hey class alright this is next review video for Thursday's exam this one is going to be on Great Britain so let's get after it here okay first of all the United Kingdom is what consists of England Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland when we are talking about Great Britain this does not include Northern Ireland if you hopefully remember that very very rapid pace video that explained this in tremendous detail all right the United Kingdom is a parliamentary democracy and there is a monarch the queen is considered the head of state and the Prime Minister is considered the head of government so what is the difference the queen is really ceremonial it's more of a figurehead she primary responsibility is to receive foreign ambassadors whereas the Prime Minister is the head of government and the current prime minister is Teresa May she appoints cabinet ministers V and is also the lead leader of the majority party in Parliament the Church of England is the established religion and the Monarchs role as the official head of the Church of England is what gives the monarch legitimacy okay there was going to be votes for the members of parliament which we will explain in a second Parliament has two houses the House of Commons and the House of Lords it is the House of Commons that the people elect whereas the House of Lords or hereditary and appointed positions there is no single written constitution there's just a series of laws that guide how the government operates okay I gave you one slide for a very brief history after World War Two the idea of a collective consensus emerged so that both parties labour and conservatives wanted to work together to help the nation we're bill we build and recover they really agreed that the government should provide for these services for people including healthcare then in 1970s an economic crisis made it difficult for them to be able to follow through on those commitments and at the end of the decade the Conservative Party came to power in 1979 and that led to Thatcherism Margaret Thatcher who is I kind of considered the equivalent of Ronald Reagan in the United States she tried to balance the budget she cut programs and she strengthened defense in 1997 Tony Blair became the prime minister and his new Labor Party was looking for a third way in other words something in the middle of the collective consensus which was providing tremendous services to people and the rise of Thatcher which was cutting those programs and then more recently David Cameron became the prime minister in 2010 but he is no longer the prime minister because he agreed to call for the brexit referendum vote and when that vote led to Britain voting to leave the European Union he agreed to leave as Prime Minister and the current prime minister is Teresa Beck the end of this video is going to focus all on brexit because I have to think that's going to be something that they asked you this year okay the concept of Oxbridge so many of these people are either from Oxford absorb oxygen or Cambridge University so it's an unofficial title that they used it's probably 75% of the House of Commons and might even be even higher for the cabinet members what are these political parties so you have the Labour Party which gets most of its votes from urban and industrial areas that is the more liberal party Scotland Wales tend to be the more liberal areas of the UK poor and working-class people will vote for labour the current head of labour is Jeremy Corbyn keep that in mind because if Theresa May has ever rousted and labour takes over he would become the prime minister you might remember some controversial aspects of him the non-controversial aspects he's probably similar to a Bernie Sanders but those of you that remember in class we we talk about some of his other problems Conservative Party gets more of its support from the rural and the suburban areas that would be England as well that's going to be wealthier people and Theresa May is the head of the Conservative Party and that is because and that is why she is the Prime Minister because they formed a coalition box second the Liberal Democrats are the more centrist party when David Cameron was Prime Minister he formed the coalition with that you Kip is the United Kingdom Independence Party that is a far-right party that was dedicated to the pregs about the leader what used to be Nigel Farage he has since left and actually now formed his own party which is called the Briggs and party then there is the Democratic Unionist Party which is from Northern Ireland and this is the party that Teresa may form the coalition with let's tomato just explain this now if you don't receive if nobody receives a majority and then somebody in the House of Commons they have to form a coalition they have to join together so they have to make an agreement that will lead to somebody becoming the prime minister and sometimes it's an odd arrangement that is made some other parties that you know you could use the change UK party actually just formed a couple of months ago that's a party that's trying to keep Great Britain in the European Union and then the plaid similar party is one of the parties it's calling for the independence of Wales okay so now we get to these elections so the only national elections that people vote for in Great Britain or for the members of parliament specifically the House of Commons they use what is called a first-past-the-post system so there are 650 districts all throughout Great Britain and each one will elect one member of parliament whoever gets the most votes wins that see so this often leads it's a winner-take-all system but this often could lead to two parties dominating and making it more difficult for third parties to get any seats now before September 4th before 2011 the the elections to the House of Commons were irregular then in 2011 they set a fixed term Parliament's a fixed term Parliament act so now every five years there must be an election the Prime Minister can pick us to select an election earlier a call for election earlier sometimes they call them snap elections but there's actually a debate on whether or not that could actually happen if they want to have an election earlier than five years it'll happen if there's a vote of no-confidence in the prime minister or if there's a two-thirds vote in the House of Commons and that could happen during this brexit controversy all right we hope you understand the Prime Minister is selected by the majority party in the House of Commons and if nobody gets a majority they have to form a coalition I went through the first-past-the-post campaigns very short and great for it much shorter than they are in the United States so they don't have as much of a time to discuss about politics but they also are very committed to their political parties all right so what are the powers of the House of Commons at House of Commons they can make laws they can pass bills they conduct votes are no confidence they can debate the issues they represent the people and they pass a budget all right the majority party would have to ask the Prime Minister stepped down without calling for a new election that would be a vote of no-confidence on Wednesday at 12:00 p.m. they have what's called question time where they're able to ask the Prime Minister anything they'd like and the Speaker of the House of Commons is is John Bercow this is not necessarily positioned most people would be familiar with the United States however he has gotten a lot of media attention for his way of saying order he that's his job to maintain order and the debates over eggs that have been quite fierce throw his name in there if you get a chance on the support - he does not take part in the debate though or in the voting all right the role of the media there's really a deep divide of the media in Great Britain you have some very high quality news sources and then you have some really sensationalized tabloid papers the BBC which some of you might know from television shows you watch in the United States it's strictly regulated by the government so they are not allowed to be political cannot sell any advertising for political reasons citizens in Britain they're probably more private with their but they do identify with a political party at a very high rate and it's really part of their culture that they feel as if they have an obligation to take part in elections okay the judiciary this might surprise you but the Supreme Court in Great Britain was not founded until 2005 it is now the final Court of Appeals and they do have judicial review so this serves as a check on Parliament in Great Britain they focus on human and civil rights civil liberties so the idea of devolution which I'm going to explain in the next slide when they give more power to local levels of government any disputes between the two would be settled by the Supreme Court and then this is a little confusing so the court was created to try to enhance legitimacy for the government but if the court had a conflict with the European Union Court it would be the European Union law that would supersede UK law but now with the uncertainty of brexit I'm not sure if that's taking place devolution devolution is when we give more power to the local levels of government so remember Great Britain is a unitary system most of the power resides in the federal or the central level but they do not have a Scottish Parliament and they do have a Welsh Assembly and if Briggs it does go through by the well I'll say that for later okay they also have now allowed the mayor another one of my mistakes here apologize the Mayor of London is now elected directly by the people that used to not be the case and Parliament's sovereignty in Great Britain has been challenged obviously by devolution okay social welfare so whenever the government provides programs for people that's considered part of the welfare state they have a universal health care system it is a single-payer system national health service run by the government everybody who lives there has health insurance through this system they have higher taxes than we do that's what pays for this concerns are that if the nation gets older the costs are gonna rise and they may need to increase taxes or make cuts and services this was a big part of the bragg's of debate I'll explain later just be aware some people think that the health system in Great Britain is not as good as ours others think it is some people think there are longer wait lines they don't have good dental care other people believe that the system provides for everybody unlike in the United States where there are still millions of people who do not have health insurance and other programs that they have they have family leave for parents subsidized housing which we have as well inexpensive college which we don't have right now and programs for the homeless all right domestic issues colonialism has shaped Great Britain and they do have a multi-ethnic society but there is a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment which also contributed to the brexit vote Great Britain has been the victim of terrorism there were bombings at four different transportation sites on July 7 2005 and Scotland the airport was bombed there in 2007 Great Britain has a history of conflict Ireland and Northern Ireland but I don't know if they go for that far back for the exam Great Britain responded to the recent terrorist acts with much greater surveillance on the streets video cameras and sending troops obviously to other countries to fight alright so now we get to brings it so I really feel like they have to ask you about this it's so important so let's see how well I could do on this all right so on June 23rd 2016 Prime Minister David Cameron who did he said this three years earlier he said if you want a referendum on leaving the European Union I'll call for it so he listened to the people and he really believed that they were going to vote to stay in the European Union and he even said if you don't then obviously I believe as Prime Minister so the vote takes place and what's the big debate should be remain or should they leave European Union so what is the European Union well it's a collection of several different countries that tried to create one like Common Market that they would have free access to travel without having to worry about orders they also wanted everybody to have the same currency they have the same judicial system there is actually a parliament as well in the European Union and what has happened is 19 of the nations use the euro they almost all of them are part of like the same common market and almost all of them have the open borders I'm not going to get into too much detail about that right now but the vote was unbelievably narrow so 50 1.9 percent of the voters chose to leave 48 for one said to remain over 70% of the population did vote the English and Wales vote was mostly to leave while the Scottish and the Northern Irish vote was primarily to remain now what would these issues that people were really concerned about as far as I I know there were two big issues the first one is that people thought that if they left a lot of money would then be devoted to the National Health Service so that was one of the reasons why people voted to leave the European Union it has come to the people's attention that nowhere near the amount of money is going to go to the NHS as they thought now another reason there was a major refugee crisis in Europe that was unfolding at this time and the open borders concept was a concern to some people so those are probably the two big reasons why people voted to leave but since then this is not three years later they still have not been able to negotiate an exit plan it's not as easy as maybe people had thought so what is that problem well they were supposed to leave by March 29th but that did they missed that deadline and Theresa May has come under enormous pressure and scrutiny as a result of it now one of the terms that the people in the media are using or should we have a hard bread sedition we have a soft breakfast I was just stop saying we I don't live there so the hard breads of people that means leave the European Union completely no side deals Great Britain is done and and sets everything up on its own soft brexit would allow Great Britain to stay in the single trade market and allow for some free movement of people across borders but they just in Parliament just has not been able to pass either deal the the problem the primary conflict has been the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland so that I told you there was a history of conflict there and they finally came to a peace settlement they called it the Good Friday Agreement and that ended for the most part the violence between Ireland and Northern Ireland so now if they put a physical border between those two because remember the Republic of Ireland is still in the European Union so now if they put a physical border there that could jeopardize the the agreement so that's one major issue Theresa May said maybe we can just put checkpoints up at the border she calls our plan a backstop but they just haven't been able to vote in favor of that so I hope I did a decent job explaining Brezza brings it the new deadline is Halloween 2019 so my class next year will have a lot to look forward to to see if that happens some people think one of they just have a second referendum but that has not been supported yet okay so there's my Great Britain review good luck everyone and I will see you for the next one