The UK just had a general election for the leadership of the government of the kingdom (it's a kingdom, it's in the name), and I tried unsuccessfully to explain what was going on to my mother. When I told my colleagues about that, they weren't surprised. They even pointed out that the US government was created by a bunch of British folks that were frustrated by the British government, so it only makes sense that they'd try to make something a bit more sensible.
First of all, let's acknowledge that the UK government had no moment of creation like the US government did. It grew organically over the span of a millennium or more.
So, start at the top with the head of state. That's the Queen. She has to sign off on the laws that are passed in Parliament before they are official, just like the President of the USA has to sign the laws before they're official. Nothing is official without her approval. Obviously, she's not elected.
The election was for Parliament, but only one half of it. Parliament is made up of two houses: the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Lords are not elected. They are lords and dukes and earls, that sort of thing. It's the house of aristocracy and clergy, and it used to hold most of the power. Now it has very little. The real power is with the House of Commons. It is the legislature, writing and passing all the laws. It is the one that is elected. Every town elects a member of parliament (MP for short), and the boundaries of the districts are often goofy.
Those MP's are members of parties, just as in the USA, but there are more represented ones than our two. The two largest are the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. There are also the Liberal Democrats (LibDems, another left party), the Green Party (environmentalists), the UK Independence Party (UKIP, very conservative anti-EU and anti-immgrants), the Scottish National Party (SNP, that supported the secession referendum), and a few smaller parties. All of those parties have at least one MP, The more MP's a party has, the bigger a say it has in creating policy. Every party has a leader. The party leader guides the party agenda, proposing policies that reflect their priorities. The Conservative Party leader is David Cameron and the Labour Party leader was Ed Milliband (until Labour did poorly in the election). The party leader is usually an MP, but not always. UKIP's leader is Nigel Farage, who is not an MP at all, but he does gather support for the party and its policies.
The point is obviously to get a majority of seats in the House of Commons. If a party manages to do that, then the leader of that party is now the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is not the head of state. That's the Queen. The PM is the leader of the majority party in the legislature, so he or she is the head of the government. In this election, the Conservatives won just over half the seats, so David Cameron is, and remains, the Prime Minister. Cameron represents his party, but when people went to the polls, they only got to vote on the MP from their district. In 5 years, the process will happen again.
That's about as well as I can explain it.
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