At this point, a general election would be the obviously correct solution. It's clear that the conservative party don't have a platform and can't agree major policy points amongst themselves.
However that would require conservative MPs to vote for it, which is the turkeys voting for Christmas so unlikely to happen, so I'd expect we'll have to wait till 2024 for that election.
The best likely outcome is that a set of senior people in the party agree a policy platform and try to steady things for now.
Calling an election is now back in the hands of the government (not parliament) since the repeal of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act; a PM can ask the monarch to call an election without having to get the agreement of parliament. Neither the current nor next PM (whoever they end up being) is likely to do this if the polling numbers are anything to go by, of course. I think the only other way an election can be called is if the government loses a vote of no confidence.
Technically speaking, King Charles III does not actually need to PM to ask in order to dismiss parliament and force a new election. Given that Charles I and Charles II both dismissed parliament maybe Charles III will grow a pair and do the same. It is somewhat ironic that while dismissing parliament caused the downfall of the monarchy for Charles I is it likely to buy a significant amount of time for the monarchy if Charles III does the same.
This is a typical misunderstanding of British politics. In theory the King is supposed to have power on a range of things, but there are very clearly set constitutional conventions that mean he does not. These are now so powerful that not even the "theory" is able to supersede them. This was found out the hard way by Boris Johnson when he tried to prorogue (suspend) Parliament using the Royal Prerogative. The supreme court cancelled his 'advice to the Queen' very quickly and restored Parliament.
Yes it's confusing and it would be better to write down a constitution reflecting how things actually are, but that's how it is.
Honestly having lived in the UK I find the flexibility of the unwritten constitution to be both a good and a bad thing.
On one hand, the constitution where I come from (Portugal) is unnecessarily binding and causes a lot of issues the country suffers from. On the other hand in the UK you get this feeling that the PM can do almost anything, which in the hands of a decent person can heavily advance the country or in a period like now, can cause utter chaos.
> you get this feeling that the PM can do almost anything
Technically, whoever has the majority in the parliament can literally do anything, including introducing the laws that require photo ID for voting (in a country without a mandatory photo ID) [0], or that anyone who protested in past five years are required to wear an electronic tag [1]. Or, because why not, to get rid of the election process - completely or partially.
He already has been for years. See the Black Spider memos he secretly sent to ministers, and all the secret carve-outs the Queen had. They have their grubby fingers in politics, but are just clever at hiding it.
Not necessarily the end of the monarchy. Parliament would just choose a new monarch as it did in 1688 when Charles II tried to choose an heir that Parliament didn't like.
It's been settled via the civil war and the Glorious Revolution, power in the UK rest ultimately in the House of Commons not the monarchy.
I seriously doubt that interfering in politics would do the monarchy any favours whatsoever. Constitutional issues aside the intersection of conservative and royalist is famously large. Why would he piss off the people most likely to support him?
You make it sound like it isn’t happening all the time already. It’s been fairly well reported on and has been very beneficial to that family. See other links in this thread.
I think the idea that the king would buy time for the monarchy by doing that is highly speculative. I very much doubt anyone knows what would happen given that the atmosphere is so febrile and it hasn't happened in centuries.
He doesn't have any authority, in practice. It has been that way since 1414. The second the monarchy tried to exert control over politics would be the second it was abolished.
Charles exerted lots of control behind the scenes while he was Prince of Wales, lobbying, receiving lobbyists, getting inside information, accepting huge donations, etc.
Influence is not the same as authority. I'm sure he has influence - but then so do lots of people. And at least as public figure he has a degree of visibility. Governments don't exist in a vacuum.
This is true, and yet there are plenty of other unelected people with far more influence than him. The US also has lots of rich, powerful and unelected people who exert vastly more political influence than the average citizen. That's not to say that I approve of Charles's lobbying activities, but he's hardly the worst example.
There's no 'intended message' to be found there, just some isolated incidents of dumb police officers arresting people for silly reasons (as acknowledged by their subsequent 'de-arrest').
Police arresting political dissidents in the name of an ostensibly powerless monarch is just one of those quirky things that happens in real democracies. Nothing to be concerned about.
Police can arrest people at their discretion. If these people were actually being prosecuted, I'd see your point. Otherwise, yes, it was wrong to arrest them, but you can find people being arrested for stupid reasons in any country. It doesn't require any kind of establishment conspiracy for that to happen. If you are raising a legitimate issue here, it's the broad powers of arrest that police have, not anything to do with Britain being a monarchy rather than a republic.
did you perhaps mean 1914? i’m not a historian but i DID watch Hamilton a few times and it really seemed like King George had quite a lot of power and authority…
I often wonder if George was merely the figurehead for colonial frustrations. After all, Parliament precipitated the revolution by insisting that they had the power to tax the colonies.
Other possible choices are 1708 (last example of the monarch refusing royal consent to an act of parliament, Queen Anne on the Scottish Militia Bill), or 1834 (last example of the monarch dismissing their government, William IV sacking the Whigs; he had to have them back in 1835 as the Tories he installed couldn't command a majority of the Commons).
Or you can point to things like the Kerr Sacking (in Australia, but using (vice-)regal power) and say it's not quite done yet, though in decline for centuries...
> a general election would be the obviously correct solution
As much as I'd love a GE and to see Tory MPs swept from power en-masse, that's just not how a Parliamentary system works. Everyone in the UK voted for (whether they think it or not) an MP to elect them for five years. Those MPs get to choose who leads them.
Technically yes, but if they can’t form a government the King can and will call an election.
I think there is a very high chance they will be unable to agree on a new leader and will therefor be unable to form a government. Even if they do elect a new leader, if that leader can barely control the party that would not a functioning government, and they should call an election.
At some point Tory MPs need to grow some, call an election, and except that it may mean loosing their job.
By "the continent" I assume you are speaking about the rest of europe, and in that case I don't think you can say anything coherent about their systems.
I think whoever is elected as the next Conservative leader needs to call a general election immediately. There is no mandate for a government formed by yet another Tory leader.
The world is such a different place to 2019, there is no way they can argue that they are a continuation of the previous mandate.
Do I understand correctly that you're saying the people who control the gov't right now should choose to call an early election that they're almost certainly going to lose? That seems unlikely.
Historically in Westminster systems that hasn't actually been that unusual when the majority party has lost as much public trust as this one seems to have. At a certain point, presiding over an unpopular rump can be more damaging in the long term than letting go and regrouping.
That doesn't seem to be the way current conservative parties operate though.
Will they? No. But when the current government would surely lose an election is exactly when an election ought to be held, assuming the government is meant to reflect the will of the people.
Yep, looting the country for private gain as much as possible before they get kicked out seems a more logical course of action.
Some would suggest that has already happened and they would have got away with it if it wasnt for those pesky international financial markets trying to limit their exposure to the impacts.
"Mandate" is a convenient fiction for political commentators. We should talk only of power. They are in power and will remain so until they choose to exit or 2025.
On one hand I'd love a general election, but on the other hand I feel what's most needed now is a kind of stability and level-headedness that has been lacking with the last two PMs.
From what I can tell, Sunak might actually do a pretty good job there; and for the time being that may be preferable over the delays and uncertainty of a general election. At least for now, considering the state of things.
He didn't do badly in the last election. He doesn't have the full support of the party, but neither had Truss, and who really does in the first place, especially when things are not going so well?
With Sunak as PM? Yes. He pretty much called Truss's plans stupid in so many words, and predicted the effects during the last leadership election. This is not really an especially high bar to clear as many people said so. The question isn't whether Sunak is the best possible PM, but what the best possible option is right now given the circumstances: a somewhat stable and "normal" person as PM vs. a general election?
It's easy to say "Tories bad, they got to go", but it's not that simple.
The big question is whether he can unify the Tories, or at least gain the majority backing him, which I doubt as the current members seem hell bent on their own power gains and increasing their own wealth no matter the cost to our economy. The real danger in another indeterminate period of this farce.
He, and many others, actually does seem to have the support of a lot of the party. Liz Truss didn't - she just had the support of the current party leadership.
They made the mistake of putting up two incredibly unpopular candidates for PM to the party members in the most recent PM selection process. I'm not sure they will make the same mistake again.
At the same time, they did just have an election, so it's not like they are going to be interested in having another one. Labour-aligned folks are calling for one for obvious reasons.
He, and many others, actually does seem to have the support of a lot of the party. Liz Truss didn't - she just had the support of the current party leadership.
This is pretty much the exact opposite of true – Truss had the support of the membership, and did not have the support of the "leadership" or the parliamentary party. Sunak was the other way round.
At the same time, they did just have an election, so it's not like they are going to be interested in having another one
There's not really another choice, though it's possible that only one candidate will stand, in which case an election is avoided.
Labour-aligned folks are calling for one for obvious reasons.
They're calling for a general election, not a Conservative leadership election.
Perhaps worth adding that right now, according to polls, a large majority of UK folks are labour-aligned, a complete U-turn compared with how they voted in the 2019 general election.
The current prime minister was voted into position by just 0.2% of the population (conservative party members only - unlike the USA, very few people are registered members of any party in the UK). That was not just a vote for a person, it was a vote for their radical change of policy direction as well, which they set out before the vote.
Yet another prime minister voted in by 0.2% of the population who are particularly unrepresentive, to enact policies diametrically opposed to the formal manifesto pledges at the last general election, is about as far as you can get from what the people appear to want.
Cynical but I think it's worth considering that the last couple of PMs to leave might have been offered a comfortable retirement by people around the party in order to not call an election. Not in the "here's a bag of money" sense but pretty close, as in "listen I'll make sure you'll always be on the after dinner circuit".
This will be the fourth unelected PM in six years (okay, Boris Johnson did actually win a GE after being foisted upon us, if you think that counts).
It's time for an early General Election. This lot need to go. Every trace of the Tories must be obliterated.
The hilarious part is, the way that polling stands right now, a General Election would result in a strong Labour majority with the Scottish National Party in opposition, the Lib Dems third, and the Conservatives a distant fourth :-D
To say they have not been elected is a complete falsification of our parliamentary system. The UK general populace has never voted for a PM. Party members do, and every single prime minister (bar some few exceptions) have been elected by their Party in some way, shape, or form. The four PMs you mention were voted into power by Conservative voters. Conservative members decide who to lead their party, not the anyone else. This is why you don't get situations like you do in the US, where the President can be of a different party to most of those in government (and little ever gets done because legislation gets caught in either house or senate as a result).
We vote for MPs, not Parties. The PM could lose their seat if their local constituency votes them out, even if every other person in the country voted for them. An example of that is the 1906 election [1], where Balfour lost his local vote and the Conservatives had to scramble to come up with a new leader. This is why top MPs are given safe seats by their respective parties. Of course, in practice, the vast majority of people vote for their Party not their local MP when they go to the polls during a general election. That isn't how the system is designed to function though. Most people couldn't even name their local MP - the one who is actually meant to represent their personal interests - which is an utter travesty and the source of most of this countries political woes.
Ah come on, when someone says this everyone knows what is meant and that when it happens there's a risk you could end up with a prime minister who is popular within the party but disliked by the electorate (Gordon Brown or Liz Truss).
So yeah you don't vote for a PM ... but there's a clear, well-understood difference between being the leader and the very visible face of your party when it wins the general election, and winning in one constituency then charming enough party members to become PM a couple of years after the General Election.
> It's time for an early General Election. Every trace of the Tories must be obliterated.
Sounds like completely unbiased opinion. /s
More seriously, I'm only interested in hearing the arguments for a general election from nominal conservative (Tory) supporters. All arguments from leftists are just "we want to win" in disguise so are completely untrustworthy.
From what I understand of UK politics, Johnson won the last election on policy (he was already PM) and lost his seat because of COVID shenanigans so presumably the Tories still have public mandate to continue the same policies (maybe not the Lizz agenda though).
> All arguments from leftists are just "we want to win"
The argument is that the party is being eviscerated in opinion polling, they’ve lost the support of the public and that since they're effectively doomed they're free to do what we know they love to do - attempt to secure themselves a role in the private sector for after the election. Given that this it the Conservative party, it's not exactly a secret that they'll try their best to gut the state in order to do so.
And the idea that Labour in 2022 is “leftist” is laughable. The party threw an election and enacted a campaign to remove members it considered left-wing (“trot hunting”). They’re not the left, they’re just probably not going to actively fuck up the country quite as severely as the Conservatives seem hellbent on doing
They are far beyond momentarily unpopular right now. A policy blip that would lose the Tories a few dozen seats - VAT or income tax hike - is one thing. What they’re facing is an extraordinary collapse. They’re polling as if they’d just enacted prohibition and banned football
They're not doing "momentarily unpopular things", they are deliberately destroying the country to make themselves a bit of cash.
Conservatives are all - without exception - junkies. Addicts. Criminal junkie addicts, who will steal all they can to sell off for a bit of cash for their fix, although in this case the fix is the cash.
> All arguments from leftists are just "we want to win" in disguise so are completely untrustworthy.
I don't understand how you can argue for an unbiased situation and then disregard the entire left side of the political spectrum. How can election results represent anything other than the will of the public?
I 100% support direct democracy but don't really see the point of having general election (i.e. electing representatives that then vote instead of you) ahead of schedule.
It's an extremely biased opinion, and I make no apologies.
I think every single living member of every Tory cabinet present and past should be strung up in Parliament Square. I'm not in any sense unclear about my views on them.
We have had twelve years of disastrous Tory austerity that has comprehensively destroyed the UK's economy. What's the plan? Let them keep trying until they get something right? How long is it supposed to take for their austerity policies to work, to get the economy back to a sensible state?
This viewpoint is both evil (literally wanting to kill people... like the "best" politicians of the 20th century! /s) and delusional (UK had approximately 0 GDP growth since 2010, like other main European countries - so I doubt it was Brexit or Tories)
Gordon Brown selling off our gold reserves wasn't the smartest move. But as you mention, the UK hasn't seen growth in our GDP since 2010. Which Party has been in power since May of 2010?
You seem to conveniently forget that Tories in parliament won him that vote. All the usual Tory rags (the Sun, Dailies Mail and Express and the Times) were all extremely hawkish, as we’re the leading Tories.
It's important to note that in the UK we do not vote for a PM we vote for an MP in the seat we live in.
I'm not a labour supporter, but I'd like to see a general election as it's obvious that the conservatives can't agree internally on a policy platform or candidate to lead. They are split between an authoritarian group and a libertarian group who don't want the same things at all.
Johnson lost due to repeatedly lying to parliament, plus a large number of unforced errors where he ended up having to perform U-Turns after choosing badly and then being forced to change by events. Covid was part of that, but far from the only part of that.
Ideally the UK should have a system of proportional representation, so that the bits of the different parties that actually agree on policies could form their own parties (Labour has similar split problems to the conservatives, but along different axis)
There's a difference between the running mate - the defacto deputy taking over in a foreseeable move and the nth choice person taking over after the two previous incumbents have been forced out.
That's a pretty patronising comment. Also, I think in practical terms that a lot of people do vote for the Prime Minister rather than their consituency MPs now, whatever the niceties of the UK poltical system are supposed to be.
I thought that people on HN didn't resort to ad hominem when they're being so visibly sanctimonious.
I know that, in theory at least, people vote for the party, not the leader. The Blair-Brown transition wasn't unprecedented, but equally morally and ethically questionable. The difference here is that the Tories, who currently have a significant majority, are in complete disarray and are clinging to power that, if the latest polls are to be believed, would see them all but wiped out.
Nor when May took over from Cameron, when Major took over from Thatcher, when Callaghan took over from Wilson, when Home took over from MacMillan, when Churchill took over from Chamberlain or when Chamberlain took over from Baldwin.
It's extremely common in British politics for the prime minister to change without calling a general election. In fact there were only two PMs in the entire 20th century (Heath and Attlee) who both entered and left the premiership as the result of an election.
Anyone who complains about "unelected PMs" needs to read more history.
Every time I think the USA is completely ruined, I remember how much worse the citizens of the UK have it. I remote worked for a London based CTO for years, with a science Phd, and to hear him discuss UK politics gave me an insight how effective propaganda and being immersed in a culture impacts one's judgement.
Rank choice and optional preferential voting have their own special tyranny. I just voted for a council election where I had to order at least 5 alderman out of 55 listed candidates. No parties, no voting guides. It was a lot of reading for me.
Right or wrong, it is fair to assume many will cast their vote without doing the reading in such a system. Speaking from a German perspective, I sometimes think how inefficient it is to count 60M votes - just counting 1M votes will give you the exact same result, iff you get the sampling right. What if we could choose a subset of 1% of citizens at random for every election (still far too many to directly bribe), giving them some pride in their responsibility, make sure they have some/better access to the candidates etc.. Again, if the sampling is sound, this won't change the outcome (other than the average voter being more motivated/informed). Of course, I see the problem that people will not feel represented if they, by chance, never get to vote in their whole life ...
Is there a way to guarantee that you "just get the sampling right?" Even if there is, is it possible to explain it to someone with a high school education such that they understand it?
Even if you could do both of those, will it hold up when the populist candidate loses and starts railing about how they have so much support, the best support, and the election was stolen from them by the elite-chosen sample?
Well I did vote and I did read all 55 pitches from the candidates. They only recently made the voting compulsory so that's going to make things interesting for all the people out there who don't do any reading and want to avoid the fine.
Yeah, parties do make that sort of thing a lot easier.
In Netherland we have elections for "waterschappen" ("water council"), apparently our oldest governmental body and responsible managing surface water, dikes, etc. So obviously very important in a country like this, but I have no idea what the actual issues involved are, and yet I have to vote for these people.
A weak executive would seem to reduce representation in government though?
As each member of parliament must necessarily represent the biggest groups in their constituencies.
So a decent size group scattered across many dozens of constituencies into relatively tiny groups would simply never get taken seriously without a strong executive.
No, you've got that exactly backwards. Parliament is the representation. Because of proportional representation, parliament represents all groups in the country, and not merely the majorities in each district.
You're right. Parliament represents only the entire electorate. And only really those opinions that are shared by enough people to be worth an entire seat. Still, it's far better representation than you get in a district system, where only local majorities of the electorate in each district are represented.
Uhm, what? I think UK politics is pretty sane actually. It has a lot of problems, but definitely not this almost civil-war-like type of language that you have in the USA. And although the UK is getting worse and worse, there are European countries that still have a worse political environment.
I'm not sure that just the force of rhetoric used is a good measure for how sane politics is.
You can be polite, and still be insane or evil (see: Brexit and all of the politicking and --from what I can tell-- outright lies that were sold to people). That whole process was mostly civil and polite, but not necessarily healthy.
The UK and US systems share a lot of similarities, which is not surprising considering the history, but UK politics seems better (or rather, less bad) to me? Both Boris and Truss were forced to resign by their own party, whereas the GOP's relationship with Trump is... well, different. Plus in spite of the first-past-the-post system there are actually candidates of alternative parties being voted in, even if we ignore the regional parties like SNP, DUP, etc. The Lib-Dems have a chequered history, but it's better than nothing.
> Boris and Truss were forced to resign by their own party, whereas the GOP's relationship with Trump is... well, different
Different in the sense that Trump remains extremely popular with Republican voters, independent of his actions. If Trump weren't so popular, his own party would have tossed him out long ago. They only grudgingly allowed him to become their leader in the first place because to oppose him meant almost certain defeat in their own next election.
I am from Brazil, at least you don't have "Electoral Judges" that will happily fuck with the elections and ignore constitution to make sure their preferred candidate win.
The Electoral Judges in Brazil, are censoring actual facts, because despite being facts, they consider it "misinformation", it go so bad that a former supreme court judge of ours got censored for explaining something technical... Despite the fact our constitution explicitly bans any form of censorship. (ironically, as defense against US... our constitution promotes free speech to prevent CIA from subverting the country again).
> at least you don't have "Electoral Judges" that will happily fuck with the elections and ignore constitution to make sure their preferred candidate win
Lets revisit this observation in 2024 when the next US Presidential election is held. Many localities have been electing people to oversee their local election process who are 2020 deniers, and who supported overturning Biden's win in order to keep Trump in office. I think 2024 could be interesting.
At this point, a general election would be the obviously correct solution. It's clear that the conservative party don't have a platform and can't agree major policy points amongst themselves.
However that would require conservative MPs to vote for it, which is the turkeys voting for Christmas so unlikely to happen, so I'd expect we'll have to wait till 2024 for that election.
The best likely outcome is that a set of senior people in the party agree a policy platform and try to steady things for now.