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Hello, my name is Mrs. Harrison.

I'm the person who's going to be guiding you through today's learning.

So the lesson today is called What happens after a general election? And it's part of a larger unit called How does the political system work in the U.

? By the end of today's lesson, you are going to be able to say, "I can explain what happens after a general election and describe what majority, minority, and coalition governments are." Some of this learning might be new to you, some of it you might already know, and some of it might be quite challenging.

I'm gonna be here to guide you all the way through it and we're gonna do it together.

Let's start with some key words for the lesson today then.

I'm going to say the key word, and you are going to repeat it back.

Are we ready? Election, prime minister, majority, coalition, and minority.

Our first learning cycle for today is called What happens after a majority vote? The United Kingdom is a democracy, and one of the main parts of a democracy is that citizens living in that country have the right to choose their leaders and their representatives in elections.

In a general election, citizens vote for who they want to represent their views in Parliament.

Now, Parliament is the legislative branch of the United Kingdom, which makes and passes the laws.

When a person is elected to Parliament, they become officially a Member of Parliament and/or an MP.

General elections in the United Kingdom have to happen at least every five years, and that means that citizens get to choose the leaders who they need at the time.

If you have a leader and they're in power for 10 years or 20 years, the world could be very different and actually you might need a different kind of leader.

So regular general elections mean that citizens choose who they need now.

Our first check for understanding then, you are going to fill in the gaps to make this paragraph make sense, I'm going to read it to you, and then I'll give you some time to think about which words go in those gaps.

So in the U.

, have the power to choose their leaders and representatives through elections.

In a election, citizens vote for a candidate to represent their views in Parliament.

The elected person becomes a.

General elections happen at least every years, allowing citizens to choose leaders who reflect their current needs and views.

I'll give you a few seconds to find those answers, and then we'll come back and check them.

All right, let's fill in these answers then.

So in the U.

, citizens have the power to choose their leaders and representatives through elections.

In a general election, citizens vote for a candidate to represent their views in Parliament.

The elected person becomes a Member of Parliament, or MP.

General elections happen at least every five years, allowing citizens to choose leaders who reflect their current needs and views.

Amazing if you got those gaps filled correctly.

Now you might have seen something on TV looking like this.

And when a general election is announced by the current prime minister, a huge chain of events is set into motion and it pretty much happens the same every single time.

It starts with something called the dissolution of Parliament, when everybody, all the MPs have to stand down and they are no longer class as MPs.

And it ends with the election results being announced and the new MPs being declared.

Once the election results are confirmed, every political party adds up how many seats they won across the whole of the U.

If one party wins a lot of seats in the election, they might have something called a majority.

Now, a majority doesn't just mean the most, it means they have more than half of the total seats available.

So a majority in Parliament would be 50% of seats plus 1 more MP.

Each constituency has one MP, and there are 650 MPs in Parliament for the whole of the U.

So to win a majority, that has to be 50% plus 1.

So that's 326 seats in total.

So if a party can win 326 seats, they win control of government.

Let's have a look at these 2015 general election results then.

So the Conservatives won 331 seats, Labour won 232, the Liberal Democrats won eight, the Scottish National Party won 56, the Democratic Unionist Party won eight, and other parties combined got 15.

So Andeep here is telling us the Conservative Party won 331 seats.

That's more than the 326, which would be the majority.

So they took control over government.

The 2024 general election results are here.

Conservatives 121, Labour 421, Liberal Democrats 72, Scottish National Party nine, Sinn Fein 7, and other parties combined with 29.

So was there a party here that got the majority? Well, yes, Jun's telling us that this time, the Labour Party won the majority of seats because they won 421, which was more than the 326, which would be the majority.

It's at least 50% plus 1.

So it's really important for a party to aim to win a majority.

Because when a party wins that majority, the leader of the party becomes the prime minister.

The prime minister is the leader of the entire U.

Government.

So when the government is deciding which ideas, which policies, which plans they have for the future, it's going to be the ideas of the leader and their party if they have control of the government.

When a political party has a majority in Parliament, that means when they have votes, when they have debates, and they have to decide if something is going to happen or not happen, if you have the majority vote, more people are going to be voting yes to your ideas than voting no.

So even if every other person in Parliament says no and you have the majority, it's still going to go through because you have 50% plus 1 of all of the votes.

And if you have a majority government, that means that it's likely to be more stable and more efficient because you're not going to need to compromise constantly with other political parties.

Another check for understanding then.

So which of these would have a majority win in Parliament if it had 650 seats? The first one is the largest party has 325 seats, the second one is the largest party has 326 seats, and the third one is the largest party has 327 seats.

Which of these scenarios would mean a majority win in Parliament? I'll give you a few seconds to think.

All right then.

So does A, have a majority with 325 seats? Well, no, because that's exactly 50%, not 50% plus 1.

So A does not have a majority win in Parliament.

B has 326 seats, which is 50% plus 1.

And C has 327 seats, which is 50% plus 2, isn't it? So both B and C have a majority win in a Parliament with 650 seats.

Great job if you got those ones.

When all the results have come back from the general election, it means that the current prime minister still their party remains in power, then the prime minister can stay in that role, as long as their party agrees to keep them as their leader.

Down here on the left, we've got a picture of a man called Gordon Brown and we've got Queen Elizabeth II.

Now, Gordon Brown was the prime minister between 2007 and 2010, and he was the leader of the Labour Party.

So why do we have a picture of him meeting the queen? Well, in this particular election in 2010, Gordon Brown's Labour Party did not win a majority in Parliament.

If the different political party wins control, then that means the current prime minister cannot continue to be the prime minister because they are no longer the leader of the party with the majority vote, And they have to then stand down, they have to resign from their position as prime minister.

And the way that is done with the U.

general elections is that the prime minister will visit the monarch, so that's the king or the queen at the time, and they will formally resign at Buckingham Palace.

This visit to Buckingham Palace along with the resignation happens the morning after the general election has taken place.

Once the former prime minister has left, the new prime minister or the prime minister-to-be arrives at Buckingham Palace.

And remember, that's usually the leader of the party that's just won the majority of seats.

The monarchs, or the king or the queen, will greet them, and then that monarch will formally invite them to make a government.

This whole process is known as kissing hands.

Well, the kissing doesn't generally take place, it's more likely to shake hands, as shown in this picture here.

Moving on from the prime minister then, a few days after the general election, that's when the members of House of Commons and House of Lords will take their Oath of Allegiance.

If they're a non-religious person, they might take a non-religious affirmation instead, and they have to do this before they're allowed to formally take their seats in the House of Commons or the House of Lords.

MPs can't take their seats, they can't speak in debates or votes, and they can't receive a salary until they've taken that oath or affirmation.

And they can also be fined 500 pounds and have their seat declared vacant if they attempt to do any of those things without taking the oath first.

And this rule applies to the members of the House of Lords as well.

The swearing in of elected MPs takes place in alphabetical order in front of the speaker in the House of Commons.

And on this picture here, we've got the MP for Kingswood, Damien Egan, being sworn in in 2024.

A quick check for understanding then.

So the oath that MPs take is called the Oath of Allegiance, Affirmation, or Agreement.

What is their oath called? I'll give you a few seconds to think.

Okay, so the oath that MPs take is called the Oath of Allegiance.

Yes.

If they're a non-religious person, they can take an affirmation.

The oath itself is called the Oath of Allegiance.

Well done.

Another thing that happens after a general election is that Parliament might elect a new speaker.

Now it's the speaker's job to run the debates in the House of Commons and make sure that everybody follows the rules when the debates and the votes are taking place.

The speaker is always an MP, and they're usually in the party that has won the majority.

But once they're elected, they're no longer allowed to be part of that political party and they have to resign and become what we call neutral.

Now, when you become politically neutral, that means you can't publicly speak of your own political ideas or beliefs or ways that you think that the society should be run.

And that's the case for the speaker here.

They're not allowed to speak publicly of their political ideas and beliefs anytime that they are the speaker.

In this picture here, we've got the current speaker of the House of Commons, and his name is Sir Lindsay Hoyle.

So we now have the new prime minister, we have all the MPs sworn in, and the speaker is elected, the next thing is for the prime minister to then officially decide who they want to sit on the Cabinet alongside them.

Izzy is telling us that the Cabinet is the team of senior ministers, and they're responsible for overseeing all the government departments and making really key important decisions on policies for the whole of the U.

state.

Once the Cabinet is selected, we then have the official grand opening of Parliament, and that is called the State Opening of Parliament.

It's a very formal, very ceremonial event, and it is led by the monarch.

In attendance of this event will be MPs, there'll be peers, and lots of other special guests as well.

The monarch travels to the Palace of Westminster in one of the golden state carriages.

It's pulled by horses.

And there's a huge procession with many, many people involved.

And when the monarch gets there, they then deliver a speech in the House of Lords about the government's goals in the near future.

But it isn't the monarch themselves who prepares this speech.

It's actually prepared by the new government.

The monarch themselves has to remain politically neutral, very much like the speaker of the House of Commons.

Another quick check for understanding then.

So which two roles must remain politically neutral? Is it king or queen? Is it the speaker of the House of Commons? Or is it the prime minister? Which two must remain politically neutral? I'll give you a few seconds to think.

Okay, so we have the two politically neutral roles must be the king or the queen.

Yep, so the monarch.

And the speaker of the House of Commons.

Of course, the prime minister can't be politically neutral because they are the leader of a political party.

Great job if you got those ones.

It's time for your first task, Task A.

In this task, you're gonna write a short explanation about what happens after a majority vote, and you're going to number the events to show in which order they happen.

The four different events here are we've got the State Opening of Parliament, the Oath of Allegiance, kissing hands, and when Parliament elect a new speaker.

You're going to write a short explanation, and then you're going to number them to show which order they happen.

It's a really good idea to pause the video to give yourself the time to do the task.

And then when you're done, please play, and we'll come back and go through some possible answers together.

Okay, let's go through some possible answers then.

Here we go.

So the State Opening of Parliament, the monarch officially opens Parliament by reading a speech written for them by the new government.

The Oath of Allegiance is where elected MPs take the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown, or a non-religious affirmation, and that's done in Parliament, in the House of Commons.

Kissing hands is when demon monarch welcomes the new prime minister and invites them to form a government.

And Parliament elect a new speaker, that's when the new speaker of the House of Commons will be appointed, and the speaker needs to resign from their political party and then become politically neutral.

And the order that these happen is, is number one, would be kissing hands, number two would be taking the Oath of Allegiance, number three would be electing a new speaker, and finally, the State Opening of Parliament, number four out of these four events.

Really good job if you've got something like mine.

I bet you've got some of those keywords and key ideas in there.

Great job.

Now it's time for our second learning cycle, what happens after a non-majority vote? Now, we've talked about what happens when there is a majority vote in a general election, but what happens if no party wins the majority? So if that happens, we call that a hung Parliament.

Sometimes some political parties can be really close to getting a majority and they've got a couple of options of what they can do next.

To get a majority, party with the most seats might officially join with a smaller party, and this is what we call coalition.

Now, a coalition could actually involve linking more than two political parties together, but that's naturally never happened in the U.

political history.

Now with a coalition government, the parties have to cooperate really carefully because they're officially making a union as such.

And so they'll discuss which policies they want to keep from which party.

They're going to need to discuss who takes the positions on the Cabinet and other important roles within the government.

But usually the leader of the party with the most votes will still become the prime minister.

And usually, the leader of the party that they're joining with, the smaller party, will become the deputy prime minister.

Let's have a look at the general election results from 2010, which did end up with a coalition government.

Now, do you remember the picture of Gordon Brown earlier on when he was visiting the queen to tender his resignation to give up being prime minister? Well, that's because his government lost control and he was no longer allowed to be prime minister.

A different political party won most votes, but they didn't win the majority of the votes.

That party was the Conservatives, led by David Cameron.

Now they got 306 seats.

Well, they didn't have a majority of the seats and they were 20 short.

So as we've said, became a hung Parliament.

And so that meant no party could take full control over the government.

So what happened? Well, Conservatives had 306 seats.

The Democratic Unionist Party had 8, Labour had 258, Liberal Democrats had 57, Scottish National Party had 6, and all the other parties combined had 15.

So what happened in this situation was that the Conservatives joined with the Liberal Democrats.

There were lots of negotiations between them, and the Liberal Democrats, led by Nick Clegg, decided that, yes, they would form this union, form this coalition with the Conservative government.

Now, this was the first coalition government in the U.

since World War II.

So a long, long time since this had happened before.

David Cameron became the prime minister, and Nick Clegg, he became the deputy prime minister.

Check for understanding then.

So the type of government formed when two or more parties come together to create a majority is called a what? I'll give you a few seconds to think.

Okay.

The type of government formed when two or more parties come together to create a majority is called a coalition.

Great job if you got that one.

Sometimes though, political parties can't form a coalition with others.

So their other option is to try set up a minority government.

This means that they can govern still, they can still be in control of the government, but they don't have a majority of seats in Parliament.

In the case of a minority government, it still means that the party who got the most seats, all the rules on the Cabinet will be filled by those MPs.

They still don't have more than half of the seats in Parliament.

So this means that when votes take place, there's often gonna still be more MPs voting against their ideas, against their proposals, then actually voting in favour of.

So that becomes really difficult to get them to pass their ideas and pass their policies and get them put into place.

So what option do they have then? Well, they might then try to set up a deal with smaller parties.

Now, this is different from a coalition because it's not an official union.

The way this happens is that smaller parties agree to vote the same way as the party to have control of the government.

So it might be all of the votes to do with education, or all of the votes to do with health, or all of the votes to do with national security.

The smaller parties say, "Yes, we'll back you on that.

We'll vote yes when you say yes as well." So that means you get more MPs voting yes to the ruling party's ideas than voting no.

What is part of this agreement then, the smaller parties will often ask for certain conditions to be met in order for the ruling party to have their support, and they will ask for things that will benefit them.

And this happened in 2017.

Here are the 2017 general election results, where the Conservatives got 317 seats, close, but not quite a majority vote.

So they had to try and set either a coalition or to set up a minority government.

And what they choose to do was to rule with the minority government, and they set up an agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party, who had 10 seats in Parliament, and that gave them the majority vote, just enough for them to take more yeses in Parliament votes than nos.

The leader of the conservative government at the time was Theresa May, and she made a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party, which was led by Arlene Foster, and they agreed that they'd vote the same way on key issues.

But do you remember, I said the smaller party would ask for things that would benefit them? Well, the DUP, the Democratic Unionist Party, they secured an extra 1 billion pounds worth of funding for Northern Ireland in return for voting with the conservative government on key issues.

Another quick check for understanding then.

So when a political party rules without having a majority, this is called a kind of government.

Is it A, minority, majority, or a coalition government? As ever, I'll give you a few seconds to think.

Okay.

The answer is A, minority government.

Exactly.

And Andeep here is reminding us that a minority government is likely to have voting agreements with smaller parties, but without officially joining together because that's a coalition, isn't it, where parties officially combine to make a majority.

What happens if the political party with the most seats can't form a coalition and can't form a minority government by making voting agreements? What happens then? Well, if they can't form a government, the monarch might actually ask the leader of the second largest party to try and form a government.

And this happened in 1974.

The Conservatives had won the most votes, but not the most seats.

The leader who was called Edward Heath, he was asked by Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, but wouldn't reach any agreements with smaller parties.

So Queen Elizabeth then had very little choice but to ask Harold Wilson, who was the leader of the Labour Party to try and form a minority government.

This meant that the country was then ruled by a Labour Party government, even though it was a minority government, rather than the Conservative Party, who actually won the most votes overall.

But what happens if the second largest party can't form a government? Well then, the monarch has to get back involved again and they might choose to dissolve Parliament all together.

So that means all of the elected MPs will not become officially sworn in MPs and a new election will take place.

It's very, very rare, however, and it's actually only happened a couple of times in U.

history, and the last time was over a century ago, in December 1923.

Another quick check for understanding then.

If a government can't be formed, what other options are there in a democracy? Can you ask another party to form a government, dissolve Parliament and have another election, or forcibly take control of the government? What options are there? I'll give you a few seconds to think.

Okay, let's check the answers on this one then.

We have A and B.

You can ask another party to form a government with you, or you can dissolve Parliament and have another election, but you cannot forcibly take control of the government in a democracy.

Well done if you've got those answers.

Task B then.

I would like you to look at this data from an example election and explain what might happen next in terms of forming a government.

Now Party 1 has got 17 seats, Party 2 has got 310, Party 3 has got 3, Party 4 has got 297, and Party 5 has got 24 seats.

Now, what might help you with this task is to consider if any party already has a majority or if a coalition or a minority government needs to be formed, and how could this be done? Which parties could work together on this? And what are the pros, what are the positives? And what are the cons, the negatives of the option that you've considered? Now, there are quite a few options you could have here.

I would just like you to come up with one option.

You do not need to come up with multiple options.

It's a good idea to pause the video now, give yourself the time to do it, and then we'll come back and explore some possible answers to this task.

Okay, let's go through some possible answers then.

So first of all, Party 2 would be likely to be asked to a government because they've got the most seats.

However, they don't have the majority do they? They don't have 326 seats or more.

So they could join with another party to make a coalition government.

A pro, a positive thing, is that a coalition with Party 1 or 5 would give them a majority government so they can put policies in place, do things quicker with more support.

A negative con of this is that they're going to have to compromise and cooperate with another party, who might have different ideas to them.

And that also means they're going to have to share the Cabinet jobs, the roles on that Cabinet, and the important jobs with MPs in both parties.

That's one option.

What could another option be? Well, Party 2 could also rule as a minority government, but they would have to make agreements with smaller parties in order to ensure they vote the same way as them.

The pros, the positives are that they'd get the votes through Parliament and that they won't have to share Cabinet jobs to the other party because it's not a coalition.

It's just a voting agreement.

But the cons, the negatives are that they still wouldn't have a majority government and that they're likely to have to agree to conditions, agree to things to benefit the smaller parties.

Is there another option? Well, let's see.

If Party 2 can't form a government, then the monarch might ask Party 4 to try so they can't have a majority government either, without forming a coalition with at least two of the parties.

But that has never happened in U.

history.

They could rule with a minority government and make voting agreements with other parties, but if that doesn't work, well, the monarch might dissolve Parliament and suggest they start again with another election.

A really, really good job if you got any of those different options there.

It's really complex to explore how political parties work together and form these agreements, but it's what you've done.

So huge congratulations for such a tricky task.

Well done.

Let's summarise our lesson then.

What happens after a general election? After a general election, prime minister is accepted by the monarch and is invited to make a government, MPs are sworn in, and the prime minister chooses the Cabinet.

Parliament is then officially opened by the monarch in the State Opening.

Governments may be run with a majority, minority, or coalition.

A majority means that one party has 50% plus 1 of all the seats in Parliament.

Coalition is when typically two parties join together to form a government.

They share the roles in Cabinet and they have to compromise over policies and ideas.

A minority government is when a party rules without a majority.

Their MPs hold the roles in the Cabinet, but they might set up a deal with smaller parties where they agree to vote the same way on certain issues.

A fantastic job on this lesson today.

I think you've done incredibly well.

I hope to see you again soon.

I've finished the video