Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mrs. Harris, and I'm the person who's going to be guiding you through today's lesson.

The lesson today is called How is the Country Run? And it's part of a larger series of lessons called How is the UK Governed? By the end of today's lesson, you are going to be able to say, "I can explain who governs the UK, how they get the authority, and describe some of the responsibilities of the Cabinet." Some of this learning might be new to you, some of it you might already know, some of it might be challenging.

I'm gonna guide you through it all, and we're gonna work through it together.

Let's start with our keywords then.

I'm going to say the keyword, and you are going to repeat it out loud.

Government.

That's the group of people with the authority to govern a country, and in the UK the government is chosen and led by the prime minister, or PM for short.

Cabinet.

That's the group of MPs who lead the major government departments.

The Cabinet meets at least weekly to make decisions about how government policy will be carried out.

It's time for our first learning cycle called Who governs the UK? A government is the group of people who've been elected and have been given the authority to govern a country or a state.

Now a government has got ideas, or we call them policies, of things that they want to put in place to improve life for people living in society and living within that country.

Aisha there is reminding us policies are courses of actions or goals that people want to carry out or are in the process of already carrying out.

And Jacob's telling us that society means that people who are living in an ordered community.

Now the United Kingdom is what we call a constitutional monarchy.

Now, long ago, it was the monarch that would've made nearly all the decisions about every aspect of life within the country, how it was run, the laws that were made, how people were expected to live, and so on.

However, now, after lots and lots of changes, the monarch is now still the head of state, but that ability to run the country and make the laws actually lies with elected leaders.

The monarch still has quite traditional roles to play, some ceremonial parts to do, so, for example, opening and closing of Parliament every year and things like appointing the prime minister after a general election.

So whilst they don't actually hold the authority and the power anymore, they still play still a very traditional, and ceremonial, and important role within the state itself.

The United Kingdom is also what we call a parliamentary democracy.

Now the word democracy comes back to the Greek.

So the demo part of it comes from the word demos, which means the people, and the cracy part comes from the Greek word kratia, which means power or to rule.

So when we're talking about democracy as a word, that's thought to mean the rule of the people.

So a parliamentary democracy, that is where citizens of a country are voting to elect representatives to sit in Parliament.

So you've got that rule of the people putting elected people into Parliament, and then those elected leaders, which we call members of Parliament, they're the ones who make the decisions and laws for the country.

Now, the parts of government which runs the day-to-day affairs of the country, so makes the decisions of how things are going to run, that group of people comes from those elected in Parliament.

So you can't be on government if you are not part of Parliament.

So it's from one that leads into the other.

Now that government, the one that run the day-to-day affairs of the country, they are accountable to Parliament, and they have to follow any rules and laws set by them.

And if that government loses support, a new leader or an election can actually be triggered to replace them and put a different government in place.

It's our first check for understanding then.

What I'd like you to do is complete this sentence by adding the correct English translation.

So in the word democracy, demo means the people, and cracy means what? What did that Greek word mean in English? I shall give you a few seconds to think about it.

Okay, so in the word democracy, demo means the people and cracy means the power.

Yes.

Well done if you've got that one.

Let's have a look at this diagram.

So there we've got the head of state, which, if you remember, is the monarch represented there by the crown.

And then we have three different branches.

We have Parliament, which is the legislative branch, that's the part of government that makes the laws.

And then we have government, that's the executive branch of the government.

So that means the part that's responsible for the day-to-day running, the running of services, and helping citizens on a day-to-day basis, and also things like enforcing those laws that Parliament actually makes.

And the third branch is the judiciary, so that's the judicial branch.

So that's the one that's in charge of things like the courts and the justice serving justice and making sure that people are treated fairly with protection of rights, and so on.

Now, as I said on the previous slides, we were talking about the government, the one that runs the day-to-day executive part of the government.

They come from Parliament, so people elected into Parliament, they will form a government and it's that part of the government that we're talking about today.

Now Sam here is telling us that the UK government is the executive branch of the country, which means it's responsible for the running the day-to-day affairs of the country.

Now the government is accountable to the public and also to Parliament, and it has to follow democratic principles, for example, like protecting the individual rights, things like freedom of speech, and making sure that everybody is still allowed to have a voice in how the country is run.

Now the role of executive government is very, very different from that of Parliament and that of the judiciary as well.

And the main functions of the government are things like proposing the legislation.

So the government, the people who have that authority to run the country, will have ideas about the laws that they want to implement.

They can't implement them themselves.

That has to be passed to Parliament to make those decisions.

So they will try and persuade Parliament, and they will kind of lobby for that law to be put into place.

If that law is made, then they implement that law afterwards.

They do things like proposed budget.

So that's like setting out how public money is going to be used and which areas it's going to be spent on.

And of course running the country on a day-to-day basis.

So actually things like your public services, so healthcare, social care, education, national security, all of the things that keep the country ticking over from day to day, that comes under the role of the executive government.

Aisha as well here says that the government also is the UK's representative in international matters.

So when they meet with other countries, it's the executive part of the government that will be the UK's representative rather than somebody from Parliament or from the judiciary, for example.

Another check for understanding then.

Can you add the correct labels to name the different branches of the UK government? You've got four gaps there.

I'd like you to fill those gaps in.

I shall give you a few seconds to think about it.

Okay, let's fill those gaps then.

So here we go.

We have A is the head of state, that's our monarch.

We have B is Parliament, C is the government, and D is the judiciary.

Well done if you've got all of those four.

So as we said, the people that will run the executive part of the government, they come from Parliament.

So if citizens want to have a say in who that government is going to be, they have to vote and get involved in the general elections because the people that get voted into Parliament are ultimately people who may get chance to run the government.

Now the process of that is called a general election and these have to be held at least every five years.

Now the prime minister, the head of the government, they might call an earlier election, so it could be every two years, it could be every three years for them.

Whenever that election is called, that triggers something called the dissolution of Parliament.

So that means MPs are no longer MPs, they can't collect their salary, they're not expected to do their job, although some of them still do, and they can't do things like vote or debate in Parliament anymore.

They are just a regular UK citizen like everybody else.

They may or may not choose to run for that seat in Parliament again.

That's up to them.

As from that moment, they are no longer an MP once the dissolution of Parliament comes in place.

If the prime minister does not call a general election in less than five years, then after five years, Parliament will automatically dissolve, and that triggers a general election anyway.

The whole of the UK is divided up into areas called constituencies, and there are 650 of these within the UK.

That matches perfectly because there are 650 seats in Parliament, which, if you are very, very good at math, you will notice that there are 650 seats, 650 constituencies, which means one MP per constituency, okay? Now the boundaries of each constituency are chosen to make sure that roughly the electorate is the same from each constituency to another.

And Jacob there is reminding us that the electorate means the people in that area who are eligible to vote in elections.

It's really important to try and keep the average number of the electorate even, so in the UK that is 73,000 people roughly.

If you can keep that representation quite equal, that makes much more sense than having one area with only 10,000 people in it and they have one MP for 10,000 people and then another area having 110,000 people and still only one MP representing that area.

So they keep it roughly 73,000 to make sure that each constituency is roughly the same size and therefore that representation is much more fair and equal.

Now we just talked about the electorate then, that's the people who are eligible to vote in elections today.

If you want to vote in a general election today, a person must be 18 or over on polling day.

They must be registered at an address in the constituency that you want to vote in.

They can't be legally excluded from voting.

For example, most of the people in prison will not be allowed to vote.

They must be a British or Irish citizen.

And as of a reasonably new law is they must bring photographic ID with them.

They have to be registered, they have to have said they want to vote, so they must be on the electoral roll, and meet all of this criteria as well.

Now, citizens are only allowed to vote in one area.

That's different from local elections because if you are, for example, a student at university and you are living in one area of the country for university and then you have a home address in a different area of the country, for local elections, you can have a vote in both of those different areas.

It's not the case with general elections, where you're only allowed to vote in one particular area, so one vote per citizen for a general election, that's for the parliament elections.

Another check for understanding then.

Can you choose the correct number to complete each sentence? Okay, the first one is there are either 650 or 73,000 constituencies.

The second one is citizens can vote in one or two areas, and the third one is elections must be held every three or five years.

I'll give you a few seconds to think about those.

Okay, let's check these answers then.

So the first one, there are 650 constituencies.

Yep, 73,000 is the average elector at the average of eligible voters per constituency.

The second one, citizens can vote in just one area for a general election, yeah.

And the third one, elections must be held every five years.

Well done if you've got those ones.

Once the eligible voters have got their name down on the register and they're able to vote, then that polling day, that actual election day, will come round, and on that day, eligible voters will be given a ballot paper, and that will have all the names of the people that are standing for that seat in Parliament.

And then the voter will take their ballot, and they'll put a cross against the name of the person who they want to be their representative in their area.

So the person that they want to be their member of Parliament.

And whoever gets the most votes in the area wins the seat.

Now this system is called the First Past the Post system, or FPTP.

It's a really, really easy system for most people to understand because whoever gets the most votes wins the seat.

So it's really, really simple to figure out who has won.

Let's take a look at these results here then.

So we have candidate one, who's got 28 votes, candidate two, who's got 16, candidate three, who's got 48, and candidate four, who's got eight, and in total there are a hundred votes.

Now, as you can see from there, candidate three has won the most votes.

So it's very simple to see that they are the person who would've won the seat.

So some people see this as the fairest way and easiest way to decide on the winner.

They've got the most, therefore, they've won.

However, if you look at here, so candidate one, 28, candidate two, 16, and candidate four got eight votes, that's 52 people in that area that wanted something different from candidate three.

So more people didn't want what candidate three was offering.

They wanted something different.

And this is a reason why some people find the system unfair because sometimes it can mean more people are voting for something different than what the actual winning candidate is offering everybody.

And so sometimes it feels to people that the result of that election doesn't actually reflect what people in that area really and truly want.

So after the general election is over and all of the votes have been counted, each political party will add up how many seats they have won.

And whichever party has won the majority or the most of the seats after the election, they are the people that will be invited to make a government.

They're invited by the monarch to make a government, and the person that they will invite to do that is usually the leader of that political party who've won the most or the majority of seats.

To get a majority of seats, that means a political party has to get 50% plus one of all of the seats in Parliament.

So if you remember, we've got 650 seats in the UK Parliament, so it has to be a minimum of 326 seats to gain overall control of Parliament and therefore government.

And when a party does win a majority, it means that they have the authority to govern the UK in their own way, and the leader of that party is usually the person who's going to become the prime minister and therefore they then become the head of the government overall.

Another check for understanding then.

So which of these is a reason why some people think the First Past the Post voting system is unfair? So we have A, it's easy to see who's won, B, it's a simple system to understand, or C, the result may not reflect what most voters want.

I'll give you a few seconds to think.

Okay, so which of these is a reason why some people think the First Past the Post voting system is unfair? And that will be C because the result might not reflect what most voters want.

Remember in our example, there were 52 people who didn't vote for the winning candidate and only 48 who did.

So there were more people who wanted something different from that which the winning candidate was offering everybody.

Well done if you got that reason.

Well, onto your first task then.

This is Task A, and in this task you are going to write a summary about who governs the UK.

Now to help you do this, you might want to include some of the following.

So, for example, how many MPs there are, you might want to include how many seats there are in the Parliament.

You might want to include information about how the general elections work or maybe how the voting system works, as in who's eligible to vote.

And you might want to include things like what the First Past the Post voting system is as well.

Best thing to do now is to pause the video to give yourself the time to do this task, and then when you're done, unpause the video, and we'll come back and we'll look at some possible answers together.

Okay, let's look together at some possible answers about this summary of who governs the UK.

So your response might look something like this.

"The UK government is made up of MPs from the largest party in Parliament.

It's led by the prime minister.

It's given the authority to rule the UK through elections.

During an election, voters in 650 constituents choose the person that they want to represent them by placing a cross in the box for the candidate that they think would make the best MP.

Votes are counted using the First Past the Post system, where the person with the most votes wins.

Some people think this is the fairest way, and other people think it doesn't always represent what people want because more may vote for policies that are different from the policies of the winning candidates." Well done if you've got something like that.

There's lots of key points there.

Things like the amount of constituencies, the First Past the Post system, and how that election is won.

Well done.

It's time for our second learning cycle now called What does the Cabinet do? Let's start this learning cycle then by taking a look at a diagram of the structure of the executive branch of the government.

So at the head of that we have the prime minister because they're the head of the government, and then underneath them we have the Cabinet.

Under them, we have the government departments.

And the government departments are very closely linked to some things called the civil service and arm's-length bodies.

And the part that we're looking at today is the prime minister and the Cabinet.

We've touched on a little bit about this already so that the prime minister remember is the head of the government.

They are the leader of that political party with the most seats in Parliament, and as their role of head of government, they are responsible for the overall direction of government policies and the ideas and the decisions that they want to put in place.

The prime minister has a really important role, not just in the UK as the head of government, but also as a major representative of the UK on an international scale.

So they'll do things like meet with world leaders.

They'll do things like negotiate trade deals, so that's goods being sold from country to country and also in big discussions, global discussions, on issues like security, climate change, global health issues, and so on.

Jacob's telling us here that the prime minister is responsible for handpicking the Cabinet members, and then those Cabinet members are then ceremonially appointed by the monarch.

So chosen by the prime minister, are appointed by the king or the queen.

Sam's telling us that those who are appointed, they're either members of Parliament in the House of Commons or they could be lords, ladies, peers in the House of Lords.

Now the Cabinet is a really prominent part of government because it's the main decision-making body in government.

It's responsible for setting policies, it's responsible for managing all of the public services and responding to national issues and needs as they arise.

It has to meet at least weekly in Whitehall in London, and that's there pictured on your screen.

In most of the cases, the Cabinet is made up of MPs who are in the same political party as the prime minister.

Occasionally, if you have a coalition government, so it's a government that's formed of two different parties to then form a majority by joining together, that Cabinet will then be split between MPs in those two political parties.

And as of February 2025, there were 22 Cabinet members.

The first check for understanding then in this second learning cycle.

So Aisha is explaining one of the roles of the prime minister.

Is she correct? If not, why not? So Aisha says, "Prime minister can pick anyone they want to be on the Cabinet." Is she correct? And if not, why not? I'll give you a few seconds to think about it.

Okay, is Aisha correct? No, she's not quite correct, is she? So let's have a look why.

So Aisha is correct in that the prime minister handpicks the people to be on the Cabinet, but she's not correct in that they can't just pick anybody that they want.

The people on the Cabinet have to be either elected members of Parliament or they have to be people in House of Lords.

Well done if you've got that answer.

Let's look at some of the main responsibilities of the Cabinet then.

So one of them is to advise the prime minister.

They are there as the right-hand men and women of the person in charge of the whole government.

And that is not just about UK issues but also international issues as well.

It's their role to lead junior ministers.

So as a member of the Cabinet, they are a senior minister, so they will lead the junior ministers with projects in the different government departments.

So, for example, you've got the Minister of Universities, that will be a junior minister, and they are led by the Secretary of State for Education, who is a senior minister.

Another responsibility they have is things like discussing and agreeing on key policies for the UK, how the country is going to run as a whole.

They are the people that make those decisions.

They also lead and manage the government department, so they're the heads of those departments and are in charge of then implementation and delivering all the public services.

All the responsibilities are working alongside the civil service and arm's-length bodies.

They are the parts of the government that actually deliver those services.

So the government departments and the Cabinet make those decisions, but then it's the civil service and the arm's-length bodies that actually deliver those services.

They handle national and international issues like pandemics, for example, COVID-19.

It was the Cabinet that were in charge of responding to that emergence of the global emergency.

Things like national security, environmental and natural disasters, so if we've got floods or any other sort natural disasters in the UK, the Cabinet are the ones that make those decisions of how to respond.

They'll also propose new laws and policies, so if there is a law that they want to put in place, they have to justify that, and they have to pass it onto Parliament in the hope that Parliament will then pass that law and put it into reality and make it happen.

And as we've already touched on with the prime minister, they represent the government, they represent the UK within the international community, so they are the UK's representatives to the rest of the world.

When members of Parliament are appointed to the Cabinet, they officially become a senior minister.

You might hear them sometimes referred to as secretaries of state, and each one of those leads a specific department, for example, health, or education, defence, national security, trade, and so on.

Now the Cabinet runs on this principle of collective responsibility.

So basically all of the ministers have to publicly support the decisions made.

So even if in their Cabinet meetings, in this Cabinet room you can see on your screen, even if they disagree with some of the decisions that the Cabinet has put in place, publicly, they have to support those decisions.

And it has been the case in the past that some Cabinet members have actually stood down from their position because they've disagreed and haven't felt that they've been publicly able to support policies.

So it's collective responsibility for the whole of the Cabinet is that general principle that they have to follow.

Let's have a look at some of the areas that these secretaries of state and the different roles then that they include.

There's lots and lots of them.

So we have the business and trade, culture, media and sport, defence, education, energy, environment, foreign affairs, health and social care, housing, justice, Northern Ireland, Scotland, science and technology, transport, Wales, and work and pensions, and that doesn't even cover all of them.

That's just a selection of the different roles that Cabinet ministers will carry out.

As well as the cabinets, that's the senior ministers that are actually making the decisions of the country, you also have something called the shadow cabinet.

Now the shadow cabinet is made up of MPs from the biggest opposition party.

So that's the political party with the next amount of seats in Parliament.

And what those ministers do, what those MPs do, is essentially the same job as the people on the Cabinet.

However, they can't actually implement their decisions, but they'll take a certain area, so education, or trade, or defence, and they will think about policies, they'll think about decisions that they would want to make, and they think about the ways in that they want to change that area to serve the country in the best way.

What they do is as well, they will question the cabinets, so they'll question the senior ministers within the Cabinet.

They might challenge their decisions, and they might do things like suggest alternatives or different ways around that they could do it.

And then if their party were to gain power, they would then essentially be able to step straight into that position, into that Cabinet position, and take over the job.

So it's a little bit like having an understudy or having a substitute, somebody who's waiting around, learning what they need to do in that role and making those decisions, and then is able to stand in if their party were to gain power.

A quick check for understanding.

So which of these is not the role of a shadow cabinet? Is it to challenge the Cabinet? Is it to override Cabinet decisions? Is it to make suggestions to Cabinet? Or is it to be ready to step in if their party gains government control? So which of these is not a role of the shadow cabinet? Take a few seconds to think about it.

Okay, which one of these is not a role of a shadow cabinet? It is B.

Yes, they cannot override the Cabinet decisions because, as Sam is saying here, the shadow cabinet doesn't actually have any power in government.

So they can't override and take over the decisions, but they can question, challenge, and make suggestions in a way to influence any decisions that the Cabinet might make.

Well done if you've got that one.

It's time for task B then, the second task in this lesson, and what I'd like you to do for this is to create the text, create the writing for a guide, which explains the role of cabinets in government.

Now, to help you do this, you might want to include information about what the Cabinet is and how it's chosen.

You might want to include information about what the Cabinet does, who it works with, for example, prime minister, junior ministers, and so on, and why the Cabinet is important.

So again, as with Task A, pause the video to give yourself the time to do this, then we'll come back and look at some possible responses.

Okay, let's look at this task then.

So you should have created the text for a guide which explains the role of cabinets in government.

Let's have a look at some possible responses.

Your answer might be something like this.

"What is the Cabinet? The Cabinet is a group of important people chosen by the prime minister who help run the country.

They are part of the government.

Who is on the Cabinet? The Cabinet is made up of different ministers.

Each minister is in charge of an important part of the country, such as education, helps school and teachers.

Health, looks after hospitals and doctors.

Transport, makes sure buses, trains, and roads work well.

And defence, keeps the country safe." Your answer then might continue onto, "What does the Cabinet do? The ministers meet with the prime minister to talk about the big problems and how to solve them.

They decide how to spend the country's money and think about which laws they would like to be made.

They lead junior ministers and make sure they're doing their jobs correctly.

They talk to other leaders around the world and try to keep good relationships with them.

Sometimes they have to deal with big issues like floods, wars, or world health issues.

Why is the Cabinet important? Well, the Cabinet helps the prime minister make good decisions for the country.

They make sure everything runs smoothly and that people have what they need." A really good job if you got some of those major points in there.

You've done a fantastic job with it.

Let's summarise this lesson then, which is called How is the country run? The UK is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy.

The monarch is the head of state, but the country is run by elected representatives in the government.

To gain power, a political party must win seats in the parliamentary elections, that's the general elections.

There are 650 constituencies in the UK, and the electorate within them vote for the people they want to represent them in UK Parliament.

Whichever party wins the most seats in Parliament will form a government, and the party leader becomes the prime minister.

They choose the Cabinet members who lead all of the government departments.

The Cabinet makes decisions for the whole of the UK on issues like health, defence, and education, and it represents the UK on an international basis.

Really, really good job if you have stayed with me through this whole of the lesson.

I think you've done an amazing job.

Hope to see you very soon.