Hi everyone, and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope Advanced. In our previous episode we confused you a lot with the idea of the British government and how our government is formed.

Mhm.

Thanks a lot for tuning into this episode where we’re probably going to try and confuse you even more. Hi, Lulu.

Hi, Anlan. I'm sure I get thoroughly confused. So I have a question first.

Yes.

We were talking about the two houses. Now let's talk about the Prime Minister.

Uh, yes.

I always wondered, see, when you hear president or chairman, you know they're the top guy.

Yeah.

But Prime Minister, it’s prime ministers like top minister, which means he essentially is still a minister.

Yeah. Or she.

Yes, she or he. Sorry being unintentionally sexist, but he or she is still a Prime Minister.

That's right.

Is that where the word comes from?

The idea is the Prime Minister is a First Among Equals, so the Prime Minister acts as the leader of the government in the name of the King.

Uh, it’s the representative.

Somewhat like a representative, but essentially the Prime Minister is acting within the blessing of the King or Queen.

I see, and how long have you been having Prime Ministers?

Since the 18th century. Originally, we had a Prime Minister because they were, I should say, representing the King, because we had a King, King George I, who was German and couldn't speak English.

So the first Prime Minister was like a glorified translator?

Uh, pretty much,

Wow.

George I and Robert Walpole, his name was Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister, they had to speak in Latin, so because King George I couldn't learn English. He was a bit older at this time. They had a prime minister.

I see. I see.

Now the Prime Minister lives, as you all know, at No.10 Downing Street which is close to the government departments in White Hall and the Houses of Parliament.

And what about those parliamentary debates that we constantly see on TV, sometimes get really heated and people were shouting, they're basically booing the Prime Minister.

Oh, yeah. That is very traditional.

Oh.

What you're probably seeing is what we call Prime Minister's Question Time.

Okay.

Now Prime Minister's Question Time is when any MP can ask the Prime Minister a question and the Prime Minister has to defend their stance, or sometimes attack the stance of the Opposition, or the leader of the Opposition in particular.

It looks brutal. It looks really… they look really aggressive, the people who are asking questions, the Opposition.

Yeah.

They're supposed to be like that?

They're supposed to be like that. The Opposition has to challenge the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister has to defend themselves.

But I know what you mean about it being very brutal. You see the House of Commons, the Chamber, is actually a very small space, surprisingly small.

I remember when I was younger, I actually went for a tour around the House of Commons, and it is quite traditional for people when you see the seat of the Prime Minister, you're not allowed to sit on the seat. But the tour guy was saying, actually what a lot people do is they hover over the seat of Prime Minister and fart on it.

OK. Carry on.

But, yeah, I just like that little fact. Each side are facing each other, on the left is the government, on the right is what we call the Opposition, or …and for another way of saying it is a Shadow Government. So you'll see Shadow Chancellor, Shadow Defense Minister.

I think the best way to think about this is like chess. Each side you have exactly the same group of people, but just one…right now one is in power, the other is not.

That's a really good way of describing it.

Right? Each person… that's why we sometimes say Shadow Minister, Shadow Minister basically means that when their party become the ruling party, they will be that minister.

Yeah.

Yeah. The other thing that I want to just really quickly mention is this parliamentary debate is also very popular debate form in a lot of like school debates or university debates, right？The whole idea is about one side needs to defend your stance, your positions, and the opposition will attack or try to poke holes in your logic.

That is it. The chamber itself is designed for that. You'll see the two sides sitting away from each other. Traditionally, the space in the middle is the length of two swords.

Oh, WOW. That's interesting.

The idea is that because back in maybe the 16th, 17th century, they all carried swords. The idea was that if it got too heated, they couldn't reach and kill each other.

省得说不过就打.

Yeah, because it's illegal to actually cross the boundaries, you can stand up, but you can't cross.

OK, so enough about that fight in the chamber of a House of Commons. Let's talk about the political parties because we were talking about the ruling party and the opposition party.

Yeah.

But there are more than two parties in the UK.

There are three main political parties throughout the UK, if we talk about Scotland, Wales, there's one or two additional parties, but for our purposes, there are three main political parties, the Conservatives or Tories.

这个是保守党或者也叫托利党. Tory is an old name.

Tory is an old name. It's actually originally an insult. You have Labor and the Liberal Democrats.

Labor就是工党, Liberal Democrats or Lib Dem, you call it, 是自由民主党.

But really the two that holds most of the supports or most of the power would be Conservatives and Labor.

That's right. So the conservatives are the centre-right party. So traditionally they focus more on the economy, lower taxation, and are seen as more traditional.

Can I just ask is there a perception that people who are richer, who have more money, have more properties, they tend to vote for the Conservatives？

Yeah. Traditionally older people vote for Conservatives, because they do stand for more the economy and lower taxation and economic growth so on and so forth.

更多是有产阶级这种.

Yeah. Whereas Labor are what we call the centre-left party. They're more focused on welfare, public spending, higher taxation; and traditionally younger people and working class people vote for Labor.

It's all in a name, isn't it？Labor party听这个名字就是工党. What about Lib Dem？

But what about them？

Are they just like center?

They're just center, the Lib Dems, they haven't been in power now for over 100 years. They're more focused on reform and they are generally seen as more pro-Europe.

OK.

Traditionally, middle class people vote for Lib Dem, but the size of the vote is actually very small.

I think Lib Dem, what I've heard is basically they were only really mentioned in like coalition government.

Yeah. And because of how badly really they performed or how badly they were perceived, that meant that the size of their vote was reduced even more, because they were seen as too close to the Conservatives.

So what is a coalition government? is when Conservatives and Labor they don't get enough votes, then there is a…

Yeah, it sometimes happens. It's when one side doesn't get sufficient enough votes to form a government. And that does sometimes happen because in parliament, every MP has a vote and generally they vote supporting their party, sometimes they don't, which is… and that's called a backbench revolt.

I see. Okay and earlier on you mentioned that… so these three parties are when you're talking about things in general, but now Scotland that's a whole other issue. I think there's something called SMP, Scottish National Party.

Scotland has its own parliament, same as Wales. And in Scotland they're dominated by the SMP. Now the SMP are very much pro-independence from the UK.

They want to vote themselves out.

They held a referendum in 2014, and Scotland narrowly agreed to remain part of the UK. Now the SMP and generally Scotland has always been seen as against the Conservatives. Traditionally they were more Labor.

But they also participate in the general election, they're running.

Oh, yeah, they do which is made things a little bit more complicated.

What if, I know it's a very unlikely situation, but what if SMP actually gets the majority vote？

They've been getting a majority vote for almost 20 years now.

No, I mean, getting the majority vote from all over the UK.

To be honest, that can't happen. Simply because England is much bigger, there's more constituencies in England and also Wales and I don't think many English people can be voting for the SMP.

Ah, so mostly, people living in Scotland.

That's right.

Let's not get into that because that is a whole complex issue. In the future we can set aside an episode talking about Scotland.

Yeah, of course.

What are some of the main issues that these parties been focusing on or been divisive on? Because we talked with James before and in America, you always see Democrats and Republicans they will differ on some major issues.

Yeah. I would say the main issue that still dominating the British political landscape is Brexit.

But it's already happened.

It's already happened. But we're now feeling the effects of Brexit. So Labor and also lots of Conservatives were pro-Europe and there are still quite a few Conservatives who are quite anti-Europe and pro-Brexit. But the problem is that because it was so divisive, I don't think we really have completely recovered from it.

I see.

We've lost Prime Ministers because they couldn't actually put forward a decent enough proposal to carry through Brexit.

So essentially lots of people in the UK, I won't tell you my own political stance to this, but lots of people in the UK they voted for Brexit, but it was up to the government to try to arrange the UK leaving the European Union, which is still quite contentious issue.

Yeah, I mean, if you think about perhaps for the past 10 years or so this has been the issue.

Oh, yeah. A good example would be look at it like a divorce, it’s very easy for a couple to say I want a divorce, but you still gotta go through dividing up the property…

Aftermath.

The aftermath, etc.

Let alone dealing with kids.

Exactly.

Which is like the “legacies”.

There we go, and I'll say one more thing as well, is austerity.

Austerity means saving money?

Yeah, it means reducing government spending and saving money. The UK was greatly affected in the financial crisis in 2008.

And obviously we've gone through the COVID pandemic as well. So the idea really is around public spending. How much should the government get involved in promoting economic growth, and this was actually why Liz Truss failed. Because…

She made some very bad decisions.

Made some very, very, very, very bad decisions…

Like the mini budgets.

The mini budget. She was trying to promote growth, but in the end actually kind of really harm the economy. And this is something that is still going around.

So for example, as I say, Conservatives are more focused on the economy and lower taxation, whereas Labor want to increase public spending. But the problem is you increase public spending, you increase tax.

It's a balancing act.

It is a balancing act, and the problem is at the moment, I, from my viewpoint, is no one's really 100% sure on the best way forward on what to do.

The fine art of governance.

Yes.

OK. And hopefully we didn't thoroughly confuse you. I know a lot of our audience are probably not very interested in politics and themselves. But hopefully we made it a little bit more relevant, made it a little bit easier to understand.

Oh, yeah, if you follow British news, you’ve probably seen a lot of references; and it's important to have that cultural background because this is how we would see politics and this is how we see our own government.

Okay. Thank you, Anlan, for coming to the show. If you guys have any comments or questions to ask, leave us a comment in the comment section.

We'll see you next time.

We'll see you next time.

Bye.

Bye.