UK Government & Politics

The Policy Sovereign:  the Executive exists to make decisions, principally what legislation the legislature should create. Hence in the exercise of the executive function, the executive is the architect of the civil state. Having received that legislation, the executive switches into government mode as they put that legislation into effect, which really means using legislation to govern the country. That bit is simple. What is less simple is how we get ourselves an executive and the extent to which it is accountable to anyone or anything, whether you want to hold it to account for the quality of its decisions (executive) or the effectiveness of its management (government.) 

The Legal Sovereign: the Legislature writes the highest form of law in the land and in a parliamentary system, this makes the legislature (Parliament in the UK) the engineers or builders of the civil state. At the same time, Parliament is supposed to represent the people and also hold the executive to account - with one of its two chambers fatally compromised by conflicts of interest and the other emasculated by a crushing democratic deficit. What could possibly go wrong?

The first role of the Judiciary in the UK is to uphold the will of Parliament. Get your heads around that and the rests is (relatively) easy. After that, and only after that, the courts are responsible for legal equality (the Rule of Law) and fair play (Natural Justice.) And that means jealously guarding judicial independence and neutrality from those who would challenge them, which most of the time is government. 

Yes, there is a constitution and, yes, it is a British (not English) Constitution, no matter how hard those who struggle to accept this might bang their keyboards. And it is not the Magna Carta either, though this does (sort of) matter. What matters more are the laws passed by Parliament as in a Parliamentary System (which the UK is) the Constitution is whatever Parliament says it is. That and a bit of Common Law, Constitutional Conventions and certain Works of Authority, to which this website is sure to be added at some point.

Ask an ill-informed people a stupid question and be amazed by the catastrophic outcome. 

We'll start with the Civil State. It's really quite important. Anything beyond that is a bonus.