Executive power rests with the prime minister and cabinet, which must have the support of the elected House of Commons. The leader of the majority party or coalition usually becomes prime minister and appoints the cabinet. Keir Starmer of the Labour Party became prime minister in July 2024 after that party won a snap general election, succeeding Rishi Sunak of the Conservatives.

The monarch is the ceremonial head of state. King Charles III succeeded his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in September 2022 and was formally coronated in May 2023.

The bicameral Parliament’s more powerful lower chamber, the House of Commons, has 650 members directly elected to serve five-year terms. Most members of the unelected House of Lords, numbering 801 in December 2024, are appointed for life by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister. The body, which includes both partisan and nonpartisan peers, largely plays an oversight role in reviewing legislation passed by the House of Commons. A bill to abolish hereditary peers was working its way through Parliament at year’s end.

In the July 2024 snap election, Labour won 411 seats, a net gain of 209, and formed a government after 14 years in opposition. The Conservatives won 121 seats, a net loss of 244 from the last Parliament. The Liberal Democrats became the third-largest party in the House of Commons, winning 72 seats (a net gain of 61). No other party won more than 10 seats; the Scottish National Party, which advocates for Scottish independence from the UK, won 9, losing 39 from the last Parliament.

Local council and mayoral elections took place across England in May 2024, resulting in a considerable loss of seats for the Conservatives and gains for most other parties. In an October report, the Electoral Commission said that the year’s general and local elections were well run and won high degrees of confidence from the public.

The UK’s electoral framework is robust and well implemented. Parliament had maintained a direct role in electoral management, notably through its involvement in the drawing of district boundaries. However, the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 has since limited its involvement, with boundary commissions performing much of that work. Parliament’s role was further eroded by the 2022 repeal of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011, which had limited the prime minister’s ability to force snap elections.

Under the Elections Act 2022, voters in England and Wales must show identification to vote in general elections and some local contests. In September 2024, the Electoral Commission said that 0.08 percent of people in Great Britain were consequently turned away when attempting to vote at the July general election, and 4 percent of surveyed nonvoters said they did not cast ballots because of the identification requirement.

Parties do not face undue restrictions on registration or operation. The Conservative and Labour parties have dominated politics for decades, though other parties regularly win seats.

Opposition groups operate freely, and the two largest parties have alternated in government over the years. Such a rotation occurred in 2024, when Labour replaced the Conservatives as the country’s ruling party.

People’s political choices are generally free from domination by groups using extrapolitical means.

Women, LGBT+ people, and members of racial and ethnic minority groups are active in UK politics. Women held 40 percent of lower-house seats after the July 2024 snap elections, the largest proportion ever. Representation for members of racial and ethnic minority populations also improved; 13.8 percent of members of Parliament (MPs) in the new House of Commons belong to an ethnic minority. Representation for LGBT+ people fell slightly, though 64 openly LGBT+ MPs were elected in July 2024. Rishi Sunak, who was succeeded by Starmer in July 2024, was the country’s first prime minister of color.

Under a system of devolution, Parliament has granted different degrees of legislative authority to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Senedd (Parliament), and the Scottish Parliament, augmenting the political power of the UK’s smaller, non-English constituent nations.

Freely elected officials can generally make and implement national policy without significant influence from actors who are not democratically accountable. While Northern Ireland Assembly elections were last held in 2022, Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party only agreed to finalize a power-sharing agreement in February 2024.

Score Change: The score improved from 3 to 4 to reflect the restoration of a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland after two years of deadlock.

Large-scale official corruption is not historically pervasive, and anticorruption bodies are generally effective. But in recent years, analysts have alleged that political corruption and the risk of corruption are rising.

In 2022, Michelle Mone, a Conservative member of the House of Lords, was revealed to have received £29 million ($35.2 million) in proceeds related to coronavirus contracts. The company that won those contracts, PPE Medpro, was still being investigated by the National Crime Agency at the end of 2024. In June, a man was arrested in relation to that investigation.

In March 2024, then–Housing Secretary Michael Gove was found to have breached standards by accepting football tickets from a company that sold personal protective equipment.

In September 2024, the government said that Prime Minister Starmer, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves would no longer accept clothing as personal gifts, after the press reported they had received such consideration from donors. Starmer reimbursed over £6,000 ($7,600) worth of gifts in October.

MPs are required to disclose assets and sources of income, and this information is made available to the public. Freedom-of-information (FOI) legislation is reasonably well implemented, and journalists can generally access and publish relevant government data.

Press freedom is legally protected. The media environment is lively and diverse, offering viewpoints that span the political spectrum. The publicly owned British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which relies on dedicated license fees for most of its funding, is largely viewed as editorially independent.

Journalists face regular harassment in the course of their work. Paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland have issued threats against journalists in recent years. The government updated the National Action Plan to enhance the safety of journalists in 2023.

A bill meant to allow judges to more swiftly dismiss strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), such as spurious defamation cases against journalists, was introduced as a private members’ bill in 2023. The bill was not passed before Parliament dissolved ahead of the July 2024 general election. In November, the incumbent Labour government said it would not introduce a new bill on SLAPPs.

Freedom of religion is protected in law and practice. A 2006 law bans incitement to religious hatred, with a maximum penalty of seven years in prison. Nevertheless, members of minority groups, particularly Muslims, continue to report discrimination, harassment, and occasional assault. The Home Office recorded 10,484 religion-based hate crimes in England and Wales in the 2023–24 reporting period—a 25 percent increase from the previous period—driven primarily by a rise in offenses against Jewish and Muslim people.

Muslims have been reluctant to discuss religious subjects or their identity in some settings, especially in the classroom, due to Prevent, an official strategy designed to identify and divert individuals who may be vulnerable to terrorist or extremist recruitment. Prevent has been criticized for causing Muslims to self-censor for fear of referral. In December 2024, the Home Office said it would update its policies to address radicalization and would update the Prevent strategy. The government also said it would fashion a new diversion policy for young people, which would include Prevent referrals.

In March 2024, the Conservative government published a new and more extensive definition of extremism, citing a rise in hate crimes following the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks against Israel. The new definition was criticized for potentially undermining free speech and potentially targeting Muslim communities.

Academic freedom is generally respected, though successive governments had recently made political forays into the academic curriculum. Implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 was halted by the Labour government after it took office. It had been criticized by expression groups for potentially allowing the government to define “acceptable speech” at universities.

The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 requires schools and universities to help divert students from recruitment into terrorist groups, as part of the Prevent strategy. Educators are expected to report students suspected of terrorist or extremist sympathies to a local government body and vet the remarks of visiting speakers, among other obligations.

Concerns about the effects of mass surveillance on unfettered private discussion persist. The Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) 2016 required communications companies to store customer metadata for 12 months, and authorities could sometimes access the information without a warrant, though this was later limited to serious criminal investigations. The IPA was amended via the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Act 2024, which received royal assent in April. Most controversially, the amended act gives authorities greater access to “bulk” data, potentially including CCTV footage and facial-recognition data, where individuals allegedly have “a low or no expectation of privacy.”

The Online Safety Act received royal assent in October 2023. Among other provisions, the law requires online platforms to remove or restrict content deemed illegal and to protect children from harmful, age-inappropriate material. Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, began implementing and enforcing provisions in December 2024.

Freedom of assembly is generally respected, though legislative changes have raised concerns about the right to protest in the UK in recent years. The Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act 2022 (PCSCA) gives police in England and Wales more power to determine whether a protest may cause “serious disorder” and allows authorities to restrict protesters’ actions. The Public Order Act 2023 (POA) allows police to restrict protests that are considered overly disruptive. It codified several new criminal offenses, including the act of locking oneself to objects or other people as a means of protest.

Protesters were charged under the PCSCA and the POA in 2024. In July, five Just Stop Oil members who organized a protest blocking a motorway were convicted under the PCSCA and another law. They received four- to five-year prison terms, believed to be the longest sentences for nonviolent protest in British history.

In May 2024, the High Court ruled that former Home Secretary Suella Braverman had acted unlawfully in using arcane powers to define “serious disruption” as anything that is “more than minor,” though the ruling was stayed pending appeal.

Also in May 2024, Friends of the Earth filed a legal challenge against the UK government at the European Court of Human Rights over the use of injunctions against “persons unknown.” These injunctions are often in used at sites owned by fossil fuel companies. Breaching an injunction can lead to prison sentences and fines.

Pro-Palestinian protests took place throughout the UK in 2024 as the Israel-Hamas war continued. A report commissioned by Braverman into impartiality in the policing of political protests was released in September; it largely dismissed her allegations that the Metropolitan Police, which patrols Greater London, was inconsistent in policing left- and right-wing protests.

Asylum seekers, immigrants, and immigration lawyers were among those targeted by far-right threats and widespread protests and riots in July and August 2024. The unrest followed a stabbing at a dance studio in Southport where 3 children were killed and 10 injured. Some 1,280 people were reportedly arrested and 796 were charged, many with violent disorder, by the end of August. In September, one man received a nine-year sentence on arson and violent disorder charges.

New “buffer zones” around abortion clinics came into force in October 2024 and prohibit protests within a 150-meter radius of such sites in England and Wales. A separate law in Scotland took effect in September, imposing 200-meter zones.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) generally operate freely. However, in recent years, disclosures regarding police surveillance of NGOs and political organizations have drawn criticism. A public inquiry into the conduct of undercover officers who spied on—and sometimes had intimate relationships with—activists released its first interim report in 2023 and continued to hear evidence in 2024. The interim report found that such operations were unjustified and should have been shut down.

Workers have the right to organize trade unions, which have traditionally played a central role in the Labour Party. The rights to bargain collectively and strike are also respected.

The new Labour government has begun the process of repealing various antiunion laws introduced by previous Conservative governments. In August 2024, ministers were instructed to disregard the Strikes (Minimum Service Level) Act 2023, which will be repealed as part of the government’s Employment Rights Bill 2024–25; the latter bill remained under consideration at the end of 2024. The former act empowers employers to instruct unions on which staff members would be required to work during industrial actions.

The judiciary is generally independent, and authorities comply with judicial decisions. A new Supreme Court began functioning in 2009, improving the separation of powers by moving the UK’s highest court out of the House of Lords.

Due process generally prevails in civil and criminal matters. However, cuts to legal aid have left many vulnerable people without access to counsel.

Police have been accused of using stop-and-search powers disproportionately: Home Office figures for year ending in March 2023 show that there were 24.5 stops and searches for every 1,000 Black people in England and Wales, compared to 5.9 for every 1,000 White people.

Some counterterrorism measures have raised concerns about due process. Under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, authorities can seize the travel documents of individuals attempting to leave the country if they are suspected of planning to engage in terrorist-related activities abroad, and to forcibly relocate terrorism suspects within the country. The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 makes viewing terrorist content online punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and allows law enforcement agencies to keep the fingerprints and DNA of terrorism suspects for up to five years even if no charges are filed.

The UK justice system still grapples with cases stemming from the Troubles, the 1968–98 period of violence involving republican and unionist paramilitary groups as well as state security forces in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 closed ongoing criminal investigations and inquests into Troubles-era cases in May 2024. All new investigations would be carried out by an independent commission with powers to offer conditional immunity for those who cooperate with “truth recovery” efforts. In December, the Labour government announced its intention to repeal the act.

Individuals living in the UK are largely free from violence, but acts of terrorism have occurred in recent years. Low-level paramilitary activity continues in Northern Ireland. The Police Service of Northern Ireland reported 1 security-related death, 5 bombing incidents, 24 casualties of paramilitary assaults, and 87 security-related arrests in its 2023–24 reporting period.

Some 140,000 hate crimes were recorded in England and Wales in the year ending March 2024, a 5 percent fall from the previous year. However, reports of religiously motivated hate crimes, especially against Jewish people, increased markedly since the Israel-Hamas war began.

Prisons generally adhere to international guidelines. However, the prison population in England and Wales stood at 88,350 in July 2024, exceeding the system’s ideal “uncrowded capacity.” Several reports showed instances where prisoners with mental health issues and prisoners from Black and Muslim backgrounds suffered mistreatment.

Thousands of prisoners are currently serving imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences of indeterminate duration. In May 2024, Alice Edwards, the UN special rapporteur on torture, strongly criticized IPP sentences.

Women receive equal treatment under the law, but gender discrimination persists in the workplace and elsewhere in society. The authorities actively enforce a 2010 law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. England and Wales have recorded a rise in hate crimes against LGBT+ residents over the past decade, though recent figures have shown a decline.

Members of Black, Asian, and other racial and ethnic minority groups experience continued discrimination, including by the authorities. Members of the Romany, Traveller, and related communities also encounter de facto discrimination.

Foreign residents face considerable scrutiny. Under the “hostile environment” policy, which aims to persuade undocumented immigrants to voluntarily leave the UK or refrain from entering, individuals seeking public and private services must undergo stringent immigration checks. Asylum seekers and migrants can be detained indefinitely, and reports of poor conditions and abuse in immigration detention centers have persisted. In December 2024, the Migrants’ Rights Network criticized the Labour government for effectively continuing the hostile environment policy.

In 2022, then–Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a plan under which people whose asylum applications were deemed “inadmissible” would be deported to Rwanda. The Illegal Migration Act 2023 was designed to deter people from entering the UK irregularly via small boats, allowing authorities to reject asylum claims from such individuals and to detain and remove them to their home country or a designated third country. While the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, which legally defined Rwanda as a safe country, received royal assent under the Conservative government, Prime Minister Starmer declared that the authorities would not deport people to Rwanda. Forced deportations have otherwise continued under the Labour government.

In 2023 the High Court ruled that the government was illegally housing unaccompanied child asylum seekers in hotels without adequate care, leaving them at risk of harm and exploitation. More than 200 children had reportedly gone missing from such hotels since 2021. In a July 2024 report, University College London and Every Child Protected Against Trafficking UK found that 118 remained missing and that children may have been trafficked.

Citizens are generally free to travel, domestically and abroad, and to relocate for the purposes of residence, employment, and education.

The UK’s legal and regulatory framework protects property rights and broadly supports free and competitive business activity.

The government generally does not place explicit restrictions on personal social freedoms.

While domestic violence remains a problem, government reports show a decline over the last decade and the law imposes serious penalties and provides for protection orders as well as government support for survivors.

Abortion is broadly available in England, Scotland, and Wales at up to 24 weeks of gestation due to the Abortion Act 1967, which effectively exempts women and providers from prosecution under a 19th century law. At-home medical abortions are permitted at up to 10 weeks in England and Wales. Under updated guidance issued in December 2024, at-home abortions can be accessed in Scotland at up to 12 weeks. A legal framework to guarantee access to abortion in Northern Ireland was passed by the UK Parliament in 2019 and took effect in 2020. Campaigns to fully decriminalize abortion continued in 2024.

Most workers are protected in law and in practice from exploitative or dangerous conditions of employment. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 increased punishments for human traffickers and provides greater protections for victims, but implementation has been criticized as inadequate. Changes to immigration rules in 2022 have reportedly led to an increase in modern slavery in the social-care sector.