Basically, Andy Burnham has majority support within the Labour Party to be the next PM, but he wasn’t a member of Parliament, which is necessary to challenge a current PM for the role. So the Parliament member for Makerfield resigned to hold a special election so that he could (hopefully) win the seat, which he did, and now he’s set to become the new PM.
And here I was trying to summarise the Westminster system with four paragraphs.
Only thing worth noting is a PM isn’t some presidential position. It’s generally just the party leader in the leadership position of the other ministers.
If a party decided they want to take turns of being leader each month, they’d each take a turn at being PM too.
Ah, this explains it. I was wondering how some random person who won an off-cycle election could just jump into leadership like that. But it seems that he had the leadership support already, and the election was engineered to make him eligible.
I was curious as to why none of the already elected Labour MPs would get the job. I guess none of them want it. Let’s see if he lasts longer than my salad.
They’re all widely seen as either tainted by Starmer, not good enough, or too new (as about half of them came in at the last election 2 years ago). There are some who have ambition, but not sure if they’ll have the support necessary to challenge.
first of all, as we all know, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government…
so, in UK you don’t vote for the PM. you vote for your local representative (Member of Parliament, MP). whichever party has the most MP becomes the ruling party and forms government, and the leader of that party becomes PM. if members of that party lost confidence in their leader, they can choose a new one. so if someone wants to be the new PM, they can do that by getting enough MPs behind them.
formally the new PM must be chosen through a leadership challenge process, but if the current PM sees the writing on the wall, they might choose to just resign with some dignity intact, instead of being dragged out kicking and screaming.
So, this other guy wins a special election and now he’s gonna be the next PM? How does that work?
John Oliver did an episode of Last Week Tonight on it recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZL_TctrNco
Basically, Andy Burnham has majority support within the Labour Party to be the next PM, but he wasn’t a member of Parliament, which is necessary to challenge a current PM for the role. So the Parliament member for Makerfield resigned to hold a special election so that he could (hopefully) win the seat, which he did, and now he’s set to become the new PM.
And here I was trying to summarise the Westminster system with four paragraphs.
Only thing worth noting is a PM isn’t some presidential position. It’s generally just the party leader in the leadership position of the other ministers.
If a party decided they want to take turns of being leader each month, they’d each take a turn at being PM too.
Ah, this explains it. I was wondering how some random person who won an off-cycle election could just jump into leadership like that. But it seems that he had the leadership support already, and the election was engineered to make him eligible.
I was curious as to why none of the already elected Labour MPs would get the job. I guess none of them want it. Let’s see if he lasts longer than my salad.
They’re all widely seen as either tainted by Starmer, not good enough, or too new (as about half of them came in at the last election 2 years ago). There are some who have ambition, but not sure if they’ll have the support necessary to challenge.
The too news generally come under tainted by starmer - there was a lot of parachuting and overriding CLPs in the last election.
I wouldn’t worry about it - it’s become a rotating door of late. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Just trying to understand how it all works in the UK. What makes him so special. Did a watery bint throw a sword at him?
first of all, as we all know, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government…
so, in UK you don’t vote for the PM. you vote for your local representative (Member of Parliament, MP). whichever party has the most MP becomes the ruling party and forms government, and the leader of that party becomes PM. if members of that party lost confidence in their leader, they can choose a new one. so if someone wants to be the new PM, they can do that by getting enough MPs behind them.
formally the new PM must be chosen through a leadership challenge process, but if the current PM sees the writing on the wall, they might choose to just resign with some dignity intact, instead of being dragged out kicking and screaming.
Think of it like the speaker of the house (assuming the one asking for clarification is American). They just have more than two parties.
Top quote!
That’s the problem, I’m not sure it’s ‘worked’ in the UK for a long long loooong time…
And your suggestion of a watery bint throwing swords might be a better method of choosing a leader than any that have come about for a while now
Lots of countries have a line of succession, which kicks in both for resignations and deaths.
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