Part 84: Crosspiece brings it home and provides a full overview.

Note that we're not taught in schools how the government works, something I feel Americans can have solidarity in. But for the most part it's just the voted in MPs that decide a lot of stuff and having a larger majority means you're able to push more things through. Especially if you use the whip, which makes MPs vote along party lines and can even be kicked out of the party if they vote against it. That's why May having a majority of 6 meant she couldn't get anything done, since it was easy to vote something down outside of the whip, or even in the whip if you don't fear the consequences. But Johnson currently has a rock solid majority of 80, so he's able to push through pretty much anything he likes. This is mainly talking about how Conservatives vote, they can backstab the PM pretty efficiently if they want, but it's easier to refer to because they'll have been in power for 14 years by the time the next election comes about.

Uh, anyway, yes the House of Lords mainly doesn't do too much, since they're unelected bureaucrats that can get a stern talking to if they try and block enough bills. They have been very useful in knocking down stupid shit the government tries to pull, and they've tried to pull a lot these past 11 years, but they do also vote in a lot of small, but still pretty crucial legislation that helps with various posh stuff like hunting limits and how much they get paid. Funnily enough a pay rise never gets voted down in the Commons or the Lords, who'da thunk.

Another aspect that doesn't come up much is local council elections, these are practically separate from local MPs, even if they follow the same party structure, because it focuses so much on local issues. So using the local elections that occur more often than general elections is not a great indicator for how the latter will go, since local councils can be very different policy wise from the national party. It's one case where voting those idiots out, whoever they are, is definitely recommended if they're failing you at the local level. Gotta get those bins collected.

And the final thing I guess is while we have 4 different regions, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with their own local governments, only Westminster, the English one, actually has any power since they can pretty easily shut down anything the other 3 try to do. And if you want to be specific Westminster usually overrides anything that's outside the jurisdiction of London, so the north of England and the south west can go fuck themselves, in essence. This wasn't usually an issue since Northern Ireland is ignored 99% of the time, we're never taught anything about the multiple genocides we've done to the Irish, and Wales is mostly hills and sheep, but this can be an issue when Scotland is, basically, ruled by another party and votes completely differently to the rest of the country. Westminster has said they'll stop Scottish independence when it pops up again, but if Holyrood ignores that then who knows what'll happen.

Last thing I guess I could mention is the monarchy, though you probably know already that they're benefit scroungers that don't pull their weight. Sure the tourism money is nice but you'd still get plenty if they weren't there. The only thing are Liz really does these days is agree to a new PM but she can't exactly say no since she holds no political power, she basically rubber stamps anything that comes her way. It speaks a lot that the most useful royal we really have is an American woman of colour who's been vilified in the press for, gasp, having opinions and wanting to make a difference in the world. Also since Swordbert and Shieldbert or whatever their fucking names are royalty, they would not be in the House of Lords, they cannot do a damn thing.

And there's a surface level look at the various institutions that I might be wrong on because I don't follow this stuff massively closely. It boils down to the House of Commons doing the heavy lifting if they have a solid majority, otherwise it gets a little hazy and elections get called 3 times in 4 years.