The trouble is here that when you use the terms “right wing”, a bunch of times this government (and I regard this one, last one, and Johnsons lot the same) aren’t particularly that. Right wing used to mean financial stability and cutting services and balancing the books. These lot seem to be basically in “reality-denial” which comes with the modern right wing, the idea that covid didn’t exist, or wasn’t that bad, and Brexit is great, and Donnie Tantrump is well loved.
How much time before Sunak can be subject to a party no confidence vote like Johnson?
Well the group that decides stated that it would have to be a year before Liz could be subject to such a vote. But they changed their mind and said if there were an overwhelming number of letters sent to the committee they would have such a vote. And Liz saw the writing on the wall and resigned. So it will be the same for Sunak.
And yet, the government has a majority in the Commons and has won contested votes, which is the definition of confidence. A majority of the members elected by the people support the government.
A parliamentary system doesn’t elect prime ministers the way a presidential system does. They are always the choice of the party, however that party chooses to elect them. It’s a fundamentally different system.
Yeah, I get how it works. Boris won an election. Truss and Sunak did not.
It’s a undemocratic flaw. I would suggest that the best solution would be having a deputy PM chosen before an election and that person would be required to take over in the event of a resignation or death/serious health problem.
So you want a presidential system and anything else is undemocratic.
Nvm …
Yes, while I’m not sure how it works in other Westminster-style systems, in UK law there is hardly any mention of the office of prime minister (or of political parties, for that matter.) Rather, these institutions emerged organically as ways of parliament and government organising themselves.
It’s true that most voters do think in terms of voting for a particular leader or party, but constitutionally they are only electing their local member of parliament. It is up to parliament who forms the government and who leads it.
No, the Tories won an election. Boris was the party leader at the time, but he was on the ballot only in his London constituency.
Are you saying people don’t vote locally with the party leader in mind? Would that election have had the same result if Liz Truss was the party leader? Would Labour have fared better if Jeremy Corbyn wan’t their standard bearer?
The crapulous UK electoral system ensures that there are only two parties than have any chance of forming a government, and that both parties are very well-established as the only two possibilities.
In theory it is possible for one of the two parties to be supplanted by a new party but it is vanishingly rare; in the 200 years since the UK first started down the road to becoming a semi-representative democracy this has only happened once, in the 1920s, when Labour supplanted the Liberals as the only alternative to the Conservatives.
The result is that, if a political movement wishes to attain power in the UK, it most do so by taking over one or other of the established parties.
The result of that is that the struggle for control of the party generally takes precedence over the desire to govern well; after all, if you don’t control the party you can’t govern at all.
The Tory party is in a febrile conditions at the moment, dominated by delusional brexiters and ideological economic right-wingers who (because the implementation of their policies is producing such dismal results) feel very insecure in their dominance. Any attempt to lead the party to take a significantly different policy course will be seen by them as an attempt by another faction to seize control of the party, and they will resist that to the (political) death.
They do vote with the party leader in mind. But they also vote knowing that he’s the party leader because he enjoys the confidence of the party, and the party can replace him at any time for reasons that seem good to the party. They are more electing a party to government than they are electing an individual to the office of Prime Minister. This is well-understood.
The fact is that it is normal for Prime Ministers either come to office or leave office other than as a result of a general election. The last UK PM who both became PM by virtue of a general election and ceased to be PM by virtue of a general election was Edward Heath; that was nearly 50 years ago. The last before him was Clement Atlee.
Parties stand on a manifesto and it is that they that they are considered democratically bound to. “We will keep the same leader until the next election” is not typically a manifesto commitment.
At the end of the day the conservative government has lost a ton of popularity since the last general election, but are just hanging on. This can happen in any political system and if the government doesn’t call an election (or can’t) then the unpopular government just waits out until there is a mandatory election. Obviously a lot of the current situation is due to leadership failures, but the only real difference between what would be occurring between the Westminster system and a US-style presidential system is whether everyone (the party and the public) is stuck with the unpopular administration (and two specific people) they voted for or if the unpopular government can shuffle around their unpopular leadership until the end of their term. Unpopular governments that remain in power until the end of a term are an inevitability in any representative democracy.
… Heh.
Obviously it can happen in the US system that a president becomes so unpopular that he resigns, in which event he is replaced by his vice-president. And it can also happen that he is replaced by a vice-president who was not the vice-president on the ticket when he was elected. And of course precisely this happened when Nixon resigned to be replaced by Ford.
So in both presidential and parliamentary democracies people may end up with a head of government about whom they have not previously had an opportunity to express a view at the ballot box. It happens rather more frequently in parliamentary systems but, arguably, that just means they are, or at least can be, more responsive to changes in public opinion than presidential systems. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Here’s the best analysis I’ve seen:
Sunak Has Been Set Up To Fail and the Likelihood Is That He Will | naked capitalism
History does not suggest that many prime ministers appointed mid-term with their predecessor having failed turn out to be great. Sunak has two failed predecessors. That’s really not good.
That Sunak is petrified of the role he is taking on does not help. How do I know he is petrified? First, he spoke to no one during this campaign, not even MPs. Second, his speech to Tories at their HQ yesterday was as wooden as anything Truss has done. He is already overwhelmed.
Third, the issues he has to address justify his feeling overwhelmed, given the near impossibility of appeasing his backbenchers on almost any of them. They could all be solved, but not by a Tory.
As I’ve said before, the Tories have purged their front benches - and to some extent their back benches - based on ideological purity rather than competence or intelligence. As a result - and much like their GOP counterparts - they have a party filled with not just incompetent but outright delusional True Believers who insist that the reason their approach to governing is the equivalent of throwing kerosene into a dumpster fire is because nefarious forces are working against them - the EU, Remainers, an “Anti-Growth Coalition”, the “tofu-eating Wokerati”, the media, the Civil Services, etc are all somehow causing their entirely fantasy-driven policies to fail.
Whether Sunak actually believes the Right’s own propaganda or whether he’s just another grifter using the chaos for personal gain, there really is no way he can come out of this with a successful premiership as all the actions that could make things better are anathema to his Party, and all the things his Party members want are at best really bad for the country and at worst actually impossible and often contradictory. He can only hope to emerge with greater personal wealth and a possible life peerage like his predecessors. But I suppose those are some consolation to a loss of reputation.
Actually, there hasn’t been one since Thatcher. And come to think of it “Lady Truss” would sound… unfortunate
I stand corrected - it’s mostly been knighthoods. I thought John Major had had one but he’s just got a knighthood plus the Garter and CH honours.
Yeah, you have to be
- effective
- popular with your party in retrospect (if still popular you’d still be PM)
- have your party in power so the current PM can recommend you for a peerage (assuming this American understands how getting a peerage works)
I don’t think there is any former PM since Thatcher who takes any of those boxes except the last one.