General election

The democracy in Britain is long-established. It is sustained by free elections, freedom of speech and open and equal treatment before the law.

The procedure is that, at a general election held a maximum of five years apart, the people elect Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The United Kingdom is divided into 646 geographical areas known as constituencies, each of them sending one MP to the House of Commons. A general election is held in all the constituencies. Most of the candidates in the election represent a political party but there can also be independent candidates. Each voter gets one vote which they allocate to one of the candidates standing for Parliament in their local constituency. The candidate with the largest number of votes is elected to be the Member of Parliament for the constituency. Thus each MP in the House of Commons represents one of the constituencies, or ‘seats’, in the UK Parliament and is also normally a member of one of the major political parties.

The principle behind the election is called “the simple majority system”. This means that the candidate with the largest number of votes in each constituency is elected, although he or she may not necessarily have received more than half the votes cast. It is thought that this system favours two-party competition, particularly when the parties’ support is concentrated geographically.

The timing of a general election depends on the following factors:

· Any Prime Minister will hope that his or her party is re-elected at the next general election so they will try to choose a time when the party is popular and opinion polls suggest that it will be successful.

· It is a convention that if a government is defeated in the House of Commons on a vote of confidence, then a general election will follow. In 1979 the Conservative Opposition defeated the Labour Government by 311-310 votes on the motion “That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”. Parliament was dissolved and the general election held.

TASK 1. Find in the text above the English equivalents for the following words and expressions and use them in the sentences referring to election campaign in your country:

1. избирательный округ
2. избиратель
3. расходы на предвыборную кампанию
4. опрос общественного мнения
5. вотум доверия
6. выставлять свою кандидатуру на выборах в Парламент
7. распустить парламент
8. голосовать
9. поддерживать демократию
10. поддерживать партию

TASK 2. Answer the following questions: