ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Motions of no confidence in the United Kingdom

Ok, so imagine you have a group of friends who are trying to decide who should be the leader of their club. But some of them don't like the person who was chosen and think they're doing a bad job. So, they get together and write a letter to say they don't believe in that person as the leader anymore. They get enough people to sign the letter to make it official and then they give the letter to the person in charge of the club.

This is kind of like what happens in the United Kingdom with a motion of no confidence. The UK has a group of politicians called Members of Parliament, or MPs for short. They make decisions together about how the country should be run. But sometimes, they don't all agree on the same thing.

If a big enough group of MPs feel like the leader of the country (called the Prime Minister) is doing a bad job or making bad decisions, they can write a letter to say they don't believe in that person as the leader anymore. They need at least 48 MPs to sign the letter to make it official.

Once the letter is sent, there's a special meeting in the Parliament where all the MPs can talk about whether they still have confidence in the Prime Minister or not. If enough of them agree that they don't, then the Prime Minister might have to quit and someone else would have to take their place.

So, basically, a motion of no confidence is when a big group of MPs write a letter saying they don't believe in the leader of their country anymore, and then there's a meeting to decide if enough people feel the same way to make the leader step down.