The Countdown of UK General Elections Started

• 05.07.2015, 02:16
•  Europe,  World

In just several hours elections for the 56^th Parliament of the United Kingdom will start. The elections will decide the composition of the House of Commons and also who the new prime minister will be. The polling booths will open at 7am and close at 10pm, after which the counting of the votes will begin. Votes are counted in each constituency, and the candidate there with the most votes becomes the Member of Parliament. The leader of the party, as independent.co.uk informs, which wins an overall majority of MPs, becomes the prime minister. 

The upcoming elections are unique in the way that it is the first election after the adoption of the Fixed-term Parliament Act of 2011, which led to the mandated dissolution of the 55^th Parliament and appointing new elections on May 7, 2015. The Act also fixes that the parliamentary elections starting from 2015 will be held every five years. Before the adoption of the Act, it was the Monarch, who decided when to dissolve the Parliament and schedule new elections. However, during the recent years this monopoly of the Monarch started to become much a formal function. In fact a decision to dissolve the Parliament was made by the Queen after consulting the Prime Minister. Moreover, according to Septennial Act of 1715, the parliamentary term was set to be maximum seven years, and according to the Parliament Act of 1911, the maximum term was decreased to five years. Nevertheless, the frequency for holding parliamentary elections was not fixed by law.

As the Economist mentions, these elections are unique also by the fact that several big and popular parties are participating in the political competition, as a result of which the British traditional two-party political system may change.

The results of the UK May 7 general elections will already be clear on May 8. As it is written in the official website of the UK Parliament, on May 18 the new Parliament will be summoned and the new Speaker of the House of Commons will be elected, after which MPs will start swearing the Oath of Allegiance. The State Opening of the new Parliament will take place on May 27 with the Queen delivering a speech. But if no party has a majority in the House of Commons, then coalition negotiations will start and it will take several days, even weeks to form a new Government. The countdown of the start of the UK General elections have already started…