Citizenship Toolkit

General elections

A general election is when the people (the electors) vote for the candidate from the political party of their choice to be the Member of Parliament (MP) for their constituency. The political party that wins the most seats in the House of Commons then forms the government. In a liberal democracy, elections allow people to decide how their country is governed. If people believe that a government or an MP is not doing his or her job then they can choose to exercise their power by not voting for them in the next election.

Who can stand as a candidate in a general election?

In theory, anyone who is a British, Commonwealth or Irish Republic citizen may stand as a candidate at a parliamentary election as long as she or he is 21 years old or over. Those who cannot stand are more or less the same as people who cannot vote. Other people who cannot stand as candidates are those who need to be politically neutral in their jobs, such as senior civil servants, judges, members of the police and the armed services and so forth (these people hold offices listed by the House of Commons Disqualification Act).