I assume in other commonwealth countries, the incoming Prime Minister meets with the Governor General rather than travel to London?
When a new PM is elected how many MPs can expect a position in the new government? Are there more spots to fill than just cabinet ministers?
Yes. see post 10.
Formally, I believe that the incoming PM chooses their Cabinet, advises the monarch to appoint them, and the monarch then formally does so.
Same net result to what you said, but constitutional proprieties must be observed.
Underlining just how low-key the transfer is, it has only been since 2010 that the audience during which the new PM is appointed has been photographed. Before then it was just the outgoing PM and then the new one being driven in and out of Buckingham Palace, followed by a brief official statement from the Palace. Now a few photographs are also released and even those are not of the moment of appointment, just the initial greeting. Only the monarch and the new PM are present for the actual transfer and that just involves the PM verbally agreeing to accept.
After an election, very true. Mostly this is what happens. However when an election is tight, you don’t always know who is going to get elected, especially in more modern times when even apparently safe seats can bite back. Famously here in Oz, Tony Abbot, a former PM, lost his seat in the last election, with a swing of 12%. His party also lost, so it wasn’t quite as embarrassing, but it underlines just how little you can usefully plan.
A leadership spill is a much nastier problem. By definition there is much discontent with the incumbent, and there will be much jockeying for position in the race for the job. In the UK the party members (as in members of the public who are signed up) get to vote on the party leader. In other countries only the elected members of the house get to vote. Typically the numbers men will have been out trying to twist arms and count the votes for all the contenders for the job, and there will be a significant element of double dealing and betrayal. There is usually some blood on the carpet before things are done. If you threw your support behind the wrong guy, your chance of a ministry or at least a senior ministry, are much reduced.
There are junior ministries that are not part of cabinet. The vast majority of MPs don’t get any sort of ministerial position. They are known as back-benchers. There is a maximum number of people for any useful sort of cabinet. Say 15. Sometimes, when pressure is on to appoint lots of people to cabinet, there emerges an inner-cabinet. Five is a good number for real decisions to be made. Hard to keep it that low.
Here in Oz, cabinet currently has 23 members (too many) and the outer cabinet and junior ministers is another 19. There are 151 members of the lower house (which is also ridiculous for a country of 25 million odd.)
There are the ministers if the major government departments, known as the ‘Cabinet’ and there are 22 of these in the current administration.
A PM would have agreed who gets what job before they were elected PM. Election is a purely internal party process and each party has their own process. A PM needs unite various party factions and offering ministries to the leaders of these factions is how it is done. Whether they are good at the job and a competent minister is another matter. There have been quite a few dingbats appointed to ministerial positions and there are regular scandals. Catching ministers up to no good is a popular sport. If a scandal becomes too heated, they are forced to resign or are sacked. However all ministers have dirt on others and if the faction they represent is isolated, they will cause trouble for the PM. Prime Ministers live in fear of powerful factions. That is why Cameron committed to the Brexit referendum, to get the Eurosceptics off his back. Referendums are not an established political mechanism in UK politics. His gamble spectacularly backfired and he resigned. It led to the past several years of excruciating political infighting within the Conservative party that made it all but ungovernable and the leadership quite unstable.
Parties are usually good for two terms in government as a maximum before they begin to fall apart of their own accord. Splitting the party as Cameron did, is a disaster. They need some time in opposition to sort themselves out, have all their arguments and train up a new generation of political talent.
So it is with the current Conservative party. Labour are looking quite united and ready to form the next government. Unless Sunak pulls a rabbit out of the hat like a stage magician and unites the party and comes up with a solution to the countries economic woes, they will lose the next election. Of course it is quite possible Labour screws up and misses an open goal. That has happened before.
There are also a lot of more junior political appointments the PM can make. The opposition mirrors the governments cabinet with a ‘shadow’ cabinet. This is essential training. They are usually ready to roll if elected, which makes a change of government pretty quick.
Well yeah, I was sort of glossing over the whole bit with the Monarch appointing the PM and their ministers, just like there’s a whole Senate confirmation process involved with American cabinet members which is usually just as ceremonial as the UK business with the Monarch, although that’s not guaranteed.
But ultimately the choosing of a new PM is almost an administrative type thing, which I believe comes primarily from the fact that the PM isn’t popularly elected to that position, unlike the US President.
Not really. Usually the real machinations are not seen, but there are many occasions when the fight becomes public. The inter-faction warfare that besets the parties can be, and often is, brutal. Here in Oz the conservative side of politics are not so well organised, and the warfare becomes public easier. The Labour party are much more organised in their factions, and the blood letting generally occurs behind closed doors.
Politicians are egotistical beasts at the best of times, and you can be sure that there are a lot of members who aspire to the top job. No different to aspiring to the POTUS.
There is a bar I used to visit in a hotel in Canberra (our capital city) were one very celebrated knifing took place. There was a point, many decades ago, where the conservative government was pretty much so on the nose that Labour were assured of winning the next election. Elections are not held on a fixed date here, another prerogative of the PM is to choose the date (so long as they don’t exceed the maximum.) One faction of Labour realised that changing leaders after the election was called would look really bad, and held a hasty meeting in this bar and the deal was done to oust the current leader of the party and install their man. Days later the deed was done, only just in time before the election was called. Labour swept to government. The ousted leader was heard to mutter that “a drover’s dog could have won that election.” He was given the job of Governor General as a consolation prize, a job he executed with great dignity.
It has only got worse. The new leader was himself ousted, whilst still PM, by his then treasurer a couple of terms later. Blood ran down the corridors when that one happened. The deals struck and favours owed and paid back would be legion. Backing the losing side could easily consign someone to the backbench for the rest of their career. Nor was it totally impossible for the infighting to erupt into actual violence. There were a few times when various participants came to grief in side streets encountering unknown assailants. The US system at least makes the process a bit more open, with fewer deals done in smoke filled rooms. This is true hardball politics.
Since those days both parties have been quite happy to dump under-performing leaders. This is usually done on a factional basis, with one faction beating down the other to install their leader. The factions are bitter rivals, with long memories. I have known a few members of parliament, and they will all say that it is easier to get on with members of the opposite party than members of their own party, but from a rival faction.
I meant in the sense that it’s administrative, in that it’s something handled within Parliament as part of its normal operating procedures, not something external to the body, like a general election or Presidential election.
Which is why it’s so easy to dump underperforming leaders; it’s political, but the procedures aren’t codified/legislated. You don’t have to have an election to have a new PM or anything like that- it could just be some poorly handled event, a vote of no confidence, and then another one is chosen and a new government formed.
Over 100, at present, but a PM can reorganise ministries and ministers as they wish and as their majority allows.
There’s an apocryphal, but nonetheless true, story of a senior government MP showing a brand-new MP the House of Commons, and gestures to the other side. Senior MP says, “That’s where the Opposition sits.”
“Ah,” says the new MP. “The enemy.”
“No”, says the senior MP. “The Opposition. The enemy sits behind me here”, gesturing to the back-benches of the Government side.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”
No different than electing the US Speaker of the House really.
On the motion to elect Chris Mangrove-Throatwarbler as Speaker, the ayes are 235. The nays are 200. The motion is adopted. The motion to reconsider is laid on the table. Smack gavel.
No. There is no such vote in the British House of Commons for the Prime Minister.
And no gavel.
What I meant was, like the election of the SotH, there is no huge ceremony for someone taking over one of the most powerful positions in the world.
Indeed. And there may be some purists/traditionalists who disapprove of the relatively recent “ceremonial” of a PM making a set speech outside No.10 rather than in the Commons.
I’ve heard that in quite a few parliamentary systems in recent decades the tension has been between the primacy of Parliamentary democracy and the rise of the Prime Minister as quasi-presidential superstar election winner. The ecology of the news media certainly favours the more simplistic presidential model.
The more set-pieces there are at No. 10 or in other PM-space, the more it corrodes the sense that Parliament is the authority.
This tends to happen when an egotistical (well, more egotistical than usual) incumbent also has a big majority in the House. Think Blair and Boris.
Not helped by frivolities like BoJo’s press conference room, and constantly changing the lectern.