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The capital of the U.K. is London; its area measures 244,820 square km; the population is made up of 59,862,820 inhabitants; the gross domestic product is 1,554.7 billion euros. The unemployment rate is 4.7%; the inflation is 1.3%; the deficit is –3.2% and the national debt is equivalent to 40.4%. The U.K. is a constitutional monarchy characterized by the absence of a written constitution. The Great Britain has a form of parliamentar government, nay it is someway the fatherland of the modern parliamentarism. The Prime Minister is appointed by the Sovereign on the basis of the House of Commons elections results. He is, at the same time, Head of the Government and leader of the majority party within the Parliament. The Parliament is a bicameral one, made up of the House of Commons, including 569 members, elected every 5 years; and the House of Lords, hereditary or for life, so not elected, including 689 members (92 hereditary, 545 for life, 27 judges of the High Court and 25 bishops). As it is obvious from the composition of the House of Lords, the trust relationship between the Parliament and the Government is carried out just with the House of Commons, for the powers of the House of Lords upon the Parliament decreased more and more and finally desappeared. The election system adopted by the House of Commons is a majority one, uninominal with a single turn. This had traditionally halved the elections results in U.K. for several historical-political reasons. The Prime Minister is the laburist Tony Blair, at his third mandate running, while the Head of the State is Queen Elizabeth II. The British political struture, at the beginning made up of two parties, nowadays has a wider range, as it is made up of three main parties at least: laburists, conservatories and liberals and severalother partes characterized by a strong local striking root. The last legislative elections took place in May 2005 and they saw the confirmation of the laburists and of their leader, Tony Blair. For the first time in the English history a laburist premier has been elected three times running. Nevertheless, we have to underline the laburist party was reshuffled and lose a hundred seats. Great Britain is a EU member since 1973, when the founding countries start a slow enlargement process, which leaded it to the present 25 countries-shape. After the enlargement, the number of seats at U.K.’s disposal decreased from 87 to 78. We must point out that, unlike the political elections, those for the European Parliament are carried out with a proportional system. Unlike the other European countries, the elections took place on the 10th June 2004 and the affluence to the polls increased from 24% -’99 elections- to 38.9%, overcoming the 51% in Northern Ireland. The June votations saw a bad result for the laburists, that get 22.3% and just 19 seats; the conservatories get the 27.4% of the votes and a good 27 seats, whereas the liberal party get the 15% of the votes and mantained the 12 seats it owned in Strasburg. Anyway, the real winners of these election were the representatives of the nationalist party UKIP and its leader, Roger Knapman, getting a good 12 seats, so quadrupling its presence in the European Parliament. Within the European Commission, driven by Barroso, the British commissary is Peter Mendelson, Commissary for the Trade.
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