By 9.14am, the UK Parliament had already managed to say “Order” 47 times, misplace one briefing folder, and produce a queue of men in shoes expensive enough to fund a small bypass around Stowmarket. Westminster calls this a normal Tuesday. Everyone else calls it either democracy in action or a particularly elaborate school assembly with better tailoring.

For many people, uk parliament exists mainly as a television backdrop for urgent faces, odd traditions and somebody from the back benches making a noise like a disappointed goose. Yet the place matters, not merely because laws are made there, but because Britain has somehow chosen to run itself through a mixture of ancient ritual, aggressive paperwork and the enduring hope that one more committee might finally sort things out.

What the UK Parliament actually does all day

At a distance, the building appears to function by people standing up, sitting down and saying “Hear, hear” as if trying to summon a Victorian ghost. In practice, the UK Parliament has three core jobs. It makes laws, checks the government and gives the nation a steady supply of phrases such as “I refer the Honourable Gentleman to my earlier answer”, which is political code for “absolutely not”.

The law-making part sounds straightforward until you meet the process. A bill does not simply stroll in wearing a rosette and leave as an Act. It is introduced, debated, examined, amended, debated again, nudged between the Commons and the Lords, and occasionally treated like a suspect lasagne in an office fridge – opened repeatedly, stared at and returned for later.

Then there is scrutiny. This is the noble democratic principle under which ministers are asked direct questions and respond by discussing an entirely different bridge, fund or future review. To be fair, Parliament does still have teeth. Select committees can be awkward, opposition parties can be noisily effective, and even loyal MPs sometimes discover a conscience when their inbox fills with messages from furious constituents in Bury St Edmunds who have had enough of cleverness from London.

Commons, Lords and the national gift for complication

If you are new to the machinery, the House of Commons is where elected MPs argue on your behalf, while the House of Lords is where appointed peers review legislation, offer expertise and occasionally look like they have wandered out of a very expensive production of Wolf Hall.

The Commons is faster, rowdier and more theatrical. It thrives on confrontation. The Lords is calmer, slower and full of people who begin every sentence as though they are halfway through an after-dinner speech in 1987. Both chambers irritate each other, which is one of the few constants in British constitutional life.

The trade-off is obvious. The Commons has democratic legitimacy, but it can be tribal and hasty. The Lords has experience and less need to chase headlines, but it remains the sort of institution that causes foreign visitors to blink twice and ask whether Britain is definitely sure about this. We are, apparently, and have been for quite some time.

Why uk parliament loves tradition more than your uncle loves a carvery

Some institutions modernise by asking what serves the public best. Britain often asks what would alarm people less. That is how you end up with black rods, ceremonial language, odd dress codes and customs that seem to have survived several centuries simply because nobody could face the meeting required to remove them.

There is logic beneath the silliness. Ritual can slow things down. It can remind office-holders that power is borrowed rather than owned. It can also stop every passing minister from redesigning the constitution after a difficult breakfast interview. The problem is that tradition can drift from grounding principle into museum piece.

A sensible person might ask whether voters feel well represented by a system that still appears to have been organised by men who travelled everywhere by horse and considered soup an event. The answer is, it depends. When procedure protects accountability, it is useful. When it merely protects itself, the public tends to notice and mutter darkly over a £6.20 sandwich meal deal.

Prime Minister’s Questions, or national pantomime with dispatch boxes

No discussion of the UK Parliament can ignore Prime Minister’s Questions, that weekly half-hour in which the Commons transforms into a heated pub debate briefly interrupted by constitutional procedure. Supporters say it is democracy at its sharpest. Critics say it is six-form debating society after too much coffee. Both have a point.

PMQs does test a prime minister under pressure. Quick thinking matters. Nerve matters. The ability to deliver an answer that sounds complete while avoiding the original question matters most of all. This is a specialist British art form, somewhere between fencing and tax avoidance.

But PMQs can also flatten serious issues into cheap lines and practised heckles. It rewards speed over thought and theatre over detail. If you only watched that half-hour, you would assume the entire country is run by men trying to score points before lunch. In fairness, there are weeks when that feels fairly close to the truth.

The real power in Parliament is often less glamorous

The cameras chase the chamber, but much of Parliament’s actual usefulness happens elsewhere. Committee rooms do not trend online. They do, however, ask more detailed questions than most headline moments ever manage. Witnesses are called. Evidence is examined. Ministers are invited to explain themselves in terms more demanding than “strongly reject”.

This is usually where grand promises meet the sort of quiet factual pressure they least enjoy. Infrastructure plans, public spending, defence procurement, health waiting lists – all can look rather less majestic when a committee asks who signed what, when, and why it now costs the same as a medium-sized moon mission.

There is no glamour in this. No triumphant desk-thumping. No heroic camera angle. But if Parliament has a serious argument in its favour, it lies here. Government works best when somebody competent, sceptical and annoyingly persistent keeps asking for the receipts.

Is the UK Parliament still fit for purpose?

That depends what you want from it. If you want speed, clarity and systems designed this side of decimalisation, Westminster may test your patience before elevenses. If you want a structure that spreads power around, builds friction into major decisions and mistrusts anyone claiming to have a quick fix, Parliament starts to look rather wiser.

Its greatest strength is also its greatest irritation. It is difficult to move fast. That can be maddening when change is plainly needed. It can also be a mercy when somebody arrives promising a glorious new era by Thursday.

There are practical problems too. Public trust has frayed. The building itself appears to be held together by scaffolding, heritage sentiment and a national refusal to read the maintenance estimate. Access remains uneven. Language is often insiderish. Too much political communication still sounds as though it was drafted by a committee trying not to upset a focus group in Swindon.

Yet people continue to care. They complain about Parliament with remarkable energy, which is usually a sign they have not given up on it. Apathy sounds quieter. Britain, by contrast, still treats Westminster like a relative who is impossible at Christmas but must, for constitutional reasons, still be invited.

Why people keep watching anyway

Part of the fascination is simple drama. The UK Parliament offers conflict, hierarchy, suspense and the possibility that someone important may be embarrassed before teatime. British audiences have always enjoyed institutions that combine pageantry with low-level chaos. It feels familiar. It feels national.

The deeper reason is that Parliament remains one of the few places where the country’s arguments are forced into the open. Not resolved, certainly. Often not improved. But aired. In an era of slogans, feeds and vanishing attention spans, there is still something oddly reassuring about a system that insists people stand up in a room and state their case while opponents glare at them from two sword lengths away.

That old arrangement will not solve every modern problem. Some days it barely solves the order paper. But for all the jeering, ceremony and baffling vocabulary, Parliament remains the place where power is challenged, delayed, dressed up, and occasionally made to explain itself. In Britain, that counts as progress.

If you are trying to make sense of Westminster, do not ask whether it looks absurd. Of course it does. Ask whether, beneath the wigs, wording and weekly uproar, somebody is still forcing the powerful to answer awkward questions in public. When that still happens, the rest is mostly just very British scenery.