Can a new prime minister take office without a general election?

[AgentKim]

Erm shouldn't we have a general election to vote in a new prime minister as no one voted for Andy Burnham to be in charge.
How is that allowed.
Im sure people voted for Labour because they wanted Kier Starmer to be prime minister. Where did Andy Burnham come from all of sudden.
Can anyone in the government in power be prime minister without a general election.

The OP rather bought it on themselves by trying to kick back with the amusing (if true) factoid that they have supposedly been voting since (checks notes) 1964 when the voting age was 21.

Making them at least 83 years old. So presumably they have seen the A bomb. The birth of the NHS, the rise and fall of the Berlin wall, the fall of communism and Ultravox missing out on #1, without really noticing any of it ?

Not a certainty but OP has reacted with fury, as if her question was an obscure one rather than a basic one.

Remember Boris, Rish, Liz Truss etc . All were not voted for at a general election

Not quite. You vote for the candidate in your constituency that you feel will best represent you.

These usually, but not always affiliate to a political party, if that party bests represents their morals, values, and political ideals.

The party with the largest number of elected MPs form a government. The person they have chosen to lead them will then become PM.

This is why MPs can cross the floor without a by-election (I think this should trigger a by-election but that isn't the system).

Have a quick Google. Or ask ChatGPT. Your thread does make you seem a bit dim

I’m not here to check on the veracity of peoples personal voting records. I’m making the point that plenty of people in this country are in the same situation, be as glib as you like, it doesn’t make it less true or help things at all. In fact sneering is the opposite of helping.

I think I agree. The constituency next door to me had two MPs change sides a few years apart, and despite one of the crossings being in 'my' direction I always felt there should have been a by-election as the parties had very different stances on many issues. I felt less strongly about the MP who became independant.

I'm amazed you think there ever was civic literacy in this country. I am 65 and when I was growing up politics was fairly tribal. Many people grew up in a Labour or Tory family/community and always voted accordingly. A few people voted Liberal because they were free thinkers or it was the dominant party in their area or they particularly liked the MP. There weren't many other options if you lived in England. Obviously it was different in the other countries of the UK. I strongly suspect if you'd interrogated many voters about the specific policies of the party they voted for they'd have been a bit surprised and taken aback by some of them.

Having said that, it's depressing that political knowledge is so poor now when the internet should make it easier than at any point in human history to find out basic facts.

Oh come on nobody believes that an 83 year old (at minimum) is on mumsnet responding to posts with language like “oh for fuck’s sake” do they?

And no there is 0 excuse for not knowing that you’re not voting for the prime minister when you vote. The answer is there the minute you walk into the poling booth and put your cross against the name of the candidate you are voting for. Unless you live in the constituency of the leader of a party, then nowhere does the potential prime minister’s name even appear on a ballot paper.

So the only assumption we can make about people who claim to not know that when you vote you don’t vote for the prime minister, is that they don’t actually vote, they just stick a cross in a box without paying attention to any of it.

Pardon? I didn’t say 100% did I? I said it was higher in the past. According to the way you phrased your comment you’re suggesting there’s none now. It’s levels isn’t it? And it has dropped, no doubt. You’ll never get a country with 100% civic literacy - which also extends beyond politics of course.

The internet is also full of nonsense isn’t it - you need to have nous to navigate it - lots of people
think Andrew Tate has legitimate political comments to make…

OP is at least 70.

In the UK you don’t vote for the prime minister. Unless they’re your MP, you would never have ever voted for them.

UK votes for party and party policies not leader. If you have been voting for the PM you have been voting wrong.

OP said on another thread she was 71 @Never2many . Where did the 83 come from?

If you don't want snide replies, try Googling before posting something ignorant. I'm not sure how you've got to adulthood without understanding something so basic but clearly you did, so maybe make an effort to educate yourself.

Where did you get 83 from? Someone who is 83 in 2026 would be born in 1942 or 1943. Harold Wilson became Prime Minister for the first time in 1964, but he was re-elected in 1966 and twice in 1974 (I was 13 then and just starting to pay attention to politics - that was an exciting year). Youngest OP could be would therefore be 18 on 10th October 1974, so 70 now. I can confirm from personal experience that many people of that age have been known to say 'Oh for fuck's sake'.

I never said anything about 100%. Given how poor functional literacy has been in the past, and how low the school leaving age used to be, and how little was expected of most children who didn't pass the 11+ or come from affluent families, I'm expressing scepticism about how well-informed they were. Some were undoubtedly very well-versed in politics, because they were active in the union movement, or found politics interesting, or came from a political family. Those people are in a minority now and I think they always were.

OP, please don’t vote in any future elections.

If you made your tick next to Keir Starmers name then I understand why you’d be unhappy now, but I’m 99.9% sure that your tick was next to a box that said Labour and you still have a Labour government. If you thought that you’d have any say who the Labour Party nominates as Prime Minister then you’re not well informed on politics.

You're plenty old enough to have worked this out by now, then.

This question comes up loads on SM from mainly reform voters. They're very confident in their sound bites of 'unelected PM'.

Yawn

Yes, the majority party can choose the prime minister, you vote for an MP not a prime minister although you may like or not the person who will become prime minister if that party is elected. The prime minister is elected by the party not the electorate, well as you say one constituency will vote for the prime minister but that is fairly irrelevant.

The general.public don't get to vote directly for the country:s prime minister. By convention it's the leader of the party that gets the most seats in parliament.
So if the winning party changes their leader then we get a new prime minister chosen in accordance with that party's rules.

That's why Zak Polanski standing as a candidate as he is in the unusual position of being a party leader but without being am MP. So he is standing in the parliamentary by selection triggered by Sir Keir Starmer standing g down as MP.

@AgentKim And what happened when Harold Wilson resigned when he was PM in the 70s? Were you asleep? Do you remember James Callaghan? How did he become pm? 5th April 1976 - Does that jog your memory?