Here in the US, it seems that every time I hear a clip of someone speaking in the British Parliament, all the other MPs are yelling like schoolboys. Does this sort of thing really go on all the time in Parliament? If so, why? It doesn’t seem to be very useful. It also strikes me as odd that the British, who have a reputation for being relatively reserved and proper, should be so much more unruly than, of all people, the Americans. Is this behavior also common in other Parliaments besides that of the UK?
Not from the UK, but as far as i can tell it happens all the time. Sort of makes it fun to watch. Why they do it? I could not tell you, I guess they disagree or something…
What you see on TV is the bit of weekly theatre called Prime Minister’s Questions. The party leaders try to score points off each other, knowing that PMQs is likely to feature on the TV news. Their backbenchers roar them on. All a bit of fun. The rest of the time, the house is usually much less full and rather sedate.
The thing about Brits being reserved is your classic stereotype - there’s a little truth in it, but it’s an exaggeration. Visit a pub or nightclub on a Friday night if you don’t believe me.
Same in France, and twice a week moreover. These are the ‘Questions au Gouvernement’, all the ministers can be asked questions. Here is an example. That one made it to the TV news. Haaa, I still remember that day. That was fun !
For the anectode, theguy with grey hair (yes, him !) is having a little explanation with the guys sitting on the left side of the parliament. In the end, the guys of the left side got him. And by doing so they did a big favour to this other guy, since it was his worse concurrent.
For a little while Prime Minister’s Questions was appointment television, and darn certain it was the only thing on C-SPAN I’ve ever DVRed. It’s a damn shame the American government doesn’t work this way. The president should be required to head to the Capitol once a week to have spitballs thrown at him.
My gf was just commenting earlier on how much more interesting the British PMQ is than anything similar in the US.
PMQs can be jolly good political theatre, it’s true. But if you want some serious parliamentary tussling, behold the Taiwanese legislature: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo-TajmBr1s&feature=fvw
Some Hon. Members: “Oh, oh!”
My admiration for Tony Blair grew when I watched him on Prime Minister’s Questions. He was obviously prepared, and gave as good as he got. I couldn’t help but picture George Bush in the same situation. He would have been eaten alive.
(Criminy, it always comes back around to George Bush, doesn’t it? Sorry)
We get the same thing here in Canada sometime, the MP’s (member of parliament) acting like school kids, hollering, heckling and all speaking at the same time, calling for this or that person to resign (but that would be a subject for the Pit) and to think that we try to tell our kids to behave.
Of course, as mentionned above, those are the bits and pieces that make it to the six o’clock news on TV.
SNL even did a few skits based on the PMQ.
In the Spanish parliament the government is required to show up on Wednesday mornings in what are called “control sessions” to answer any questions from parliament members. I believe the questions are submitted in advance and the government can choose what member will reply.
The opposition tries to use these control sessions to score points and the government fires back so these sessions often turn into members exchanging jibes and their respective groups egging them on. A lot of the time though they are as monotonous and boring as the rest.
Backbenchers in Parliament have considerably less autonomy and opportunity for visibility than do junior U.S. Congressmen – their role in the House in mainly limited to a fairly strictly regulated showing up and voting for whatever Government proposes (and if you’re an opposition backbencher, you feel even more useless as your token no vote won’t even prevail). This is their time to get some visibility/notoriety if they hope to move up later.
Also, the head of Government in the U.S. is not always from the same party as the legislative-majority party. But in the U.K., the party that loses the election in which the PM is (de facto) chosen has very little influence in the legislature, so I guess this serves as a pressure valve to keep their views (and importantly, the views of third party or coalition parties) from becoming completely invisible.
To be fair to George W Bush, I doubt that many US presidents could do a good job during Prime Minister’s Questions. And few members of Congress could do a good job either. I don’t think that the American system trains them well for this sort of thing.
They have extensive briefing books, and the PM is generally a guy who almost inevitably would have been a frequent questioner, as leading party figures ask many of the questions. There are only so many prominent public issues that the public would even know enough about that you could hope to embarrass the PM on in public view (an opposition backbencher could try to ask some obscure question about mutton subsidies in the Outer Hebrides, and maybe the PM wouldn’t have dead-on facts to respond, but the questioner might be the one who looks like an ass for wasting time on trivia, and of course a merely competent public speaker would have no problem going back on message with one of the dozen or so major Government talking points: “Perhaps the honorable gentlemen should be asking of his learned colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle the much larger question of why they have continued to oppose this Government’s efforts to pass legislation that would give effect to the Common Agricultural Policy and create 300,000 jobs for British agriculture.”).
Ha! If Brits are schoolboys in their parliament, what would these be?
In contrast there was an incident some years ago in Spain where a case of the giggles started spreading until no one could stop laughing and a recess had to be called so they could all recompose. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bN8aD5J7g8
So if, say, the economy is considered the most important issue of the day, and a coalition government forms out of a few parties who agree on economic issues but disagree on other points, do the smaller parties in the coalition just have to keep their mouths shut on those other issues? How is such party and coalition discipline enforced?
As an example, suppose you’ve got the Liberal Party (40%), the Conservative Party (35%), and the Libertarian Party (25%). None of these parties has a majority, so they have to form a coalition. The Conservative Party and the Libertarian Party agree that the most important issue is lowering taxes, so they form a coalition low-tax government, led primarily by the Conservatives. Meanwhile, though, the Conservatives want to ban gay marriage, while the Libertarians and Liberals want to allow it (they just consider it a lower priority than the tax issue). Does this mean that the Libertarians would be expected to vote alongside the Conservatives against gay marriage, even though they (and a majority of legislators) otherwise support it?
That’s all up for negotiation. In Westminster systems generally speaking any money bill is a matter of confidence (which is to say, if the government loses the vote, they’d have to step down and ask for an election). Any proper coalition would have all members committed to voting with the government on matters of confidence. On any other issue it’s all up for grabs. The Libertarians could say to the Conservatives, “We’ll support you on issues x, y, and z, but in exchange we expect you not to bitch when we vote with the Liberals on a, b, and c.”
Formal coalitions in the Westminster system are extremely rare, and tend to be quite unstable. I think that Canada has had one coalition government in its history, and it only lasted a couple of months.
Even minority governments are quite rare in the Westminster system. I believe that here in Canada, 42% of the popular vote is generally sufficient to win a majority*. When there has been a minority government, generally the government survives by not introducing legislation that enough of the opposition will oppose. I don’t think that a minority government in Canada has ever managed to last more than 2 years.
- Obviously the actual percentage required can vary greatly depending on how the votes are distributed among the various ridings.