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The United Kingdom is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe.With a total area of approximately 244,376 square kilometres (94,354 sq mi), [a] [1] the UK occupies the major part of the British Isles archipelago and includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern one-sixth of the island of Ireland and many smaller surrounding islands. [3]
The administrative geography of the United Kingdom is complex, multi-layered and non-uniform. The United Kingdom, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe, consists of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. For local government in the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each have their own ...
While the UK was a member of the European Union, they defined areas (constituencies) for the purposes of elections to the European Parliament. Eurostat also used them to demarcate first level Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) regions ("NUTS 1 regions") within the European Union , which in 2021 were superseded by International Territorial Level (ITL) regions ("ITL 1 regions").
The total area of the United Kingdom is 94,354 square miles (244,376 km 2 ), [ e][ 12] with an estimated population of 67,596,281 people in 2022. [ 13] In 1707, the Kingdom of England (which included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland united under the Treaty of Union to create the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Since 1922, the United Kingdom has been made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales (which collectively make up Great Britain) and Northern Ireland ( variously described as a country, [ 1] province, [ 2][ 3][ 4] jurisdiction [ 5] or region [ 6][ 7] ). The UK Prime Minister 's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to ...
The postcode area is the largest geographical unit used and forms the initial characters of the alphanumeric UK postcode. [1] There are currently 121 geographic postcode areas in use in the UK and a further three often combined with these covering the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and Isle of Man.
Also shown is the one city in a UK Crown Dependency, Douglas in the Isle of Man. (For cities in UK Overseas Territories, see below.) 32 cities have a Lord Provost (in Scotland) or a Lord Mayor (in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland), see List of lord mayoralties and lord provostships in the United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy which, by legislation and convention, operates as a unitary parliamentary democracy. A hereditary monarch, currently King Charles III, serves as head of state while the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, currently Sir Keir Starmer since 2024, serves as the elected head of government .