Why would the rich person bother with the drudgery of actually being PM?
Surely it would be better to just bribe the real PM or president with “campaign contributions” and then have him or her enact policies that benefit the rich. Just like they do now.
I’m curious - how quickly could the Tories choose a new leader in that scenario? would there be a need for a caretaker while there was a leadership convention, or would the caucus be able to do it in a couple of days?
That’s happened at least twice in Australia:
In 1967 Harold Holt went missing, presumed drowned, and the Deputy PM John McEwen (leader of the minority party in the Liberal-Country coalitition) was PM for 23 days until the Liberals met and elected a leader.
In 1945 John Curtin died, and was succeeded by his party’s deputy leader Frank Forde. When the Labor Party met eight days later, Ben Chifley was elected as leader, so became the next PM. Forde returned to being deputy leader of the party and Deputy PM, having served the shortest term as PM of Australia.
A very similar example can be found in New Zealand, following the death in office of PM Norman Kirk. The deputy leader Hugh Watt became acting PM for several days before returning to deputy when the Labour Party elected Bill Rowling to PM.
In Australia, the situation with Harold Holt pretty much captured the entire state of issues as far as constitutionality went. Not only did he die, he vanished whilst swimming, and there was a period where it was not certain if he was alive or not. Indeed no body was ever recovered. (Leading to a suitable round of conspiracy theories.)
The situation in Oz was reasonably easy however. All ministers, including the PM, serve at the pleasure of the Govenour General. When Holt vanished, there was no instant transmission of executive authority from the PM to the deputy PM. Nor is there ever. The Deputy PM is only nominally considered to be the designated placeholder for temporary office by the governor general (in the absence of other direction, for instance from a dying PM.) When Holt vanished, Australia did not have a PM. Nor did it have a deputy PM. The governor general sought advice (from Sir Lionel Bowen - supreme court judge) but the advice was what you would expect. The GG should appoint a caretaker PM on the advice of the incumbent party, and in the period during which no PM was appointed, the GG held executive authority, and could, if matters needed it, exercise that authority. It was not a time when there was any expectation that that would need to be done, so there was no real issue. But Lionel Bowen was clear that the GG should make it very clear that if he did need to act, it was only due to the very unusual and temporary situation. Things were complicated as the country didn’t have a deputy PM, partly due to the fact that the government was made from a coalition of the two conservative parties, and the concomitant messy politics that flowed. The infighting between the two caused even more tumult in the transition. As it was, John McEwen (who was leader of the smaller of the two coalition parties) was sworn in as a caretaker PM a couple of days later. But in the interim, there was no-one who had the position of PM. A little while later the coalition parties voted on a new leader (John Gorton) who was then sworn in as PM.
This is probably the clear difference between Oz and say the US. Here there is no designated set of fallbacks defined in the constitution for elected power. Power is delegated from the GG in one step, and cannot go further. So we can end up in the situation that we have no PM. (During an election the PM is officially in office until the instant that the next elected PM is sworn in. So there is an atomic passing of authority in the normal course of events.) The absolute continuity of power is in the governor general. They serve at the pleasure of the UK crown. And thus continuity derives from continuity there. So long as the UK has a monarch, Australia has a root of executive power.
Egomania? Why does my example Jack Warner want to go around dealing with traffic projects etc. Oh and since I made this topic he has now been made minister of national security.:dubious:
Don’t underestimate the lure of power versus money. PM gets to be the main guy/girl. She gets to hob-nob with Obama, gets invited to the G20 conference, gets her picture taken with the other G20 leaders. Picture in the paper every day. Leaders of industry fawn over her (at least in public) and do it goes. Compared to that, being merely very rich is not in the hunt. The world is filled with the rich. There is a point where it is impossible to spend the extra money. But there is only one PM/president of your country. Heck you might even think there is a possibility you can do something useful. History is pretty oblivious to the rich. In the end it is a pretty empty pursuit. Indeed, a very rich person attaining power is not very likely to even be interested in enacting policy that benefit the other rich. After all, why should they? It isn’t as if they owe one another anything. A cartel of the very wealthy working in concert is about as real as there being honour amongst thieves.
I agree with everything you’re written, but a slight nitpick:
Not quite. Australia has its own Crown - Elizabeth II is Queen of Australia, which is a title equal in dignity to Queen of the United Kingdom. The GG serves at the pleasure of the Australian Crown.
Moreover if, say, Britain became a republic, Australia would remain a monarchy until it chose to change that.
Sorry, just a slight nitpick 
I imagine the Tories could make a choice pretty quickly - say a fortnight or so. I concede Clegg may be asked by the Queen (with the blessing of the Tories) to become PM temporarily while a new Tory leader were chosen, but he’d be expected to stand down as soon as the Queen’s appointed the new leader.
Indeed. Nice point.
Yes, Australia would remain a monarchy, in the unlikely event of the U.K. becoming a republic, and no change being made to the Constitution of Australia. But, who would be the monarch?
Clause 2 of the preamble to the Constitution of Australia says:
[QUOTE=The Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons (aka the Parliament of the United Kingdom)]
2. The provisions of this Act referring to the Queen shall extend to Her Majesty’s heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.
[/QUOTE]
So, who would be Queen Victoria’s “heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom”? You’d need to read the hypothetical legislation of the UK Parliament, but arguably it would be the President of the United Republic of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – not the now-citizen Elizabeth Windsor or Charles Windsor.
Not if the leadership election was contested. That would require a postal ballot of all the party members. If there were more than two candidates, there would also have to be preliminary rounds of balloting by Conservative MPs first.
Except that the Conservatives have a de facto deputy leader in William Hague. Calling Clegg would therefore open the Queen to criticism that she had favoured the Liberal Democrats when a suitable Conservative candidate for that temporary appointment was available. Especially as one reason that Hague stands in for Cameron when necessary is that he’s unlikely to be a candidate in any future leadership contest. So the Queen would almost certainly seek the Cabinet’s advice before summoning either. Or she could just leave the position vacant. It’s not as if there is much that the Prime Minister can do that the Cabinet couldn’t do collectively or by temporary delegation.
True - and therefore a longer period of choosing a replacement.
I think you’re correct, on reflection it depends essentially on the feelings of the Cabinet.
I don’t know if she’d risk leaving the position vacant - although I think it would be kind of cool to have an absolute monarch for two weeks 
Hmm, I disagree. The clause was written before the creation of separate Commonwealth Realm crowns for the Dominions in the first half of the 20th Century, so it was obvious that the Queen of Australia would be the Queen of the UK. But now, with separate Realms, it’s not that straightforward: the removal of the monarch in Britain would have zero formal impact on the right of Elizabeth Windsor to remain Queen of Australia until further notice.
<hijack> I am now thinking of the science fiction stories of Cordwainer Smith, where Her Absent Majesty the Queen ruled the planet of Old North Australia millennia after the U.K. on Earth was obliterated. </hijack>
Just the Senate
We did just have the analogous situation in which the Leader of the Opposition died; in his last letter he indicated the MP he wanted to succeed him as interim leader, a choice that was agreed to by the caucus and the party’s federal council. She then became acting party leader – although not formally the Leader of the Opposition – until the next leader was chosen by the membership.
Similarly, there being no formal process for it, the governing party would simply choose an interim leader, and therefore interim Prime Minister, through whatever process it deemed expedient, until a permanent party leader were chosen. Since that interim leader could command a parliamentary majority (either the governing party would be a majority or else it would see to it that whoever it chose could command the support of its coalition partners), the Sovereign would simply recognize that person as Prime Minister.
That’s open to question; the Statute of Westminster says that no change to the succession can be made without the consent of all the Commonwealth Realms.
This is a good point and needs repeating. There is no universal definition of parliamentary system that requires a minister, even the prime minister, to be members of parliament. What grude, Northern Piper and others are referring to is usually called Westminster system, which is just one type of parliamentary system - though a common one as it’s the one that most former British colonies use. But in other systems such requirement may not exist at all, so for example in Germany, Kiesinger was chancellor for three years in 1960’s without being a member of parliament and no one seems to have problem with this. Similarly, every Finnish government tends to have a few ministers who aren’t MPs. Also, the use of by-elections to raise would-be ministers to MPs is possible in an electoral system with majority constituencies as in the UK, but wouldn’t work in countries which elect their parliaments proportionally from multi-member constituencies.
Rather, a parliamentary system is one where the executive needs to be supported by the majority of legislative, at least passively so as the simple majority tolerates the cabinet including the prime minister, and does not cast a vote of no confidence or take a similar measure to replace the current PM and administration. So the prime minister is the person whom the majority of parliament members want to hold the position. In case the PM appoints someone as deputy PM and then promptly resigns, it thus follows that this person can become the new PM only by being voted in by the majority of MPs. Or if the PM goes permanently vacationing and lets the deputy run the show, the parliament probably notices at some point and if the majority is not happy with this overuse of temp workers, they soon vote a new team in. So this is the answer: whatever personal political power scheme the PM and the shady DPM want to run, they can do it only so long the parliament allows it.
Of course, what the OP’s scenario actually says is that neither the party or the elected PM care about the future implications of letting their massive financer to rule the country. As the party has presumably won the majority in parliament through the millions/billions of funding from the new deputy prime minister, they can choose whoever they (or the party’s MPs) want to rule the country. So there isn’t anything to stop this happening if the voters really do fancy this upstart politician and party and elect them in a position where they can put their scheme into action. But I wouldn’t call this all “a giant loophole around democracy” really; if it’s what the most voters wanted, then it is democratic by definition.