David Cameron loves grabbing the headlines. He has been out in the sun warning about a hung parliament and then:
Even in the age of anti-politics, the only way to defeat a Government is with a vote of no-confidence.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
In the future, if someone becomes Prime Minister in the middle of the parliament they must hold a general election within 6 months.Would Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas Home, Jim Callaghan or John Major have agreed to this? Gordon Brown nearly did, but that is another story.
Even in the age of anti-politics, the only way to defeat a Government is with a vote of no-confidence.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
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Your partiality leads to you making less sense day by day.
ReplyDeleteIt is evidently 'right' that the electorate should get a say on who the PM is - particularly if they vote in the expectation of one and then get another.
Silly comment and proves how little you know about how politics works.
ReplyDeleteWhat are you saying that at a time of war a Prime Minister should call an election.
No, what we're saying is that you seem to be so blinded by dislike of David Cameron that you can't see the wood for the trees.
ReplyDeleteIgnoring the Elvis impersonators, the "story" of today is either this or another Brown speech on what (he claims) the evil Tories would do. You're concentrating on this, as are many others. QED.
As you often say yourself, in other contexts, it's politics, stupid.
Alternatively, we could talk about more polls saying Labour is as low as 23%. But of course, that's far less interesting than having yet another pop at Cameron.
But I have commented on the polls and Labour's dreadful day. You just see what you want.
ReplyDeleteI actually think this is a good idea, although I would increase it to 12 months so that the appointed PM does not automatically go to the country in the honeymoon period. I would also add an exception if a party tells us up front that X will go and Y will take over midway through the parliament.
ReplyDeleteI also support fixed term parliaments so a party could change leaders in the last year of a parliament ready for the next election.
Politics have changed. Like it or not, our democracy is much more presidential than it used to be. A PM leading the country without a mandate cannot be good for democracy.
The people pick their government on the basis of a leader's personality and the party manifesto. Allowing them to change leader also means that they can throw out the manifesto commitments and lead the country in a totally different way than what the country voted for.
In 2005 we were told that Blair would govern for the whole parliament. Instead of Blair the reformer we got Brown the tax and spender. Did we really get what we voted for?
Say the Tories are elected under Cameron and switch to Ian Duncan Smith, who then takes the country out of Europe. Would this be OK with you?
I dont buy the point about 'time of war'. We are very unlikely to have to fight a real war (like WW2) ever again. Modern wars are in far away places and dont effect the day to day business of holding elections. After all, we had an election in 2005 when we were arguably fighting two wars at the time.