I can’t get over how insane it is that the sitting party gets to look at their polling numbers and decide if it’s a good time to have an election or not. I get why they are so insistent on keeping the monarchy because the rest of the system is kept together by tape and random bits of string
Somewhat true, but there’s lots of parliamentary systems that were never under British rule. Nobody has followed the US’s weird system. Not even ones where the US had a direct hand in setting up the democratic government, like Iraq.
The weird system of… predictable elections? Because that’s what we’re talking about. You can have predictable elections with a parliamentary system.
And any government is only as good as the people in it, as we can see from Brexit. They threw away their future because of a non-binding vote, which was very close and done only once.
Weird in having a whole bunch of compromises between big and small states, and separating the power of the executive and legislature. Countries looked at both of those and picked the one that’s more chaotic, but less clumsy.
There’s no reason why the current government should be able to pick the date of the election. What’s the reason behind that besides “The Prime Minister wants it that way”?
I dunno, with the American system you have like 2 year long campaigning cycle for president. There’s almost no break and it’s exhausting. In Canada when an election is called the campaign is only about 6 weeks give or take a week.
Also, if the government becomes dysfunctional, it can be dissolved and a new government elected. The US system doesn’t allow for that flexibility.
If your campaign is only 6 weeks, you have to be campaigning all the time too. Do you think people just say “oh there’s an election in 6 weeks? Maybe I’ll run for office!”? They have to have everything ready to go immediately. All politicians are campaigning all the time.
Parliament can always dissolve itself and call an election, and it’s an important mechanism for getting rid of the government.
The problem is that the prime minister also has a majority in parliament, and that means he can make parliament dissolve itself when he likes.
This was actually a problem for Johnson. Initially, he didn’t have enough of a majority and it wasn’t clear he could call an election without Corbyn’s support.
“Ha ha, that person who’s been literally saying ‘prepare like the election could be announced tomorrow’ for months was completely caught out by our guy standing in the pissing rain (despite having somewhere indoors they could make the announcement) announcing an election! Huzzah!!”
It’s a corrupt convention but it wasn’t always the case. An important reform by the 2010-15 coalition government was the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, which took this incredibly important decision out of the prime minister’s partisan hands and have elections on a predictable 5 year cycle (barring the government falling or a supermajority for early elections).
After Boris Johnson won the 2019 election though, he set about dismantling checks and balances such as this. He also changed the electoral system for mayoral elections to First Past the Post (with no consultation or referendum - which the Tories have always insisted was needed to change the electoral system away from FPTP…) because FPTP tends to favour Tories.
Wait? Is the current political leader allowed to just change how votes are counted for the next election?! Is this why the Wikipedia article for how election in England work is just incomprehensible garbage?
Everything is eventually decided by the majority of votes in the house of commons. Even if you put a law in saying that the pm can’t do this without a 80% vote, that law itself could be repealed with a 50% vote.
Theoretically it would only require a 50% vote to remove elections or something crazy. (Although in practice that might not get past the king who technically has the final say)
There is no formal constitution that has more protection like in some countries.
Can’t they create a law which says that the PM cannot do something without 80% of the votes and that the law itself requires the same amount of votes to be modified or superseded in any way?
It’s been a while since my politics A level, so I may get some of the terms wrong but hopefully the facts right.
As the UK doesn’t have a formal constitution, it relies on convention and that parliament is effectively all powerful (under the crown) in that if parliament (encompassing both houses in this context) votes for something it can do it. (As it represents the will of the people and has the authority of the crown (less relevant in the modern day))
Parliament can’t therefore lock a decision in such a way that a future parliament can’t change because the future parliament is still all powerful.
In practice though this isn’t entirely the case. You can make a law like you said, and while a future parliament can break it, it would (probably) look bad on them. But what does that do to stop politicians?
A further note on the previous chain - we go have two houses of parliament; the house of commons is the main one with the green benches that most will recognise. It has our elected representatives (MPs) in and (normally) where the PM is selected from.
The house of lords (red benches, appointed members for life) is generally considered the check chamber. It used to be able to block laws entirely, but I believe lost that power semi recently and it can now be overruled by the commons after 2/3 rejections.
A similar problem occurs when accessing legislative or parliamentary sovereignty, which holds a specific legal institution to be omnipotent in legal power, and in particular such an institution’s ability to regulate itself.
And tbh, a parliament which cannot regulate itself is a fairly powerless parliament.
All of our constitutional law takes the form of Acts of Parliament that can be amended or repealed with a 50%+1 vote in Parliament - unlike most countries where the constitution sits above the parliament and changing it requires a supermajority and/or a referendum. Boris had a majority so he could change the constitution. It’s a totally messed up system.
One reason British liberals as so passionate about internationalism and the European Union is that international treaties and EU law are some of the few mechanisms we have had for constraining executive overreach, since they sit outside and above Parliament’s remit. For example, even if Parliament were to repeal the Human Rights Act, Britain remains a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (which is why some Tories now talk about withdrawing from this too). Without international safeguards external to the UK, in theory all that stands between Britain and despotism is a simple majority vote in Parliament.
I can’t get over how insane it is that the sitting party gets to look at their polling numbers and decide if it’s a good time to have an election or not. I get why they are so insistent on keeping the monarchy because the rest of the system is kept together by tape and random bits of string
It’s not just the UK, it’s actually quite common wordwide.
Isn’t that because it was spread by the British in the first place?
Somewhat true, but there’s lots of parliamentary systems that were never under British rule. Nobody has followed the US’s weird system. Not even ones where the US had a direct hand in setting up the democratic government, like Iraq.
The weird system of… predictable elections? Because that’s what we’re talking about. You can have predictable elections with a parliamentary system.
And any government is only as good as the people in it, as we can see from Brexit. They threw away their future because of a non-binding vote, which was very close and done only once.
Weird in having a whole bunch of compromises between big and small states, and separating the power of the executive and legislature. Countries looked at both of those and picked the one that’s more chaotic, but less clumsy.
There’s no reason why the current government should be able to pick the date of the election. What’s the reason behind that besides “The Prime Minister wants it that way”?
I dunno, with the American system you have like 2 year long campaigning cycle for president. There’s almost no break and it’s exhausting. In Canada when an election is called the campaign is only about 6 weeks give or take a week.
Also, if the government becomes dysfunctional, it can be dissolved and a new government elected. The US system doesn’t allow for that flexibility.
If your campaign is only 6 weeks, you have to be campaigning all the time too. Do you think people just say “oh there’s an election in 6 weeks? Maybe I’ll run for office!”? They have to have everything ready to go immediately. All politicians are campaigning all the time.
It’s a consequence of parliamentary sovereignty.
Parliament can always dissolve itself and call an election, and it’s an important mechanism for getting rid of the government.
The problem is that the prime minister also has a majority in parliament, and that means he can make parliament dissolve itself when he likes.
This was actually a problem for Johnson. Initially, he didn’t have enough of a majority and it wasn’t clear he could call an election without Corbyn’s support.
So is dictatorships.
I’m just like a dictatorship we also know the outcome of this election before it’s even announced.
The guardian were saying that they decided “this was the best they’re going to get”
The Sun had something like Rishi picks his moment and “it caught starmer on the hop!”
“Ha ha, that person who’s been literally saying ‘prepare like the election could be announced tomorrow’ for months was completely caught out by our guy standing in the pissing rain (despite having somewhere indoors they could make the announcement) announcing an election! Huzzah!!”
It’s a corrupt convention but it wasn’t always the case. An important reform by the 2010-15 coalition government was the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, which took this incredibly important decision out of the prime minister’s partisan hands and have elections on a predictable 5 year cycle (barring the government falling or a supermajority for early elections).
After Boris Johnson won the 2019 election though, he set about dismantling checks and balances such as this. He also changed the electoral system for mayoral elections to First Past the Post (with no consultation or referendum - which the Tories have always insisted was needed to change the electoral system away from FPTP…) because FPTP tends to favour Tories.
Wait? Is the current political leader allowed to just change how votes are counted for the next election?! Is this why the Wikipedia article for how election in England work is just incomprehensible garbage?
Everything is eventually decided by the majority of votes in the house of commons. Even if you put a law in saying that the pm can’t do this without a 80% vote, that law itself could be repealed with a 50% vote.
Theoretically it would only require a 50% vote to remove elections or something crazy. (Although in practice that might not get past the king who technically has the final say)
There is no formal constitution that has more protection like in some countries.
Can’t they create a law which says that the PM cannot do something without 80% of the votes and that the law itself requires the same amount of votes to be modified or superseded in any way?
It’s been a while since my politics A level, so I may get some of the terms wrong but hopefully the facts right.
As the UK doesn’t have a formal constitution, it relies on convention and that parliament is effectively all powerful (under the crown) in that if parliament (encompassing both houses in this context) votes for something it can do it. (As it represents the will of the people and has the authority of the crown (less relevant in the modern day))
Parliament can’t therefore lock a decision in such a way that a future parliament can’t change because the future parliament is still all powerful.
In practice though this isn’t entirely the case. You can make a law like you said, and while a future parliament can break it, it would (probably) look bad on them. But what does that do to stop politicians?
A further note on the previous chain - we go have two houses of parliament; the house of commons is the main one with the green benches that most will recognise. It has our elected representatives (MPs) in and (normally) where the PM is selected from.
The house of lords (red benches, appointed members for life) is generally considered the check chamber. It used to be able to block laws entirely, but I believe lost that power semi recently and it can now be overruled by the commons after 2/3 rejections.
But then parliament isn’t all powerful, is it? See the omnipotence paradox:
And tbh, a parliament which cannot regulate itself is a fairly powerless parliament.
Holy shit, no wonder the empire is fucking dying.
All of our constitutional law takes the form of Acts of Parliament that can be amended or repealed with a 50%+1 vote in Parliament - unlike most countries where the constitution sits above the parliament and changing it requires a supermajority and/or a referendum. Boris had a majority so he could change the constitution. It’s a totally messed up system.
One reason British liberals as so passionate about internationalism and the European Union is that international treaties and EU law are some of the few mechanisms we have had for constraining executive overreach, since they sit outside and above Parliament’s remit. For example, even if Parliament were to repeal the Human Rights Act, Britain remains a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (which is why some Tories now talk about withdrawing from this too). Without international safeguards external to the UK, in theory all that stands between Britain and despotism is a simple majority vote in Parliament.