Main article: Northern Ireland Assembly Parliament Buildings in Stormont, Belfast, seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Strategic cross-party alliances have been initiated, including a " progressive alliance" and a "Patriotic Alliance", [49] [50] as proposed by UKIP donor Arron Banks. However, following the lead of the Hanoverian monarchs, an arrangement of a "Prime Minister" chairing and leading the Cabinet began to emerge. Voters rank their choices; they can rank as many as they choose since parties will run more than one candidate in each area. As an issue, Scottish independence is known to cross-cut across party lines, with many Scottish Labour voters in particular being favourable to the prospect of independence.

The politics of the United Kingdom functions within a constitutional monarchy where executive power is delegated by legislation and social conventions to a unitary parliamentary democracy. After winning the largest number of seats and votes in the 2015 general election, the Conservatives under David Cameron, remained ahead of the Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn since September 2015. While coalition and minority governments have been an occasional feature of parliamentary politics, the first-past-the-post electoral system used for general elections tends to maintain the dominance of these two parties, though each has in the past century relied upon a third party, such as the Liberal Democrats, to deliver a working majority in Parliament.

There have been shifts in liberal thought, the most prominent of which was the move from classical liberalism (minimal role of state, unsecured liberties) to progressive liberalism in the early twentieth century. Other parties include: the Socialist Labour Party (UK), the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the Communist Party of Britain, the Socialist Party (England and Wales), the Socialist Workers Party, the Liberal Party, Mebyon Kernow (a Cornish nationalist party) in Cornwall, the Yorkshire Party in Yorkshire, and the National Health Action Party.Tribunal NDPBs are part of the justice system and have jurisdiction over a specific area of law - for example, the Competition Appeal Tribunal. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom serves as the highest court of appeal for civil cases under Scots law. Electoral reform was a major priority for the Liberal Democrats, who favour proportional representation but were able to negotiate only a referendum on AV (the alternative vote system is not a form of proportional representation) with the Conservatives. The Countries of the United Kingdom are divided into parliamentary constituencies of broadly equal population by the four Boundary Commissions. The Conservatives lost all their seats in both Scotland and Wales, and was their worst defeat since 1906.

The Labour Party won the second-largest number of seats in the House of Commons at the 2019 general election, with 202 seats overall, 60 seats less than 2017. The first-past-the-post system elects members to parliament through individual elections in each of the 650 constituencies in the UK. The House of Lords currently acts to review legislation initiated by the House of Commons, with the power to propose amendments, and can exercise a suspensive veto. After the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election, the SNP won enough seats to form a majority government, the first time this had ever happened since devolution was established in 1999.The coalition partners campaigned on opposite sides, with the Liberal Democrats supporting AV and the Conservatives opposing it. The Scottish National Party won the third-largest number of seats in the House of Commons at the 2015 general election, winning 56 MPs from the 59 constituencies in Scotland having won 50% of the popular vote. Sinn Féin has a policy of abstentionism and their MPs refuse to take their seats in Parliament, and have done so since 1918.