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

We need Proportional Representation.

It would be a total mess if we got to vote for a PM. Imagine that we had voted for Boris three years ago - how would we get rid of him? The Tory party couldn't kick him out because we voted for him, so the only option would be to vote to dissolve Parliament. Don't you think that the Cons would rather continue on with Boris rather than take the chance of losing a General Election (like turkeys voting for Christmas)?

If we got a vote on who becomes PM, then if/when Labour win the next election could we vote for Rishi Sunak, Ed Davey, Nicola Sturgeon or even Nigel Farage to be PM instead of Keir Starmer?

If you think that sounds ridiculous then imagine the situation from 2010 if the LibDems had refused to work with the Cons, but chose to work with Labour instead. To have a majority they would need 322 seats (excludes Sinn Fein and The Speaker) and Labour(258) + LibDems(57) + SNP(6) have a total of 321 and are still short of a working majority.

Surely to vote for Nicola Sturgeon to be PM, she’d have to be an MP?

No. I think that would be a terrible idea. Firstly, it's a parliamentary democracy, so that's just not how it works. And secondly, the oppositional parties and their supporters could mobilise to ensure you had a lame and easily won duck at the helm. That wouldn't be great would it? Every single leader of every single party would end up shitter than they are right now. 😱

The Prime Minister does not have to be an MP.

No and I suggest you read up on the British political system.

I wish the system was different.

We don't technically vote for the PM as we vote for our MP.

Yet at the same time we do vote for the party which leaves us really open because they put someone in and we all know they have centric leaders and then we get far right and left.

My local Tory MP who is brilliant and did so much retired. I always voted him.

But we end up with Suella as constituency MP 🤮

I think right now people have genuine concerns we are moving from a proven liar with no morals who was a more centric PM to the party choosing someone really far right because of the influence of doners and the ERG.

Just because things are a certain way doesn't mean that way is perfect, though.

Yet at the same time we do vote for the party
No you don't @itsgettingweird
You vote for the person, not the party.

There should be a multiple choice test on the electoral system before people get the vote. It's clear that most people don't understand it. Maybe if they did, they'd want to change it.

OK, I've taken in the various comments (including responses to my posts) but here's where I stand.

Although strictly speaking a vote in an election is a vote for one's local MP, I think it's impossible to divorce this from the higher outcome (in the case of a general election) of which party gets to run the country as a whole. For that reason I always vote as if I was voting for which party gets in overall. (There's a principle involved here imo, as well as the obvious practicalities.)

Secondly, the reason I'm uncomfortable with only Tories getting to vote for who the next prime minister will be is that that person could take policy in a direction that non-Tories are not happy with, and we (I'm not a Tory) then will have had zero say in how the country is to be run going forward. To give an example, if the person elected is riding on a ticket of further benefit cuts or more draconian measures around immigration, they're pitching that into an echo chamber of people who are, logically speaking, more likely to agree with those measures than individuals who don't support Tory policy. This is dangerous imho, and could take the country in a direction many people would not want to see.

I'd actually argue that most of the people in this thread arguing the system is fine as it is are probably saying so because they vote Tory themselves and are likely to get a result they more or less approve of as a result (though, obviously, feel free to correct me if I am wrong). It's the only reason I can think of why what I consider a glaring inequity is being touted as perfectly OK.

For this reason, as far as I'm concerned, resignation of a Prime Minister should always trigger a general election. Anything else is undemocratic.

For Nicola Sturgeon to be come PM we'd all need to be smoking some seriously impressive drugs simultaneously

The reason it feels wrong is that the Tory party members are not representative of the Tory party voters , never mind the el citrate as a whole.They are , as a whole and clearly not individually , from a fringe of the party .

I think it is for the members of the political party to elect their leader, but when that party is in power at the tome of the change the new leader's election should be swiftly followed by a general election so the country get a say on the direction the governing party is taking under new leadership.

Time of the change...

Since Brexit I don’t think the British public can be trusted to vote for anything - especially when human dog turds like Farage can so easily influence a vote with their jingoistic, racist rhetoric so no, I don’t think we should vote for the next PM.

I don't know why so many people feel the need to 'explain' to the OP that 'that's not how our system works'. She knows that. That's why she's asking if hypothetically it ought to be.

But even hypothetically, OP, it's probably a bad idea. I hate that a small number of highly biased people will choose this PM rather than the electorate as a whole knowing what PM we will get depending on how we all vote in general election, but if the likes of you and me were to be able to vote on the Tory leadership now, presidential-stylee, I would vote for whoever I thought would be the crappest, because I desperately want this government to fall at the earliest opportunity. So your thought experiment is flawed in that it fails to allow for disruptors like me.

Very hard to say who would be the crappest, of course, but at the moment I feel quietly confident the Tory membership won't let me down. 😉

And yet here we are with the tories, so clearly that ship has well sailed.

No. YABU

The Tory MPs were elected on a manifesto. If the new leader does stuff that is not in their manifesto, then that breaks a promise They are doing stuff that they were not elected to do and they can't say they have public support for it.

I get that Covid was different - but taxation views, schools, NHS, etc - what was in their manifesto?

We don't vote for a Prime Minister - but the MPs stand on a manifesto. A manifesto shouldn't be changed once you get in power.

Agree with this. It might not be how our current system works, but I very much doubt everyone votes according to their local MP. People do vote strategically for a specific party and leader. I don't think we get anything positive out of our current system and the past few years have proven that.

John major won an election and then lost an election.

John major won an election and then lost an election.

But he didn't become PM in that way, which is what PP said.

Nope, the public are dreadful judges.we get carried away if we like someone and go with the herd. Remember Vince Cable? He was going to be fantastic when his party finally got some power and he did nothing much. Kier Starmer was the Next Big Thing except he wasn't. As was Jeremy Corbyn. There are people who think the Tories only got in last time because people liked Boris. I have read threads on here this week about both Ed Balls and Andy Burham both being Labour leaders without much more than the posters liked them. At least the members of the party have some knowledge of the candidates.

The mandate the Government has is for the promises made in the Conservatives Manifesto in 2019 and whoever the leader of the Tory Party is they have to abide by that Manifesto.

No tax rises ?