May the horse you rode in on get taken in by a rescue place and a nice retirement in the country with someone who loves it and feeds it apples and stuff. Horses are nice animals. You, Mr. Faux-democratic embarrassment to weasels, are not.
I wouldn’t trust you to look after a spider plant for the weekend, forget a country.
Sounds like (you guys?) have a real winner there. As long as the US has Trump and his voters, though, I won’t be pointing any fingers.
How is this surprising? If Parliament hadn’t wanted a PM who acts like Boris Johnson, they wouldn’t have chosen Boris Johnson.
I can’t see any surprise expressed in the OP, just anger.
Me, I’m going for depression, followed by acceptance.
Parliament didn’t choose Boris. Neither did the country. That’s half the bloody point.
Wait - I don’t understand. Doesn’t Parliament have to vote to approve a new government?
Just out of interest, I was checking out on rationalwiki.org what previous worthies had held the position of Prime Minister. This is the entry for Asquith:
This is the current entry for Johnson:
Boris is a fucking clown and an asshole, just like OUR moron. He is a Trump wannabe, and Brazil has one now too. WTF is up with these cockroaches?
Yes, it does. Although again, I can’t see where the OP includes any statement to the contrary.
I believe the party votes for their new leader, not the whole parliament, and the Queen appoints him as Prime Minister. I guess the Queen could refuse to do so, but that would be messy. This sort of thing happens in Australia every six months or so.
I’ve no idea mate. I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t understand the world any more, so I’m going to ignore it, play with the dogs, talk to the chickens, and hope I don’t live too much longer.
Usually the answer would be yes, but in this instance it’s “not yet”.
The PM is the person who can command a majority of votes in Parliament. Normally, finding out who can command a majority is achieved by a party winning an actual majority in a general election (quite easy under First Past the Post). Once elected, the new PM will produce a programme for government (aka Queen’s Speech) which will be voted on. This vote is essentially a Parliamentary seal of approval and if your party has a majority it’s a formality.
Occasionally no one party wins a majority and some sort of coalition is assembled, with the leader of the largest party becoming PM. This is what happened after the 2010 election (Conservatives and Liberal Democrats) and 2017 election (Conservatives and Democratic Unionist Party).
Another thing that happens occasionally, as happened with Johnson, is that the leader of the governing party changes during a parliament. Normally, this is perfectly straightforward because normally there is a reliable majority so it is assumed and will quickly be shown that the new leader commands a majority. However, the actual process of deciding who the new party leader is is purely one for the party. In this case, Conservative MPs whittled initial candidates down to a shortlist of two, who were then voted on by the membership of the Conservative party. So Parliament as such had no say.
There are two factors that raise some doubt about Johnson’s ability to command a majority. The first is that the majority is now incredibly slim - down to 1, if IIRC, possibly even 0. So it would be hard for anyone, let alone someone as divisive within his own party as Johnson, to reliably win votes. Linked to that is the second point, which is that Johnson became Conservative Leader and PM during the summer recess. He has not called any votes and so as a matter of empirical fact we don’t know whether he can win any. Nevertheless he is currently being treated as PM.
Hence the outrage at his decision to prorogue Parliament for 5 weeks. This allows him to continue to govern as PM and e.g. fail to make a deal with the EU without ever finding out if Parliament assents to his being PM.
Well, they are prone to tip browning. Maybe he’d be OK briefly babysitting a snake plant?
Trump on the other hand would probably knock the plant over, stomp on it and then ridicule it on Twitter.
And they all wish they were Berlusconi… the breed isn’t new, but we’re used to seeing it in certain locations more than in others.
If it ever got to the point that the Queen would have to eventually appoint him, may she bird-flip him, or at least a good slap to the bicep.
I’m pretty sure there’s some Italian lineage going, like, way, way back with her.
Got it. I assumed that the British system was similar to my own country’s system (which is in fact based on it), in that all ministers, including the prime minister, have to be approved by a majority vote of Parliament before they can take office on a non-interim basis. That’s why I assumed Boris had already been voted in by Parliament.
Don’t forget Israel! Bibi’s been in power even longer than any of them! But then, he’s (arguably) a smart corrupt racist demagogue.
As much as I despise Bibi and hope he’ll be going down in three weeks, I have to say, he’s started looking a lot better in recent years, at least compared to other world leaders. Which doesn’t really say anything about him.
Every time I see a picture of Boris Johnson, I think I’m looking at Jeff Daniels’s character from Dumb and Dumber.
Boris Johnson is smarter than Theresa May. She thought the way to negotiate with the EU was to hold a gun to her own head and shout “I’m going to pull the trigger!”
Not so with Boris. His approach is to hold a gun to his own head and shout “I’m going to pull the trigger! I really mean it!”
See? Smart.
j