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UNITED KINGDOM
Year of EU entry 1973
Political system Constitutional monarchy
Capital city London
Total area 242,500 km2
Population 59.3 million
Currency Pound sterling |
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Overview
The United Kingdom consists of England, Wales, Scotland (who together make up Great Britain) and Northern Ireland. The highest mountain is Ben Nevis in Scotland which reaches a height of 1,343m.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy. The main chamber of parliament is the lower house, the House of Commons, which has 646 members elected by universal suffrage. About 700 people are eligible to sit in the upper house, the House of Lords, including life peers, hereditary peers, and bishops. There is a Scottish parliament in Edinburgh with wide-ranging local powers, and a Welsh Assembly in Cardiff with more limited authority.
The English account for more than 80% of the population. The Scots make up nearly 10% and the Welsh and Irish most of the rest. The UK is also home to diverse immigrant communities, mainly from its former colonies in the West Indies, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Africa.
The economy - one of the largest in the EU - is increasingly services-based, although it maintains industrial capacity in high-tech and other sectors. The City of London is a world centre for financial services.
Home to the industrial revolution, the United Kingdom has produced many great scientists and engineers including Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. The father of modern economics, Adam Smith, was a Scot. English literature has produced an endless stream of poets, dramatists, essayists and novelists from Geoffrey Chaucer, to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, to a plethora of modern writers.
Economy
The UK, a leading trading power and financial centre, is one of the quintet of trillion dollar economies of western Europe. Over the past two decades, the government has greatly reduced public ownership and contained the growth of social welfare programmes. Agriculture is intensive, highly mechanised, and efficient by European standards, producing about 60% of food needs with less than 2% of the labour force. The UK has large coal, natural gas, and oil reserves; primary energy production accounts for 10% of GDP, one of the highest shares of any industrial nation. Services, particularly banking, insurance, and business services, account by far for the largest proportion of GDP while industry continues to decline in importance.
GDP growth slipped in 2001-03 as the global downturn, the high value of the pound, and the bursting of the 'new economy' bubble hurt manufacturing and exports. Output recovered in 2004, to 3.2% growth, but fell in 2005 to 1.7%. Despite slower growth, the economy is one of the strongest in Europe; inflation, interest rates, and unemployment remain low. The relatively good economic performance has complicated the Blair government's efforts to make a case for Britain to join the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Critics point out that the economy is doing well outside of EMU, and public opinion polls show a majority of Britons are opposed to the euro. Meanwhile, the government has been speeding up the improvement of education, transport, and health services, at a cost in higher taxes and a widening public deficit.
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