, and the DUP partnership held, Theresa May’s deal could have been approved. When it became clear that this would fail, some other majority needed to be found. But May stuck rigidly to her tribal approach, while Corbyn was both a difficult and an unattractive partner. With splits in both parties, questions increasingly grew over whether other parliamentarians could build an alternative majority.

The preceding three factors (or even just two of them) were sufficient to generate a chaotic parliamentary situation. They were further exacerbated by the inability of the Commons’ rules to facilitate a solution—either through allowing an alternative majority to be found, or perhaps (though this is more debatable) through allowing the government to force its MPs into line. Which of these routes the rules should have facilitated was contested, reflecting different interpretations of parliamentary sovereignty itself. But either way, the rules failed to alleviate the situation.

In some respects, it could be argued that parliament rose well to the Brexit challenge. In particular, it provided an essential forum of accountability for May and her ministers, through regular statements and questions about the negotiations and government preparedness, and through the Commons Exiting the EU Select Committee (which was created to shadow the government department of the same name). Innovative means were used to extract information from ministers, notably through revival of the ‘humble address’ procedure ( Defty, 2018 ). But as time wore on, the degree to which a recalcitrant minority government controlled the agenda of the House of Commons, and hence the ability of MPs to reach a decision point, became a problem.

In comparative terms, the Commons agenda is seen as strongly government controlled ( Döring, 2001 ). That control is manifested in various ways, most obviously through Standing Order no. 14 (SO14). This states that ‘Save as provided in this order, government business shall have precedence at every sitting’, and then lists various exceptions (whose timing in practice is also government controlled), including a limited number of days for opposition or backbench debates, and private members’ bills. Pre-Brexit, a 2009 report from the Select Committee on the Reform of the House of Commons (colloquially the ‘Wright committee’) had recommended various key changes—including establishment of a broadly representative ‘House Business Committee’ to decide the Commons’ weekly programme, which would be put to MPs for a vote ( Russell, 2011 ). This arrangement would have brought the Commons into closer line with other parliaments more often subject to minority or coalition government. Had it been implemented, the Brexit battles might have been resolved in a more controlled and constructive way. 8 However, under the standard setup of majority government pressures for change were limited, as the parliamentary majority was coterminous with the governing party (or parties), and hence this proposal was shelved. But the dynamic changed radically under minority government.

Concerns about the government’s direction on the part of Remain or ‘soft’ Brexit supporting MPs began early on, following May’s ‘Brexit means Brexit’ rhetoric. This led to defeat during passage of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill in 2017, on an amendment from former Conservative Attorney General Dominic Grieve, to enforce ministers’ promise that MPs would get to vote on the final Brexit deal. Consequently, Section 13 of the bill as passed made ratification conditional on approval in a so-called ‘meaningful vote’ by MPs. In the end delays in the negotiations, due partly to continued Cabinet splits, meant no final agreement with the EU emerged for approval until late November 2018. To meet the Section 13 requirements, the government proposed five days of Commons debate in December, to be followed by a vote. But the vote was postponed by ministers after just three days’ debate, as it was clear that defeat was imminent—which significantly angered MPs, and eventually led to the first heavy defeat on 15 January 2019. 9 By this point, the March deadline was looming, and the government apparently had no Plan B.

MPs hence increasingly sought innovative procedural solutions to avoid a ‘no deal’ exit, whereby the UK would depart the EU with no agreement in place. This included moderate backbench Conservatives and opposition MPs repeatedly seeking to ‘seize the agenda’, which in turn sparked anger among ‘hard’ Brexit supporters, some of whom were content to leave without a deal. It brought great controversy to the position of Speaker—with the incumbent (John Bercow) frequently required to decide which initiatives were permissible. Controversy over proper use of parliamentary procedure hence became increasingly heated, and politicised along Brexit lines.

Numerous backbench initiatives were attempted in this period. Votes against ‘no deal’ took place on 29 January and 13 March, effectively forcing the Prime Minister to seek an extension to Article 50. Once this had been agreed, and the deal had been rejected twice, the first successful attempt was made—in late March—to set aside SO14. On an amendment from senior Conservative backbencher Sir Oliver Letwin, MPs agreed to stage ‘indicative votes’ on a series of Brexit options on 27 March. But these became a fairly chaotic free-for-all, with all eight alternative propositions—including for a ‘softer’ Brexit or a new referendum—defeated. 10 This demonstrated starkly how difficult it is to organise a parliamentary majority without the usual apparatus of party groups (leadership, staffing and whips) to facilitate decisions, and in the absence of the usual stable voting blocs. The standard Westminster voting process (based on yes/no propositions) also contributed, as members could not express ordered preferences between the numerous options. 11 Had this been possible, a compromise around a ‘soft’ Brexit or a referendum might have been reached ( Renwick, 2019 ). A government-sponsored attempt at achieving compromise using some of these methods could perhaps have succeeded at this point—but no such attempt was made.

Another tactic deployed by the increasingly emboldened anti-‘no deal’ alliance was to use private members’ bills to force legally binding outcomes on the government. Such bills can normally readily be blocked by government whips, but rebel business motions were used to guarantee them time. The first successful such bill (the EU (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill) was sponsored by Labour’s Yvette Cooper in April, to require a further Article 50 extension. This helped force Theresa May into agreeing a (second) new deadline of 31 October. The most dramatic such intervention came in early September, when May’s successor Boris Johnson was made subject to a bill (the EU (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill) sponsored by Hilary Benn, Labour chair of the Exiting the EU select committee. This required a further extension request to 31 January if parliament had not agreed a deal by 19 October. Even more than most other initiatives the Benn Bill’s passage stretched previous precedents for the use of Commons rules, being based on a rebel business motion brought forward and agreed during an emergency (‘SO24’) debate.

Many Brexit supporters were highly critical of these moves. Opponents argued that it was not parliament’s role to take the place of government in setting such significant policy direction (e.g. Ekins and Laws, 2019 ). But government’s persistent failure to broker a compromise, and the ticking clock, left many MPs feeling compelled to act. Ironically, key Eurosceptic opponents of these moves in parliament had themselves voted to block the government's policy, preferring a ‘no deal’ option—which the Prime Minister, as well as the parliamentary majority, was working to avoid.

These episodes raised fundamental questions about whether SO14’s default of government agenda control was appropriate under minority government, or whether the more appropriate principle should be parliamentary majority control. This touched, once again, on key disputes over sovereignty—this time in terms of the interpretation of ‘parliamentary’ sovereignty itself. Under a ‘liberal’ view, parliamentary sovereignty means just that—that the ultimate authority should lie with parliament. However, an alternative ‘Whitehall’ view asserts that the true authority is the crown-in-parliament—meaning, in practice, ministers ( Birch, 1964 ). Under the latter view, parliament should primarily be an electoral college for choosing and maintaining a government that sets policy, rather than setting policy itself. Crucially, under single-party majority government these interpretations can normally remain blurred; but minority government, coupled with large-scale backbench dissent, brought them into open conflict. Again, some claimed that government control was necessary in order to uphold popular sovereignty, and thereby that parliament should be sidelined. But the key argument was between forms of Brexit, on which the public mandate was unclear—while some purporting to support executive control had voted repeatedly against the government.

For those arguing the Whitehall view, the problem was perhaps not SO14 but instead the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which had unbalanced the executive–parliament relationship (for discussion see Norton, 2019 ). The Act removed the Prime Minister’s unilateral power to call a general election—thereby boosting ‘parliamentary’ sovereignty in the purest sense. But it also removed the Prime Minister’s ability to threaten recalcitrant backbenchers with an early election when they failed to fall into line. Whether the existence of this weapon could have forced support for Theresa May’s Brexit deal is distinctly questionable, as Labour offered only a limited electoral threat; but it might perhaps have changed backbenchers’ calculations. 12

Undoubtedly, under any conception of British politics, parliament’s ultimate sanction is the ability to remove the government via a no-confidence vote. It is hence a final peculiarity of this period that, with a weak government failing on its central policy, no such vote occurred. The explanation rests on factors discussed above, including the Brexit timetable, moderate MPs’ fear of ‘no deal’, and the absence of stable building blocks from which to create an alternative majority. Crucially, rejection of Jeremy Corbyn as a viable prime minister—by Conservative rebels, Liberal Democrats, and even some on his own side—was a clear obstacle when cross-party talks did finally take place among anti-‘no deal’ MPs about possibly installing an alternative ‘unity’ government ( BBC, 2019 ). This was not until summer 2019, and any such prospect was soon—as discussed next—overtaken by other events.

The combination of these four features—the constraints on MPs resulting from the (highly unusual) referendum, the unexpected minority government, the grave divisions on the Conservative benches and the shortcomings of parliamentary rules—fuelled an increasingly adversarial and ill-tempered environment both inside and outside parliament. This laid the ground for the start of Boris Johnson’s premiership, beginning in July 2019 after May had been forced out, which was characterised by an increasingly overt populist rhetoric, setting ‘parliament’ against ‘the people’.

Johnson had been a key player in the 2016 Leave campaign and departed May’s Cabinet in protest at her Brexit proposals. He then voted against her deal twice, though backed it on the third occasion. Upon becoming Prime Minister, he appointed a strongly pro-Brexit Cabinet, including several ERG sympathisers. His administration was clearly even less likely than its predecessor to conform to the usual consensus-building expectations of minority government or to find common cause with Labour.

The timing of the Conservative leadership contest saw Johnson subject to just one day’s parliamentary scrutiny before the summer recess—providing no opportunity for MPs to question his detailed Brexit plans. He openly entertained a ‘no deal’ Brexit during the contest, which helped motivate the cross-party summer discussions among rebel MPs. With parliament set to convene on 3 September, it was clear that this group intended either to pursue what became the ‘Benn Act’ (see above) or a no-confidence vote and alternative ‘unity’ government.

But on 28 August, it was announced that Johnson had sought a five-week parliamentary prorogation from the Queen, to run from mid-September to mid-October. Leadership contender Dominic Raab had floated use of this mechanism during the contest, as a means to prevent MPs from blocking a ‘no deal’. Other contestants had condemned the idea, while Johnson had indicated that he was ‘not attracted’ to it ( Honeycombe-Foster, 2019 ). By choosing to prorogue, Johnson severely curtailed opportunities for rebel activity; nonetheless, the ‘Benn Act’ to require a further Brexit extension was rushed through before parliament closed on 9 September. 13 A group of 21 moderate Conservative MPs who voted in support of the bill was summarily stripped of the whip.

There followed a second Supreme Court case, which judged the prorogation to have been unlawful. The Court’s unanimous judgment rejected the ‘Whitehall view’ of parliamentary sovereignty, emphasising that ‘The Government exists because it has the confidence of the House of Commons. It has no democratic legitimacy other than that’. 14 Hence, as the senior partner in the relationship with government, parliament could not simply be dispensed with by ministers.

As seen above, anti-parliamentary rhetoric had already featured in the Brexit debates under Theresa May—including in her speech calling for the 2017 election. It was also evident in another, much-criticised, Downing Street statement following the second Commons defeat on her deal. As ever, not wanting to single out her own backbenchers for criticism, the Prime Minister stated that ‘MPs have been unable to agree on a way to implement the UK’s withdrawal’, suggesting that ‘you the public have had enough’ and, distancing herself from the parliament on whose support her government depended, claiming that ‘I am on your side’ ( May, 2019 ). This had clear undertones of populism, which presents society as ‘ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”’ ( Mudde, 2004 , p. 543). May sought to portray herself as the people’s defender against intransigent MPs—one of whom at the time, of course, was Boris Johnson.

Although Johnson’s argument had been with May, his own administration, particularly after the Supreme Court judgment, adopted even more persistently and manifestly populist anti-parliamentary language. The Attorney General’s comments (above)—made during the Commons’ first debate on its return—illustrate this. Johnson used his Conservative Party conference speech the following week to suggest that ‘If parliament were a school, Ofsted [the educational standards body] would be shutting it down’, and to proclaim the views of a united people, suggesting that ‘what people want, what leavers want, what remainers want, what the whole world wants’ was to ‘get Brexit done’ (PoliticsHome, 2019). By now, the very question of whether parliament should sit was becoming politicised along Brexit lines; polling showed that 76% of Remain supporters approved of the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the prorogation, but 62% of Leave voters opposed it ( Curtice, 2020 ).

Shortly before the October Brexit deadline, Johnson secured a new deal with the EU27, which avoided customs union membership for the island of Great Britain but retained this for Northern Ireland (to the consternation of the DUP). On 22 October, MPs agreed a second reading of his Withdrawal Agreement Bill by 329 votes to 299, so that it might move to its committee stage. But they rejected the bill’s programme motion, which had proposed just three days’ Commons scrutiny. At this point, Johnson pressed, for the third time since early September, for an immediate general election. To circumvent the requirements of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act he did so via a short bill, allowing it to be achieved by a simple (rather than two-thirds) majority. This facilitated, as Johnson had almost certainly wanted from the outset, an election fought on a ‘parliament versus people’ theme. In his own pre-election statement in Downing Street, he suggested that ‘our MPs are just refusing time and again to deliver Brexit and honour the mandate of the people’, and (deploying what was now his key election slogan) what was needed was instead to ‘get Brexit done’ ( Tapsfield, 2019 ). What he omitted to mention, of course, was that he and several members of his Cabinet had been central protagonists in preventing Theresa May from doing exactly that.

This article has argued that four key factors contributed, in interrelated ways, to the ‘perfect storm’ that caused the UK executive to pit itself increasingly explicitly against parliament over Brexit. The 2016 referendum presented the public with a change option that government and parliament did not support, which was ill-specified, and which left parliamentarians to navigate the unexpected result. Theresa May’s desire to strengthen her hand in parliament then resulted in a minority government, for which the UK system was ill-adapted, and to which she was personally ill-suited. There were deep divisions inside her own parliamentary party, but as an instinctively tribal politician, May made little attempt to build cross-party support, while expressing increasing frustration at an undifferentiated ‘parliament’ rather than her own backbenchers. Had the House of Commons rules been better suited to a minority situation (e.g. as proposed by the Wright committee in 2009), others might have been better able to construct a compromise around a ‘soft’ Brexit deal, and/or a further referendum. But this proved impossible; while Jeremy Corbyn’s unpopularity undermined attempts to create an alternative government. Repeated chaotic scenes, with MPs failing to back any concrete Brexit alternative, no doubt helped build support for Boris Johnson’s eventual ‘people versus parliament’ rhetoric. That he and his allies had been part of the blocking majority at earlier stages remained something that his predecessor, and oddly even the Labour leader, never highlighted. In the end, the result of a ‘bluff call’ referendum driven by divisions in the Conservative Party failed repeatedly to be delivered, due to continued divisions in the Conservative Party—and the rhetoric of the party’s leaders increasingly heaped the blame on parliament.

Throughout this process, fundamental tensions grew about where sovereignty should lie in the UK system, and these remain unresolved. Referendums are devices favoured by populists ( Müller, 2017 ), and have the potential to challenge the UK’s traditional central tenet of parliamentary sovereignty. The peculiar setup of the 2016 poll, and parliament’s ambivalent attitude to the result, led the government to claim a direct mandate from ‘the people’: invoking a principle of popular sovereignty effectively to justify demands for executive sovereignty, which became more insistent as the tensions with parliament mounted. But there was no instruction from the people about the form that Brexit should take, while many pro-Brexit MPs who argued against parliament’s interference had themselves voted to block the government’s deal. In truth, divisions in parliament—between supporters of remaining in the EU, or of a ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ Brexit, or a further referendum—reflected fairly accurately the divisions in the country. Just as there was no undifferentiated ‘parliament’ to criticise, there was no undifferentiated ‘will of the people’. Nonetheless a minority government, and its own backbench opponents, both claimed ever more vocally to speak on the people’s behalf.

The general election of December 2019 was won by Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party with a House of Commons majority of 80 seats. This promised to bring to an end many of the preceding difficulties. It ensured that Brexit was delivered and saw a return to the familiar territory of single-party majority government. The ‘perfect storm’, of a minority government seeking to pursue a highly controversial referendum result with a divided party, could in principle be left behind. But the scars are likely to remain.

Prior to the referendum trust in parliament was already at a historically low level; it since appears to have declined further, providing a fertile breeding ground for populism. 15 The conflicts also fuelled frustration among Brexit-supporting politicians about parliament’s power, and demands for reform. The Conservative manifesto hence promised a ‘Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission’, with a far-reaching remit to examine ‘the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts’ ( Conservative Party, 2019 , p. 48). One obvious conclusion from such an exercise could be that both Whitehall and Westminster need to adapt better to the possibility of future minority governments. But with the very meaning of parliamentary sovereignty itself now in contention, the Brexit ‘perfect storm’ has exposed fundamental questions about the core principles of the UK democratic system.

Geoffrey Cox MP, House of Commons Hansard, 25 September 2019, column 660.

As indicated below, the 2011 referendum on the voting system was more complex, as the lead Minister Nick Clegg (Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats) supported the change and campaigned for it, while the party's coalition partner, the Conservatives, opposed change. In addition, the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence presented a proposition that was opposed by the UK government, but which was strongly supported by the Scottish National Party government in Scotland.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond MP, House of Commons Hansard, 9 June 2015, column 1056.

R (on the application of Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5.

House of Commons Hansard, 31 January–1 February 2017.

Those voting against the second reading included 50 Scottish National Party members, 47 Labour, 7 Liberal Democrats and just 1 Conservative.

Interview with Home Office insider, 8 February 2012.

The Wright committee’s proposals included backbenchers in membership of a House Business Committee, and crucially required its proposals to be agreed by the chamber, in an explicit attempt to prevent agenda control simply being a ‘stitch up’ between party leaders. An alternative model, as for example, applies in Germany, is for parliamentary agenda time to be divided proportionally between party groups.

The Speaker made a short statement following the deferral of the vote, in which he referred to it as ‘deeply discourteous’ given that 164 members had already spoken in the debate (House of Commons Hansard, 10 December 2018, column 27).

Letwin repeated the exercise, using the same voting system and with very similar outcomes, on 1 April.

This was a predictable outcome based on a previous attempt by the Commons to choose between multiple options on Lords reform in 2003 ( McLean et al. , 2003 )—as was widely mentioned at the time.

Again, some of the harshest critics of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act were those who had voted against the government. This appears paradoxical, as it implies that with a tougher enforcement of the whip they themselves would have fallen into line.

Fearing a prorogation, rebels had inserted amendments in the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation, etc.) Bill in July to require some autumn sittings—without which the prorogation might have come into force before 3 September.

R (on the application of Miller) v the Prime Minister and Cherry and others v Advocate General for Scotland [2019] UKSC 41, paragraph 55.

According to the 2016 Eurobarometer survey, 37% of UK respondents reported that they ‘tend[ed] to trust’ the UK parliament, compared to 51% who responded ‘tend not to trust’. In the 2019 survey, these figures had shifted to 19% and 71%, respectively. Source: https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Chart/getChart/chartType/lineChart/themeKy/18/groupKy/89/savFile/201

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council UK in Changing Europe programme, grant number ES/T000929/1.

BBC ( 2017 ) ‘Theresa May’s General Election Statement’, BBC, accessed at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39630009 on 22 January 2020.

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December 29th, 2017

How effective is parliament in controlling uk government and representing citizens.

1 comment | 120 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

This article was published in 2017. To read a fully revised 2018 edition of this article, download The UK’s Changing Democracy: The 2018 Democratic Audit published by LSE Press here .

What does democracy require for the legislature in focusing national debate, and scrutinising and controlling major decisions by the executive?

• The elected legislature should normally maintain full public control of government services and state operations, ensuring public and Parliamentary accountability through conditionally supporting the government, and articulating reasoned opposition, via its proceedings.
• The House of Commons should be a critically important focus of national political debate, articulating ‘public opinion’ in ways that provide useful guidance to the government in making complex policy choices.
• Individually and collectively legislators should seek to uncover and publicise issues of public concern and citizens’ grievances, giving effective representation both to majority and minority views, and showing a consensus regard for the public interest.

How should the legislature operate in passing laws and controlling the executive’s detailed policies?

• In the preparation of new laws, the legislature should supervise government consultations and help ensure effective pre-legislative scrutiny.
• In considering legislation Parliament should undertake close scrutiny in a climate of effective deliberation, seeking to identify and maximise a national consensus where feasible.
• Legislators should regularly and influentially scrutinise the current implementation of policies, and audit the efficiency and effectiveness of government services and policy delivery.

Recent developments

The first peacetime coalition since 1945 between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats marked out 2010-15 as an unusual period of Parliamentary relations with the government. Ministers (especially David Cameron as Prime Minister) were uniquely exposed to right-wing Tory backbenchers and centre-left Liberal Democrats dissenting from government policies. Not surprisingly, Phil Cowley showed that backbench dissent  affected 35 percent  of Commons divisions 2010-15, a post-war record (with the Labour government of 2005-10 as the nearest parallel). A new ‘hung Parliament’ situation arose after the failure of Theresa May’s June 2017 general election bid.  Her new minority Conservative government is reliant on a ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with the 10 MPs of the DUP. Most predictions are that it will be vulnerable to more backbench revolts (and indeed to defeats), because Tory MPs in particular have now got the habit of dissenting.  Early indications seemed to bear this out. In the Queen’s Speech debate in June 2017, Labour backbencher Stella Creasy tabled a relevant amendment to fund abortion operations in mainland UK for women from Northern Ireland. This would have been supported across the House had it gone to a vote, and so the government was forced to agree to the change in order to avoid a defeat.

However, some potentially key changes in parliamentary operations also survived from the 2010-15 coalition government period. The  Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011  formally requires that general elections are held every five years, unless the government loses a vote of confidence and no other government can be formed, or unless two thirds of MPs vote for an earlier dissolution. This was seen as a key safeguard against Cameron calling an election early by the Liberal Democrats, but it actually did little to prevent their electoral punishment at the end of the government’s enlarged term in 2015. With Cameron’s victory in 2015 the Act initially made the Tories look like a strong beneficiary, with a five-year term apparently securely guaranteed. But May’s miscalculation in calling an early election for June 2017, which resulted in the loss of Cameron’s slender majority, meant that things turned out differently. In April 2017 when May demanded the election, the Tories were 20 points ahead of Labour in opinion polls, whose MPs nonetheless voted for an immediate context – vindicating Jeremy Corbyn’s judgment in this case.

Another legacy of the coalition era was that a significant parliamentary boundaries review to cut MPs’ numbers from 646 to 600 and to fine-tune equally-sized constituencies was canned in 2012 by the Liberal Democrats, after Cameron proved unable to keep his promises on Lords reform because of Tory backbench resistance. But when (thanks to the first past the post electoral system) the Conservatives won an outright (if wholly artificial) majority of MPs in 2015, the scheme was dusted off and implementation began – which is likely to  boost Tory MPs  by around 20 at the other parties’ expense. The  Boundary Commission for England  must submit its report by September 2018 and, if approved by Parliament, the new constituencies will be used in the next election after the approval. However, the febrile conditions of a hung Parliament, and the probability that some Tory members may want to postpone changes that damage their seat, mean that the outcome here is no longer guaranteed.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis

Parliamentary consideration of treaties and military actions.

The Royal Prerogative consists of those powers of the medieval absolute monarchs that are not yet regulated by statute law. They are exercised on the Crown’s behalf by ministers, especially the PM. Historically the PM and government have retained the prerogative ability to go to war and to ratify treaties. The Commons has only been able to vote on these decisions after the fact and in restrictive ways – e.g. via moving a no confidence motion in the government. The  Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010  curtailed the treaty ratifying power and put it on a statutory basis. Its new provisions will be very important if the withdrawal agreement from the EU will be in the form of a treaty, as this would require the approval of the UK Parliament (and of the EU Parliament) before it became binding.

The ability to commit UK armed forces to war appears to have been replaced through a new convention that MPs should vote on major actions before they are undertaken. In 2003, MPs approved action in Iraq (but influenced by a ‘dodgy dossier’ prepared by the Blair government). MPs also voted in 2011 for action in Libya against Gadaffi (although operations had in fact already begun). And in August 2013 MPs defeated a proposal by the Coalition to take military action against the Assad government in Syria. A year later a diametrically opposite motion for air strikes against IS (Islamic State) in Iraq (but not in Syria) was approved by the Commons. In December 2015 the Tory government won a vote with a 174 majority to extend anti-IS air strikes to Syria in December 2015. This sequence would seem to suggest that the power to go to war is now subject to approval by the Commons. However, in mid-2016 it emerged that some UK ground forces were being secretly deployed in anti-IS actions in Libya, with no notification to Parliament.

What do fixed term parliaments mean?

The rules passed under the Coalition require a PM with a Commons majority to call the next general election on a five-year fixed timetable. Should the PM resign, as David Cameron did in June 2016, the process to be followed (as indeed it was in 2016) is that the governing party will elect a new leader, and that leader will be asked by the Queen to form a government. However, should the PM lose a no-confidence vote instead, the process to be followed is still unclear. The monarch could ask another member of the largest party to try to form a government. But if they too declined, conceivably the Leader of the Opposition could be asked to, and might seek to, form a minority government within a 14-day period under the Act, without any immediate dissolution. To dissolve Parliament early a vote of two-thirds of MPs is needed, which would normally require that (most) MPs from both the government and the main opposition should support the motion. This last route was the one successfully followed in April 2017, when a supermajority of 522-13 backed the government’s motion for a new election.

EVEL: English Votes for English Laws

A second potentially far-reaching (or potentially temporary) change for Parliament followed from Labour and the Liberal Democrats’ rather credulous decision to support the Conservatives to defeat the Scottish National Party’s independence referendum in summer 2014. The three parties solemnly pledged a major granting of powers to the Edinburgh Parliament, and the morning after the result became clear Cameron announced that the deal would be implemented. However, it would be with a previously hidden codicil that changes would be introduced to allow English and Welsh MPs to vote alone in the Commons on laws just affecting them.

After the Conservatives’ 2015 victory this substantial constitutional change was peremptorily implemented by a single majority vote to change the House of Commons’ Standing Orders. So the growing pseudo-convention that UK constitutional changes require a referendum (buttressed by the 2011 referendum on the Alternative Vote, and the 2014 Scotland vote) was wrecked at a stroke. There was no real public consultation, no House of Lords vote on the change, no Supreme Court decision on the scheme and no judicial review.

In essence the EVEL provisions made these changes:

• a new ‘England-only’ committee stage for laws affecting only England (and including Welsh MPs for E&W laws);
• a ping pong process between the committee and full House (including other MPs) is possible at Report stage; and
• (iii) at the close of the Commons’ consideration, a Legislative Grand Committee of only England MPs votes to accept or reject the final bill as a whole.
• The House of Lords process is not changed. But a Commons Grand Committee composed of only English MPs considers any Lords amendments, as well as full the Commons.

The government’s explanation of how the English Votes for English Laws process will work is summed up in this diagram. The new processes are highlighted in blue.

The main components are covered above, but note that the Speaker is repeatedly involved in determining which laws or provisions within laws must be subject to this procedure, conceivably subject to overview by Supreme Court. The Public Administration and Constitution Committee’s 2016  report on EVEL  is highly critical. Together with politicising the office of the Speaker,  Daniel Gover and Michael Kenny  have identified and evaluated four additional criticisms surrounding EVEL: that English and Welsh MPs have the power to veto laws passed by the entire House; that the process undermines that way the coherence of UK-wide government; that it is too complex; all while it fails to facilitate a meaningful expression of England’s voice. Their evaluation of the first year of the process found that in practice, the force of the first three objections is limited by key features, like the double veto that is required. But it also found that criticism pertaining to complexity and the meaningful expression of the English voice do remain an issue. Whether the scheme will be much used, and if it can survive a non-Tory majority, both seem dubious at present.

Scrutiny of the executive

The prime minister’s active participation in parliamentary proceedings is a key mechanism for ensuring the accountability of the executive, but they have been  less and less present  in the Commons since the time of Thatcher and Blair. The Prime Minister’s attendances are now limited to a single 30 minute question time (PMQs) once a week when Parliament is sitting, occasional speeches in major debates, and periodic public meetings with the chairs of Select Committees in the new Liaison Committee. More encouraging is recent  research  showing that backbenchers used PMQs in 1997-2008 as a key public venue, with backbenchers often leading the agenda and breaking new issues that later grew to prominence. The current Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, has also routinely been using PMQs to ask questions sent in on email by the public, somewhat changing the tone of the session.

The ‘payroll vote’

Parliament’s independence vis-a-vis the executive has long been qualified by strong partisan loyalties amongst almost all MPs, who (after all) have spent many years working within parties before becoming MPs. The members of the government’s frontbench are expected to always vote with the executive, as are Parliamentary Private Secretaries (who are pseudo-ministers). The last  official data  in 2010 showed approximately 140 MPs affected.  Unofficial estimates  of the size of the payroll vote suggest that by 2013 it was equivalent to well over a third of government MPs. Given the smallish number of Conservative MPs in the 2015 and 2017 Parliaments, the ratio will still be high. When Commons seats fall to 600, the prominence of the payroll vote will increase, unless government roles for MPs are cut back.

Figure 2. The payroll vote 1900-2016

Sources:  Who Runs Britain?  /  Commons Library

Dissent by backbench MPs

The coalition period marked not just a period of record dissenting votes by backbenchers against their party line, but also the extension of this behaviour to larger and more consequential issues. The cleavages inside the Conservative party between pro and anti-EU MPs are exceptionally deep. During the summer of 2016 the Cameron government backed off several controversial legislative proposals, and proposed an exceptionally anodyne set of bills in the Queen’s Speech, apparently to avoid straining party loyalties further in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. The rise of serial backbench dissenter Jeremy Corbyn to becomeLabour leader has also created a serious gulf between his team and many of the Parliamentary Labour Party, which may reduce the cohesion of the main opposition party’s voting.

Public confidence in Parliament was very badly damaged by the expenses scandals of 2009, and trust in the House of Commons remains at a low ebb, despite some worthwhile but modest reforms in the interim, which made Select Committees more effective in scrutinising government. The Commons remains a potent focus for national debate – but that would be true of any legislature in most mature liberal democracies. There is no evidence that the UK legislature is especially effective or well-regarded, as its advocates often claim.

Five years of Coalition government 2010-15 somewhat reduced executive predominance over Parliament – as they were almost bound to do – and the return of a hung Parliament in 2017 may do so again. But even this recurrence may not break traditions of strong executive control over the Commons. Tory divisions over the EU (plus the artificial exclusion of UKIP from Commons representation) perpetuated backbench unrest after 2015, but UKIP’s almost-demise has not lessened tensions between Leave and Remain-inclined Conservative MPs. After 2017, there were some signs of an amelioration of party discipline and more cross-party working being possible, but they may still be temporary. Structural reforms to make the Commons a more effective legislature, and to modernise ritualistic behaviours and processes, are still urgently needed.

Note: this was originally published on Democratic Audit .

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'You did not act in time': Greta Thunberg's full speech to MPs

Read the full text of the speech Greta Thunberg gave to MPs at the Houses of Parliament

My name is Greta Thunberg . I am 16 years old. I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future generations.

I know many of you don’t want to listen to us – you say we are just children. But we’re only repeating the message of the united climate science.

Many of you appear concerned that we are wasting valuable lesson time, but I assure you we will go back to school the moment you start listening to science and give us a future. Is that really too much to ask?

In the year 2030 I will be 26 years old. My little sister Beata will be 23. Just like many of your own children or grandchildren. That is a great age, we have been told. When you have all of your life ahead of you. But I am not so sure it will be that great for us.

I was fortunate to be born in a time and place where everyone told us to dream big; I could become whatever I wanted to. I could live wherever I wanted to. People like me had everything we needed and more. Things our grandparents could not even dream of. We had everything we could ever wish for and yet now we may have nothing.

Now we probably don’t even have a future any more.

Because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money. It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit, and that you only live once.

You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard.

Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?

Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilisation as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%.

And please note that these calculations are depending on inventions that have not yet been invented at scale, inventions that are supposed to clear the atmosphere of astronomical amounts of carbon dioxide.

Furthermore, these calculations do not include unforeseen tipping points and feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas escaping from rapidly thawing arctic permafrost.

Nor do these scientific calculations include already locked-in warming hidden by toxic air pollution. Nor the aspect of equity – or climate justice – clearly stated throughout the Paris agreement, which is absolutely necessary to make it work on a global scale.

We must also bear in mind that these are just calculations. Estimations. That means that these “points of no return” may occur a bit sooner or later than 2030. No one can know for sure. We can, however, be certain that they will occur approximately in these timeframes, because these calculations are not opinions or wild guesses.

These projections are backed up by scientific facts, concluded by all nations through the IPCC. Nearly every single major national scientific body around the world unreservedly supports the work and findings of the IPCC.

Did you hear what I just said? Is my English OK? Is the microphone on? Because I’m beginning to wonder.

During the last six months I have travelled around Europe for hundreds of hours in trains, electric cars and buses, repeating these life-changing words over and over again. But no one seems to be talking about it, and nothing has changed. In fact, the emissions are still rising.

When I have been travelling around to speak in different countries, I am always offered help to write about the specific climate policies in specific countries. But that is not really necessary. Because the basic problem is the same everywhere. And the basic problem is that basically nothing is being done to halt – or even slow – climate and ecological breakdown, despite all the beautiful words and promises.

The UK is, however, very special. Not only for its mind-blowing historical carbon debt, but also for its current, very creative, carbon accounting.

Since 1990 the UK has achieved a 37% reduction of its territorial CO2 emissions, according to the Global Carbon Project. And that does sound very impressive. But these numbers do not include emissions from aviation, shipping and those associated with imports and exports. If these numbers are included the reduction is around 10% since 1990 – or an an average of 0.4% a year, according to Tyndall Manchester. And the main reason for this reduction is not a consequence of climate policies, but rather a 2001 EU directive on air quality that essentially forced the UK to close down its very old and extremely dirty coal power plants and replace them with less dirty gas power stations. And switching from one disastrous energy source to a slightly less disastrous one will of course result in a lowering of emissions.

But perhaps the most dangerous misconception about the climate crisis is that we have to “lower” our emissions. Because that is far from enough. Our emissions have to stop if we are to stay below 1.5-2C of warming. The “lowering of emissions” is of course necessary but it is only the beginning of a fast process that must lead to a stop within a couple of decades, or less. And by “stop” I mean net zero – and then quickly on to negative figures. That rules out most of today’s politics.

The fact that we are speaking of “lowering” instead of “stopping” emissions is perhaps the greatest force behind the continuing business as usual. The UK’s active current support of new exploitation of fossil fuels – for example, the UK shale gas fracking industry, the expansion of its North Sea oil and gas fields, the expansion of airports as well as the planning permission for a brand new coal mine – is beyond absurd.

This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.

People always tell me and the other millions of school strikers that we should be proud of ourselves for what we have accomplished. But the only thing that we need to look at is the emission curve. And I’m sorry, but it’s still rising. That curve is the only thing we should look at.

Every time we make a decision we should ask ourselves; how will this decision affect that curve? We should no longer measure our wealth and success in the graph that shows economic growth, but in the curve that shows the emissions of greenhouse gases. We should no longer only ask: “Have we got enough money to go through with this?” but also: “Have we got enough of the carbon budget to spare to go through with this?” That should and must become the centre of our new currency.

Many people say that we don’t have any solutions to the climate crisis. And they are right. Because how could we? How do you “solve” the greatest crisis that humanity has ever faced? How do you “solve” a war? How do you “solve” going to the moon for the first time? How do you “solve” inventing new inventions?

The climate crisis is both the easiest and the hardest issue we have ever faced. The easiest because we know what we must do. We must stop the emissions of greenhouse gases. The hardest because our current economics are still totally dependent on burning fossil fuels, and thereby destroying ecosystems in order to create everlasting economic growth.

“So, exactly how do we solve that?” you ask us – the schoolchildren striking for the climate.

And we say: “No one knows for sure. But we have to stop burning fossil fuels and restore nature and many other things that we may not have quite figured out yet.”

Then you say: “That’s not an answer!”

So we say: “We have to start treating the crisis like a crisis – and act even if we don’t have all the solutions.”

“That’s still not an answer,” you say.

Then we start talking about circular economy and rewilding nature and the need for a just transition. Then you don’t understand what we are talking about.

We say that all those solutions needed are not known to anyone and therefore we must unite behind the science and find them together along the way. But you do not listen to that. Because those answers are for solving a crisis that most of you don’t even fully understand. Or don’t want to understand.

You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before. Like now. And those answers don’t exist any more. Because you did not act in time.

Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.

Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfil something, we can do anything. And I’m sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: we can still fix this. But the opportunity to do so will not last for long. We must start today. We have no more excuses.

We children are not sacrificing our education and our childhood for you to tell us what you consider is politically possible in the society that you have created. We have not taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us, and tell us that you really admire what we do.

We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.

I hope my microphone was on. I hope you could all hear me.

• Greta Thunberg
• Environmental activism
• Climate crisis
• House of Commons

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What Is British Parliamentary Style Debate?

10 Feb, 2024 | Blog Articles , Humanities Articles , Law Articles , Politics Articles

Before they begin debating, the teams are typically given 15 minutes to prepare their arguments. This includes any research time. Each speaker typically speaks for five to seven minutes, with the Chair indicating the end of the allotted time with a gavel.

Points of Information can be raised by opposing teams during the speeches of their opposition, but these are prohibited during the “protected” first and last minute of a speech. They can also be rejected by the speaker at any time, and may be disallowed by the Chair if they express personal opinion.

Points of Order cannot be rejected, and they must report an abuse to the rules of the House. This might be a slanderous remark, or otherwise offensive outburst.

A panel of judges ranks the four teams (Opening Proposition, Opening Opposition, Closing Proposition and Closing Opposition), from one (best) to four (worst). The team with the most “one” votes wins.

Other Styles of Debate

British Parliamentary Style is popular but by no means the only style of debate that is practiced. There are many different ways to debate, and we’ve collected just a few of them below:

Debating around the world

• Australasian Debating: two opposing teams of three members each
• European Square Debating: four teams of two members, each representing a European nation, with the four countries broadly divided into two sides
• Offene Parlamentarische Debatte: a German debating style with two teams of three speakers, and three additional “free speakers”
• Oxford-Style Debating: a variation of British Parliamentary Style originating in the Oxford Union debating society. It includes two audience votes: one before and one after the debate
• Paris-Style Debating: a French debating style consisting of two opposing teams of five speakers each

Alternative types of debating

• Extemporaneous Speaking: this style is more spontaneous than British Style, with limited research time and only a single index card of notes allowed
• Impromptu Debating: individuals debating, often with a focus on humour
• Lincoln-Douglas Debating: this is a philosophical debating style popular in the US, in which the two opposing debaters switch sides every round
• Mace Debating: the debate is opened to audience participation after the first round of opening statements and rebuttals

British Parliamentary Style debate is one of the most popular debating setups in the world. It has a rigid structure and allows both sides equal space to put across their point of view. That said, there are many other debating styles, which vary widely to fulfil different purposes.

At our  Oxford summer courses  for students, we explore these various styles of public speaking and debating, offering a comprehensive understanding of different approaches and techniques. This exploration enables students to adapt and excel in diverse debating environments.

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