A-Level Politics: UK Government

Every question here is descriptive. None asks which party is right, which policy is better, or how anyone should vote — the examiner does not ask that either. What is tested is whether you know how the system works and can state a disagreement about it accurately from both sides.

Several questions are built on the confusions that cost marks. Judicial review examines whether a government decision was taken lawfully; it does not let judges strike down an Act of Parliament, and the option that says it does is the one most students reach for. Select committees scrutinise departments; they do not draft bills or rule on constitutionality. Collective ministerial responsibility is about cabinet unity in public, not about a minister answering for their department. An uncodified constitution is not the absence of a constitution — it is one whose rules sit in statutes, conventions and common law rather than in a single document.

The voting-age question is written the way the examiners write it: the campaigners' case is set out in the stem, and you are asked what the argument on the other side actually is. Note that this asks what the counter-argument is, not whether it succeeds — which is exactly the distinction an essay has to hold on to.

The worked example uses an invented constituency and invented parties, and no question rests on a claim about a current politician, a current government or a live controversy. The permanent features of the system are what is being examined.

Nothing is taken from any exam board specification, past paper, mark scheme or textbook.

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• Apply first past the post to a stated set of vote totals and say why a plurality is enough
• Explain what the list vote in the Additional Member System is there to correct
• Distinguish an insider pressure group from an outsider one by the methods each uses
• State the argument on each side of the voting-age debate without taking a side
• Say what follows from the UK constitution being uncodified, and which matters devolution reserves to Westminster
• Describe what a select committee does, and what collective ministerial responsibility requires
• State the scope of judicial review, and what it cannot reach

Campaigners for lowering the voting age to sixteen argue that sixteen-year-olds can work, can pay income tax, and can join the armed forces with consent, and so should have a say in decisions that bind them. Which of these is the argument most often made on the other side of that debate? — one of ten questions written for this set.