Lesson video

Hi welcome to our second lesson in the unit of how does political system work in the UK.

Today we're going to be exploring the question of how do elections work? and looking at the different processes and kind of procedures involved in electing the officials we have, who represents us.

So in today's lesson you are going to need your notes from last time.

Can have some paper, a pen Probably, could pen out your work and somewhere quiet to complete the lesson.

If you need to get anything or you need to move please pause video now to do so and then rejoin once you're ready.

So today we're going to look at kind of two things.

Oh, we're going to look at what voting is.

I'm going to look at how the general elections work in the UK.

Okay.

So let's imagine that you and your friends are having a party and you're trying to decide what cake to buy.

Okay.

And you've stood in the cake aisle, you've narrowed it down to these four flavours, chocolate fudge, lemon drizzle, carrot cake, and Victoria sponge.

What are the different ways that you could decide what cake to buy? Just have a couple of seconds, just to think about the different ways you could choose Hopefully one of your ways was to vote.

So you could all take turns and you could all say, well, I want chocolate fudge.

I want carrot I want chocolate fudge and hopefully there'd be winner and you'd be and you'd be able to make and you'd be able to make your decision that way.

Okay.

Have you ever voted for anything before? So have you ever, you know kind of rang up a TV programme to vote for something Have you voted in your school council elections? There are lots of opportunities that you might have to vote and hopefully you, are you taking those up? So what is voting and what does it mean to vote? So voting is defined as the activity of choosing someone or something.

Now you might want to pause the video and just make a note of that definition.

So you have it for your notes Voting really underpins a democratic society.

Okay.

Voting is really important, in any kind of democracy and voting should always be free and fair.

Okay.

Elections is the period running up to voting for a new government.

Should be held kind of regular.

So in the UK, we have them we have elections, at least every five years They can be before five years but they do have to be at least have to be every five years.

Citizens should be free vote for whoever they want to.

Okay.

So they shouldn't be forced to vote for political party.

Sadly, in some countries people record about that happening Okay.

And all those are voting age should be allowed to vote.

So we have a voting age of 18.

So people who are 18 and above should be able to cast their vote for whoever they want to win the election.

So when election is a time when people vote in order to choose someone for a political or official job.

Okay.

So again, you might want to jot that definition down.

So you have it for your notes.

We have lots of elections in the UK.

We have Local Elections We have General Elections, We have Devolved Elections.

So elections in Devolved nations of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland.

We have Mayoral elections and police and crime commissioner elections.

Within your assessments, your lessons you will get to explore some others in a little bit more detail, but this topic and discussion, we'll focus on the general election.

So see what you can remember from the stuff I've been saying.

So here's a little quiz, and all you have to do is think to yourself, is it true or is it false? If you want to, you can write it down But you don't have to.

Okay.

So pause the video and just have a think.

Okay.

So hopefully you have the same answers as me.

So we've got number one, in a democracy citizens who are of voting age or elect their government? So there's tends to be, so this is true.

Okay.

When we have an election, we are voting for that government.

In the UK you can vote at age 16 in the General Election.

This isn't true but you have to be 18 to vote in a General Election in the UK Voting is when you are forced to select somethings So, you know, voting should be free and fair.

You shouldn't be forced to vote for something that you don't believe in.

In the UK election should take place at least every five years.

That's true.

So they can be before but have to be at least every five years.

And There's only one election in the UK That's false because are the general election the local action, the devolved election, et cetera.

So well done for that.

Okay.

Next question is how did general elections work in the UK? So let's imagine that this was the news.

Okay.

It's not but let's imagine it is as a general action has been announced.

Okay.

So how do we get from this to brand new government? Okay And that's what we're going to look at in the next part of the lesson Your main task for today is that is that you're going to create a timeline of the general election period.

Okay.

So it's really important that you do have your paper with you at the moment, do this.

because we're going to pause at significant points as we go along.

Okay.

I'm not going to ask you to do, is have a symbol, and a description, a summary of each point using some of the key vocabulary.

Related to that aspect.

Okay.

The first thing I would want you to do is draw a line or cross down your page.

Okay.

And you're going to need a full piece of paper for this.

Okay.

Now I'm just going to show you an example.

So this is one of them.

So this is mine.

Okay.

You can tell my drawings are wonderful.

And this is a kind of thing I'm going to ask you to do.

Okay.

I'm going to stop you at various points to give you some time to do it.

So let's have a look.

So, so the first thing what happens is that the existing parliament is dissolved.

Okay.

So it's tradition and, and customary, for the Prime Minister to go to the Monarch and ask their permission to dissolve parliament.

Okay.

So in this case the Prime Minister will go to the Queen and say, "We're going to have a general election please dissolve parliament.

And they do.

Okay.

So this means that MPs are no longer MPs and election process begins.

However people are still in charge of the country but the prime minister would still be charge of the country And should something happen should a big decision needs to be made then they could do that.

Okay.

So that's number one, Number two, constituencies and campaigning Okay.

For the purpose of a general election for the purpose of a lot of the political systems in the UK, the UK split into 650 areas, okay.

And each area is called a constituency.

Okay.

Each constituency is represented by one MP.

So there's one MP for every 650 constituencies.

So that means there are 650 MPs If the MP wins the election in the area they will be awarded a seat in the House of Commons Okay.

So they get to sit in the House of Commons for that area Okay, but a fun fact is that there, The House of Commons isn't actually big enough for everyone sit down.

So it's often quite crowded when people are allowed in MPs often stand for an election representing a political party.

Okay.

We're going to look at political parties a bit and a bit later in another unit, but a political party, basically a group of people who share the same political ideas and views So last time we looked at government and the political party currently representing us is The Conservatives.

That means they have most MPS in The House of Commons, but you can also stand as an independent candidate so not representing a political party but your own ideas and your own views Okay.

Well, that's not that common in the UK.

And the final bit for this section is campaigning and manifestos.

Okay.

So campaigning will often focus on on local and national issues.

So an MP will often focus on the issues in their constituency and on national issues to try and encourage you to vote for them.

That's quite it, isn't it? Policy promises join the action.

Okay.

And these promises are collected into a document called a manifesto.

Okay.

And these manifestos are promoted during the election process to make each party different and stand out.

And people make the decision based on their manifestos.

Yeah.

So a manifesto is a very helpful thing for people to use, to decide who to vote for.

So, what I would like to do is take a couple of minutes pause the video and have a think about how you would summarise those three different elements.

Okay.

So you need three different stages on your timeline to represent all the things I have just said.

So please pause the video now to complete that task.

So you might have something that looks like this.

Okay.

So this is mine.

So you can see I have the key words and I've summarised each stage.

Okay.

So the next stage is debates.

Okay.

So you might have seen the 2019 election that often the leaders of the political parties will engage in far more debates on the TV.

Okay.

And you can watch them talk about the issues and answer questions from media people, and from members of the public.

So they may the questioned on the manifesto and how they plan to govern country if they win.

And, and sometimes these election debates focus on a specific issue.

So for example, there was the climate change debate during the 2019 General Election.

So we've had some campaigning, We've had some debates, we've had some more campaigning.

We finally get to election day.

Now election day is also called polling day.

And the reason why that is will become familiar soon.

It's always, always on a Thursday.

On this day people go visit a polling station.

And this is where people cast their vote.

Okay And it's often open from 7:00 AM, till 10:00 PM.

Now your primary school might've been used as a polling station can be another place in your community might also be a polling station.

Those who vote, are given something called a ballot paper and they're asked to mark with an X who they would like to represent them.

After they marked the ballot paper they put it into a ballot box.

The process is done all alone or in secret.

So traditionally, you not meant to tell anyone who you voted for obviously you can, that's up to you, but sometimes people choose to spoil the ballots.

They choose not to vote for anybody that's probably because they don't feel that anyone who is standing who represents their views or feels like they can represent them adequately.

And you can also request to vote by post or by proxy.

So you can get asked So you can ask to send the postal vote or you can ask for someone else to vote on your behalf but you do need to give your express permission for that to happen.

And this is an example of a ballot paper.

So what you can see all the, all the parties are listed.

And it says at the top, please put a cross in the box, next to your choice You put a across in Can you pop it in the ballot box on your way out Okay.

So you going to pause video now, please.

And add those two stages to your timeline again, and remember to summarise and again add a little picture Okay.

Hopefully yours will look something like that.

Probably better.

So you have the debate stage and you have the polling station and on ballot paper and voting stage.

Okay.

So after people have voted Voting concludes at ten o'clock because the polling station is closed The votes are collected and they're taken to a nearby vote count station.

So this is often quite a big hall of kind of a big space and count teams under strict guidance and supervision will count the votes.

So votes are checked continually to make sure that nothing goes wrong.

Yes Once its undertaken the result is announced And each constituency is one of 650.

Okay.

And it normally take some till early the next day to get the full count.

So you might have, you might have a recollection of the 2018 election by about 7:00 AM.

We kind of had an idea who was going to win And this is an example of a count.

You can see the ballot boxes, you can see the voting so she can see people's supervisors in the count, et cetera.

And then we have the winner.

Okay.

So for general elections or the UK uses what we call first past the post voting and simple, this means that the person with the most votes wins that constituency and the party who collectively has the most votes are the party of that form of government.

So remember those who have the authority to of rule the country and the leader of this party becomes the Prime Minister To have a majority you need to win 326 seats.

So you need to get over half because remember there's 650 The party that gets second biggest majority becomes the opposition.

So they oppose the government kind of regularly debate and challenge and scrutinise their work.

If no one party gets a majority then perhaps a minority government can be formed or maybe a coalition.

And that happened a few years ago with the Conservatives on the Democrats.

So these are some of the results of the 2019 General Election You can say there's a lot of blue and that blue represents Conservatives.

You can see pockets of red that's Labour up in Scotland.

You can see a light to yellow.

That's up there the SNP Again in Whales you can see green and some blue The green is the Plaid Cymru And in Ireland you can see a darker green and that's Sinn Fein and all sorts of like orange and that's to Democratic Unionist Party.

We will look at these parties in an up coming lesson.

Okay.

But that is what the UK General Election looked like.

I don't know if you can see it, but right at the bottom of that in Brighton, you can see a little bit of green.

That was a green party.

So after the election has been announced and you have the new Prime Minister, they will go and revisit the Monarch and ask their permission to form a new government The Monarch will say yes.

And after this a short time later, so a few days or a week the parliament is officially opened again by the Monarch Who gives a speech, how iron in the policies proposed association of the new government.

So all these things were promised during the election campaign, during manifestos this is what will be put to work.

This is what, this is what will be in the speech and the government meeting straightaway In the afternoon, they back in the House of Commons and they are debating.

And here's the Queen giving her speech and the Lords So again, the final three stages please pause the video now of those three stages, remember, remember just kind of summarise under our picture and then come back and check your answers.

So, here you go here are mine, again with a very special looking crown and I'm not an artist, but that's okay.

So again, I've got some key words I have underlying my keywords, you can do that too, if you want to.

And then this is what the whole thing might look like.

Hopefully you also have something similar so well done and hopefully you now have a better understanding of how a General Election works.

And so what I would like you to do now, again is we have a very nice kind of video.

What kind of sums up that process One way to have a say in how the country is run is to use your vote.

You have to be 18 or over to vote in general elections but you can register it from the age of 16.

There were lots of other ways to get involved and have your voice heard, whatever your age remember MPs represents all of their constituents but how? You can visit an MP in their local constituency office, or you can even travel to the houses of parliament to lobby them in central lobby Lords have knowledge and experience in specific subject areas.

You can look them up by policy interest on the parliament website.

Anyone can contact any Lord or their local MP by letter or email to discuss an issue that's important to them or their community.

Sometimes though there's strength in numbers.

So to get your voice heard, you could join the youth section of a party or the UK youth parliament.

If you're passionate about an issue you could start a petition for a cause either on paper or online or joining an existing campaign pressure or protest group to influence decision-making.

These groups use different methods to get their voices heard from lobbying to peaceful protest all designs to bring about change.

And don't forget, you can get your voice heard in school or college too, by joining or starting a student council a bit like a mini parliament.

So parliament sits at the heart of UK democracy debating the big issues of the day making and shaping laws and holding the government to account by voting petitioning campaigning, and more you can also get involved with the work of parliament.

What will you do? And if you want to do something a bit further after the lesson, why don't you have a look and see what the election result was like in your area.

Okay.

So under the supervision of your parent or carer use a search engine to find the 2019 General Election result in your constituency.

So literally just search 2019 General Election Results in wherever you live.

And you can have a look at things like who win the most seats? How big was the majority? Can look at what the other political parties stood? Just to get a sense of the politics in your local area.

That is completely optional, though.

It gets completely up to you and how much time you have That brings the lesson to the end.

Okay.

So hopefully now you can define what voting is and you can explain the different stages of the general election in the UK.

So now we've reached the end of the lesson.

Don't forget to complete the exit quiz time then you're finished.

And hopefully see you again for the next one.

Have a good day.

Bye.