Should the UK public be able to vote on who is the next PM?

[curiousitygotthebetterofme]

I think we should be able to. At the end of the day, whoever it will be, will be in charge of our entire country so why should we not get a say in it?

YABU - no. We shouldn’t be able to vote on who the PM is

YANBU - yes that would be a good idea

When I hear people say this, I always think of the George Carlin quote about intelligence:

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realise half of them are stupider than that."

Democracy is the least worst solution, so let's not make it even worse.

We should all be able to vote in a leadership election when the winner will be PM, after all their policies will affect all of us.

@AffIt I’m not suggesting that we should do it, I think it’s a terrible idea. I think it is right that party members are able to select their own leader without that being sabotaged by others.

It is essentially what the OP is suggesting though. She should get a say in another parties leader because she doesn’t like some of the options.

We should all be able to vote in a leadership election when the winner will be PM, after all their policies will affect all of us.

Well campaign for a presidential system then.

If we have a general election and Labour win, no one other than his constituency and Labour members have voted for him either.

Ah, fair enough.

I do actually like it when these conversations come up in public, though, because I think there are actually a lot of people (not you, obviously!) out there who genuinely believe that you 'vote for the PM' as though we had a presidential system in the UK, and then get arsey when that's clearly not the case.

You can though, just need to join th conservative party...

Because they don't run the country. They lead a party which implements a
manifesto agreed to and voted for by us.

They're administrators, not leaders. We lead ourselves, we are an independent free people with self determination.

We just can't manage a huge pension scheme or education system as it requires managing large teams and organisation, lots of admin, that falls on them.

🤣

If we'd voted for a solitary head of the executive, like a president, then no-one would be able to remove him.

Even though there would be a theoretical mechanism, in the US the republicans didn't remove Trump for much worse because they would lose control of the executive.

Boris would also have had much greater power over things like the police, army, taxes etc.

Given how much corruption he achieved as part of cabinet government I dread to think what he might have pulled off as Commander in Chief.

You wouldn't get a vote if you joined now, would you?

Errr. No.

Your vote does not count towards a party. It's for an individual.

No. Definitely not. We know almost nothing about 80% of the candidates. The vote is on who will do the job properly and lead well. Most of us have no idea what goes on behind the scenes and what constitutes a good leader. They will have to unite the party, bring new direction and the wind of change and to do that, they will need to be pretty impressive and with an iron will.

Liz Truss said the party has “lost its sense of self” and I think she has hit the nail on the head. Who are the Tories, post Brexit and Post Covid? What do they stand for? Which direction do they want to go in?

I sincerely hope the vote will be based on the above factors and not cronyism.

Of course the scandals of the last couple of years will be in mind when they vote.

Do I feel qualified to decide something of this magnitude based on the couple of soundbites I’ve heard over the last few days? Absolutely not.

No, the cut off was being a member early July.

Labour now has an earlier cut off too than before for theirs.

YABU. The PM is not ‘in charge of the whole country’. The PM gets to form a government, which, within all the other checks and balances of our legislative and judicial system, runs the country.

It’s actually really, really rare for a British PM to enter and exit the office through a general election. I believe the most recent was Edward Heath (elected in 1970, before being voted out in 1974).

I agree. Those saying it isn't how it works here are missing the point of your question really. It is always the poor that are left behind and the fact the next PM relies on the decision of people who pay into it is another example of it. Many of those are rich and policies are made to keep those people happy

So you think we should have a presidential system instead? Once upon a time I may have agreed with you, but then there was Trump.

If the poor turned out to vote they could make a difference. There's a 23% difference in turnout between the richest and the poorest sections of society.

But personally, I'd like to see electoral reform and ditch the FPTP system. I don't want a presidential system, but I want a system where every vote has equal status regardless of how your neighbours vote. If you live in a safe seat with a sizeable majority, your vote should not be ignored just because you favour the less-popular-locally option.

And whilst we're about it, change the architecture. Having two sides facing off just far enough apart to prevent a sword fight only encourages the boorishness.

It’s telling that the Tories, who are the biggest defenders of FPTP, don’t even consider it fit for their leadership contest.

The tide is turning, it looks like the Unions will try to push Labour towards Electoral Reform in the Autumn and the Lib Dems and SNP are already pro-ER. Unfortunately Labour are determined to take two steps back for every step forward in terms of electability. If, as has been rumoured on Twitter this evening, Starmer is going to announce a policy of divergence from EU regulatory standards he's going to lose a lot of support from the centre-left.

The Tories have the most to lose from ER. They benefit massively from FPTP and the current constituency boundaries, and are the most likely to fracture in the event of proportional representation.

So if our political system was like that of the US, we would have Boris as our president rather than Prime Minister?

I find this interesting. What would happen to the Royal Family? As I’m assuming BJ would be head of state as well.

and what would happen in regards to the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland?

Islington North, or Hackney?

So if our political system was like that of the US, we would have Boris as our president rather than Prime Minister?

Not necessarily. If we had a US-style presidential system everything would be different. Boris became PM under the current UK system, under a different system the outcome may be completely different.

Under a proportional representative system, and using the 2019 election result, we'd possibly have had Corbyn as Prime Minister of a Labour-Lib-SNP coalition. But, under a different system would everyone have voted the same way?

If we had a system like the US, the Queen & the Royals would be redundant because President Boris, or whoever, would be head of state. He would also be head of the UK government, as he is now. He would not, however, be responsible for passing new laws & changing existing laws, because legislating would still be Parliament’s role, just as it is Congress’s role in the US.

Scotland, Wales & NI would still have their own governments, just as each individual state does in the US, which is why abortion is being banned in some states but will continue to be available in others.

Alternatively, we could have a system in which the monarchy was replaced by an elected figurehead President with a mainly ceremonial role as head of state, and a PM who is head of the government and controls the legislature as Boris is under the current system. This is how they do it in Germany & Ireland.

There wasn’t even a leadership challenge when Gordon Brown took over. At least these 5 have to fight for it a bit. Gordon Brown was pretty much handed the keys to number 10.