Do you want to discuss boring politics? (23 Viewers)
- Thread starter mrtrench
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Grendel
Well-Known Member
Well if that happened I doubt they’d have ended Johnson’s tenure. Cameron is the only PM since Thatcher who hasn’t been elected this way hasn’t he?
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
Sounds like there’s another rebellion coming. She’s apparently planning a U turn on universal credit being linked to inflation and instead linking it to average wage rise rates instead. Obviously followed by another U turn and recommitting to linking it to inflation again. Talk about not being able to read the room. If she can’t read her own party she’s never going to read the country.
stay_up_skyblues
Well-Known Member
I work in liability insurance and it’s often those who mock/whinge about health and safety gone mad who are first to stick a claim in when they get hurt on site.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Blair?
May and Johnson both won GEs pretty quickly after appointment. Brown should’ve called one earlier.
It’s precisely because it happens a lot that the constitution should be clearer on it. That’s how all laws are made: a problem with the existing setup is identifying and rectified.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
Brown succeeded Blair was what I’m meant - a change of leader in office - this isn’t a presidential system - and it’s happened numerous times in history
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
I feeL like we’re having different conversations. You asked if Cameron was the only PM since Thatcher to be elected first, he wasn’t Blair was. And you can argue with Cameron as he came from a coalition agreement not a majority vote.
No one has said it is a presidential system, but the manifesto the Conservative Party we’re elected on isn’t the one Truss is running on so under a parliamentary system there’s a question of mandate.
And yes, it happens a lot nowadays, which is the case for change. Public mood in these situations is almost always on the side of a relative quick GE. It’s my opinion that that should be codified.
Liquid Gold
Well-Known Member
I tend to lean your way on this but my concern is that it would prevent MPs taking action against and incompetent PM for personal reasons/good of the party over what's correct.
There is rarely a leadership change when times are good so they just may be hesitant to remove some absolute shit if if it meant an election and putting their salary and pension on the line.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
Well the only way it’s going to change is if a party puts it in a manifesto and it goes through parliament - can’t see any doing it
I think you’ll find that if it happens there won’t be too many no confidence votes anymore.
It would also seem a bit unfair say if Mr Starmer was elected then died in a car crash after 3 weeks and we had to have another election
Grendel
Well-Known Member
Correct - turkeys Christmas and all that
What the two main parties should do is have a better system to elect a leader that has the support of the MPs not the membership
D
Deleted member 5849
Guest
I'd agree with you on the general principle. It's fair to say we've ended up with a government far removed from that which preceded it this time however. Ultimately the others were basically continuations with tweaks, and a bit of a change of style of leadership.
Normally I haven't been particularly bothered - as you say, you elect your MP rather than a Prime Minister, but it does feel that somehow we've ended up with a government that has given itself a mandate to do things nobody really wants it to. Sure there are precedents in the past, but they'd be a long time ago!
chiefdave
Well-Known Member
Bookmarking this for when someone runs Starmer over 3 weeks after the next election.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
Seriously? 1977 isn’t that long ago
D
Deleted member 5849
Guest
Long enough for some of us!
Anyway, wasn't that different to what had gone before, really? More a shift of Thatcher to Major, surely? Or May to Johnson if you like? This is totally opposed.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
Not really. A Lib lab pact which no one voted for, an attempt by labour to put a pay restraint of 5% against a 17% inflation rate (no manifesto for that which I think it continued to impose on public sector workers until the bitter end) and a government that carried on against the publics wishes when everyone wanted them out and ultimately the only one since 1924 to collapse after a no confidence motion against it
It ended up a far cry from the government elected under Wilson
D
Deleted member 5849
Guest
That was confidence and supply, just like May and DUP. Nothing like the Cameron / Clegg coalition, even. Which, of course, nobody voted for but comes with such things, as did May's deal... where DUP arguably held more influence than Liberals in 1977.
Again, no real difference from Wilson to Callaghan, beyond a loss of charisma. Equally Johnson's progressed from May, and only changed after an election where he asked for a mandate to do so. You're barking up the wrong tree here.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
How many PMs have died on the job in the last century exactly? You are getting desperate.
There aren’t any confidence votes anyway, that’s the problem. We’ve got a PM who doesn’t command the confidence of the house but is using loopholes and bravado to avoid the constitutional conventions designed to stop that.z
Grendel
Well-Known Member
I don’t agree. The public mood at the time was totally opposed to the government. Even the unions opposed them and the pay restraint proposals. The libs pulled out of the pact and parliament pulled the trigger on a government that refused to die
the only difference is this government has a huge mandate from the last election
Major by the way insisted to remain in tbe ERM and was slavishly obsessed with the EU and wanted to join the Euro - something his predecessor did not
Grendel
Well-Known Member
I’m hardly desperate it’s you whose desperate as you are proposing something that’s never ever going to happen
D
Deleted member 5849
Guest
But I'm not talking about that, I'mtalking about policy shift. Not just one or two, but a fundamental change in economic and social policy. That's what we've got here... on a larger scale in fact than that from Major to Blair, economically at least.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Ah yes, basic constitutional reform the likes of which has happened several times in the last decade alone, unlike a new PM dying in a car crash which happens all the time. What with all that speeding about not at all escorted by police Prime Ministers do
D
Deleted member 5849
Guest
One interesting policy is the plan to uprate benefits with wages instead of inflation.
Surely if you support benefits going up in line with inflation, as per Penny Mordaunt, you support the same for wages too?
Surely if you support benefits going up in line with inflation, as per Penny Mordaunt, you support the same for wages too?
Liquid Gold
Well-Known Member
Starmer more likely to kill someone else in a car crash with his record...Ah yes, basic constitutional reform the likes of which has happened several times in the last decade alone, unlike a new PM dying in a car crash which happens all the time. What with all that speeding about not at all escorted by police Prime Ministers do
D
Deleted member 5849
Guest
He's right that it would be stupid to have a new general election if the Prime Minister ended up incapacitated very shortly after taking over, however. The issue here isn't the person at the top changing, but more how a mandate is interpreted. Our system works as long as MPs are happy to offer checks and balances in their own party... and tbh the way both main parties choose to elect their leaders by allowing the membership the final say, takes away some of the ability for MPs to actually hold the leader to a manifesto.Ah yes, basic constitutional reform the likes of which has happened several times in the last decade alone, unlike a new PM dying in a car crash which happens all the time. What with all that speeding about not at all escorted by police Prime Ministers do
Better to revert to MPs electing their leader, in the system we have. That would also probably allow greater continuity between one leader to the next. The attempt to make the leadership election process more democratic probably has the opposite effect.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Really, though I don’t like it, there’s a case to be made for PR type system just because that’s how most people vote anyway.
As I said it’s only needed because conventions on things like finance and cabinet responsibility have been eroded first by Johnson and now Truss.
If PMs and Ministers resigned when they should and had to build consensus or fall as they’re supposed to we wouldn’t have an issue.
I will say that the membership vote for both parties kinda changes the dynamic for me. Saying “you vote for these representatives and they vote for their leader” is a very different thing to “your reps pick a few leaders then a bunch of random political weirdos take it from there”.
D
Deleted member 5849
Guest
We'd have had some very different leaders on both parties over the past few years if left just to MPs, and arguably it would have been better for it. Only one I could argue against would be Ed and David Milliband... and I suspect more people would sit on a different side of that fence to me!
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Or you go entirely the other way and insist the public gets a vote in party leaders if they’re in government.
We could have had PM Rory Stewart.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
out of interest and I can’t be bothered to check was the increase to 45p in the pound introduced when Brown was PM? Was that in the manifesto or a change in direction?
Otis
Well-Known Member
Better than falling out of a window I guess
Did George Osborne have a go with it?
Read a few days ago it was 40% under Blair /Brown?
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
It didn’t exist under Blair, was introduced in Browns last budget as PM just before the election and was reduced three years later by Clegg and Cameron from 50% to 45%.