David Jones MP has an excellent post (which I urge all to read) on the perils of ousting Brown early. He rightly points out that voters are gazing longingly across the ocean to the presidential elections in the USA, and wondering why we can’t elect our leaders in a similar fashion. Watching Brown rise to the post of Prime Minister without any ballot (in Jones’ words “in a process so arcane as to rival the puff of white smoke from the Vatican chimney”) left many of us with bitter tastes in our mouths, I’m sure. The reasons behind this particular peculiarity of our system strikes to the heart of the British form of democratic government. The reason we don’t elect Prime Ministers is because the Prime Minister is not the head of state; the position wasn’t intended to wield the power and status which, following the scaling back of regal influence, it has achieved. We elect parties, they elect prime ministers.
The electorate recognise that despite the (unwritten) constitution, the Prime Minister is functionally the head of state, and they want a say in who they have leading the country. Moreover, the process of ‘men in grey suits’ deciding who takes a position of such authority is plainly undemocratic. The party system allows us to choose a manifesto for the country, but the differences between Blair and Brown have clearly demonstrated how manifesto maketh not management.
So how do we bridge this gap between tradition, constitution and the will of the electorate? I shall tell you how: I would suggest an ‘open leadership election’ be brought in. When a party is in opposition, it may choose whichever leader it thinks best, by whatever system it feels most appropriate. This could continue to take the form of a ballot of party members. When that party becomes the government, however, leadership changes should be put to an open vote, where any citizen of the United Kingdom may place their vote – in essence a Prime Ministerial election.
The idea is a simple but powerful one, and doesn’t require any changing of any constitution or a new act to be passed, it is a simply the case of an alteration to the rules of selection by the various parties. By making this change, we would be accepting that the selection of Prime Minister is more important that of the other ministers. We would be preventing the kind of corrupt intimidation that brought Gordon Brown unchallenged into power. We would be bringing direct democracy, for the first time in our nation’s history, to the most important position in the ruling of that nation – while retaining the party system that has served us so well for so many years.
Personally, I would urge David Cameron to commit to this. The first party to take such a stand for democracy would undoubtedly be met with great good will. It serve as a promise – that a Prime Minister with no electoral mandate would never again be the head of a Conservative government. That they believed in letting the people choose those who have control of their collective destiny.
A bit of a hole in your argument to deal with first: officially, we elect MPs, not parties. The party with the largest number of MPs is asked to form a government, yadayadayada. Thus, we have the situation, as now, where the leader of the majority party is automatically the PM, and the election of the leader is nowt to do with the national electorate. Cute.
Given that, I contend it would need an Act to force a General Election if there was a change in the leadership of the government. God knows, I’ve asked several times on Lords Of The Blog how we can legally overturn an elected gvt. Never did get a reply – dangerous stuff, y’know.
There are so few registered members of parties nowadays (Reasons? Let me count the ways…) and this causes me to worry about the election of leaders, especially in the Labour party saddled with the union block votes.
The Gordon Brown anointment was perverse and the unions are making hay. Nobody wants him: just how low does he want to see his personal ratings go before he is forcibly sectioned? Seriously.
The bar to trigger a Labour leadership contest has been set high, yet I suspect this will happen before the autumn conference. Meanwhile, I am suffering, and I’m not alone.
To return to your idea, there is more than a hint of presidential over party aspirations within. It has merit, though, while the electorate insist on purveying the entire parliament based on the PM. Personally, I would prefer the entire electorate to purvey their MP, thereby giving more power to the MP and his/her constituents.
Tizzy
July 28, 2008 at 8:29 pm