The Mother of parliaments ( expression ) - wikipedia The Mother of parliaments ( expression ) Not to be confused with Mother of Parliament. `` The mother of parliaments '' is an expression coined by the British politician and reformer John Bright in a speech at Birmingham on 18 January 1865. It was a reference to England. His actual words were : `` England is the mother of parliaments ''. This was reported in The Times on the following day. The expression is often applied to the Parliament of the United Kingdom because of the adoption of the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy by many countries of the former British Empire. See also History of democracy History of parliamentarism Parliament Parliament in the Making Parliamentary system Prime minister Parliamentary sovereignty The History of Parliament References Jump up ^ Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, revised 4th ed, 1996, p. 141 Jump up ^ Parliament. CUP Archive. 1957. p. 517 ; `` UK Politics : Talking Politics The ' Mother of Parliaments ' ''. BBC Talking Politics. 3 June 1998. Retrieved 23 April 2016 ; `` Full text of Obama 's speech to UK parliament ''. CNN. 25 May 2011. Retrieved 23 April 2016 ; `` Britain and France Get Poor Marks in Democracy Ranking ''. Spiegel Online. 2 January 2011. Retrieved 23 April 2016 ; `` A Makeover for the Mother of Parliaments ''. The New York Times. 11 July 2015. Retrieved 23 April 2016. Jump up ^ Seidle, F. Leslie ; Docherty, David C. ( 2003 ). Reforming parliamentary democracy. McGill - Queen 's University Press. p. 3. ISBN 9780773525085. Jump up ^ Julian Go ( 2007 ). `` A Globalizing Constitutionalism ?, Views from the Postcolony, 1945 - 2000 ''. In Arjomand, Saïd Amir. Constitutionalism and political reconstruction. Brill. pp. 92 -- 94. ISBN 9004151745 ; `` How the Westminster Parliamentary System was exported around the World ''. University of Cambridge. 2 December 2013. Retrieved 16 December 2013. Further reading Graham, Harry ( 2015 ) ( 1910 ). The Mother of Parliaments. 1347470220. ISBN 9781347470220. Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_mother_of_parliaments_(expression)&oldid=832418982 '' Categories : Quotations Parliament of the United Kingdom England Westminster system Talk About Wikipedia Add links This page was last edited on 25 March 2018, at 22 : 06. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: why is the british parliament known as the mother of parliaments
Answer: because of the adoption of the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy by many countries of the former British Empire