Parliament, which is supposed to represent the will of the people, can inhibit, obstruct and criticize the Government's plans, but has negligible power to initiate legislation. The unelected House of Lords can further delay and obstruct legislation, however the House of Lords reform in 1999 means that there are less hereditary Lords and more experienced Lords to minimize this, but in the end, sovereign power rests with the PM, and the degree of power held by the PM is increasing all the time due to the Royal Prerogative among other things.
The UK's First Past the Post (FPTP) system means that the effective vote that actually makes a difference to the outcome of the election is usually restricted to the floating voters in a few marginal constituencies. This is because in FPTP, the electoral outcome in "safe seats" is predetermined in all but the rare occasions when there is a massive change of support between the dominant parties.
Since the turnout in the 2001 UK general election was inversely proportional to the majority, the greater the proportion of the electorate did not bother to vote. Elections are not won or lost in safe seats, but in the marginal seats. Therefore it may seem that only around 10,000 votes are seen to be important.
Government officials are protected by the system of Ministerial responsibility. If a government department fouls up, the officials who made the mistake may be rebuked or moved sideways, but it is the minister who loses his job otherwise known as Collective Cabinet Responsibility. Or isf an individual has a personal issue that may have affected the way in which they carry out their job may have to resign or Individual Cabinet Responsibility. The media are the second non-democratic influence on the PM. Before his election, Tony Blair famously flew half way across the world to meet with Rupert Murdoch. Having convinced Murdoch that a Blair government would be friendly to the aims of free market capitalism, he was granted the support of the Murdoch press and broadcast media, which undoubtedly helped to secure Blair's huge majority.
Business is another non-democratic influence on government. Major political parties are obliged to spend millions on advertising campaigns during elections. This money comes from business. Examples of this kind of influence can be repeated ad nauseam. The comparative powerlessness of the democratic vote is underlined by the fact that all major political parties are funded in the same way - so although voters have the option of voting for the Green Party, which receives no donations from industry, their wishes will not be represented in Parliament, since the UK electoral and broadcast system effectively excludes that group from UK politics, notwithstanding their slow advance at the local authority and European level.
The European Union (EU) is the fourth constraint on the freedom of the British PM to enact the will of the UK electorate. The European Parliament is an elected body, but it has less power, if that is possible, than the House of Commons. The European Parliament's powers to initiate policy are negligible, and its power to amend policy is minimal.
In 1974 Edward Heath asked “Who governs Britain?", and due to the lack of a written constitution thirty years on, Britain is governed by judges, by officials and by Eurocrats. Powers have passed from local councils to Whitehall and from Westminster to Brussels. At every level, elected representatives have lost ground to bureaucrats.
In one sense, Parliament is too weak; in another, too strong. Ministers are micro-managing a number of matters that ought to be left to local communities. School admissions policies, hospital cleanliness, speed bumps, and council workers' wages: in the United States these things would be settled at a town meeting or by a directly elected precinct official, not decreed by a minister and then applied uniformly across the country.
At the same time, however, MPs should enlarge their jurisdiction at the expense of unelected functionaries. This might happen in many ways.
The Prime Minister, acting under Crown Prerogative, exercises awesome powers, not least over patronage.
The problem of judicial activism - that is, the tendency of judges to rule on the basis of what they think the law ought to say, rather than what it actually says - is not unique to Britain. But it is striking that, when British judges challenge Parliament, they invariably do so from the same direction for example in the case of biological GBH.
There is no legislative protection against judicial activism; MPs can write safeguards into their statutes, but judges often ignore such safeguards.
Referenda have been relatively rare and relatively recent in United Kingdom political history, although they had been considered at several times in the past. There have been a total of eight referenda but only one, on membership of the EEC in 1973, has been UK-wide; there have been two each on the constitutional future of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and one for London.
The (Northern Ireland) in which a majority of Northern Irish (57% of the electorate) voted to remain in the United Kingdom.
The (United Kingdom) where a majority of the Scottish, 36% of the electorate, voted in favour of remaining in the EEC.
Scotland remained in the EEC, the No 40 % rule was applied in this case.
The (Scotland) at which a majority of Scots (33% of the electorate) voted in favour of a Scottish Assembly. However, unlike 1975, a 40 % rule was imposed and the Scotland Act was repealed.
The (Wales) where a minority of Welsh (12% of the electorate) voted in favour of a Welsh Assembly.
The (Scotland) where Scotland voted in favour of a Scottish Parliament with tax raising powers by a large majority.
(Wales), Wales voted for a Welsh Assembly.
(England), A majority of Londoners (24.5 % of the electorate) voted in favour of a London Assembly. Unlike 1979, no 40 % rule was applied.
(Northern Ireland & Eire) 71 % of voters in Northern Ireland and 94 % of those in Eire supported the Good Friday peace agreement.
It is clear therefore from this analysis of the current state of affairs in the UK that our political system falls far short of the target of real democracy. The UK is perhaps generally worse than other countries that describe themselves as "democratic", particularly in its lack of proportional representation, which transmits the will of the people more accurately than the UK electoral system. But democracy is not an accurate term to use for any of the "western democracies".