Several people suggested yesterday that I could not question Theresa May's legitimacy as UK prime minister because she had not stood for election in that role. Technically that is true, of course, although as an accountant I am always more interested in substance than form and the the reality is that we all know that prime ministers appointed by parties mid term lack the legitimacy of those with a general election mandate. We also know most go on to fail to secure that mandate (Brown, Callaghan, Hume), although there is a surprising post war exception in the form of John Major.
There is another point to consider though. Has anyone heard any more of the supposedly on-going investigation into Tory election fraud in 2015? It's coming on for two years now since the election and the last statement I can find was in April last year. These investigations involved enough seats to strip May of her majority and yet nothing seems to be happening. Is that a fraud in itself? And do we actually have a legitimate prime minister or government as a result, come to that?
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A timely reminder about that episode.
Never before do we need our institutions so much to get to the bottom of this issue. Yet where are they?
I agree that there has been a coup – but it happened in 2015 it seems.
Democracy is so precious and so vulnerable too. I want answers.
Of course, the UK’s ludicrous First Past the Post electoral system means that arguably one should question the legitimacy of *every* post-war government (except the 2010-15 Coalition) as all the others were elected on less than 50% of the popular vote and were, in that sense, minority governments (at least, I think that’s right… some of the 1940s and 1950s governments may have had close to 50% support as that was when the two-party duopoly was at its height).
I heard on Facebook that the authorities are saying they have lost all the files. But don’t know if it’s right or not.
I think that incredibly unlikely
I can’t help feeling that this will quietly disappear as the consequences are too serious to contemplate.
Memory of it is already disappearing, wrongly so in my opinion, which is why I mentioned it here yesterday.
The Tory election expenses scandal has strangely been ignored by the BBC. They even managed not to mention the numerous ongoing police investigations into the Tories when they covered the recent fining of the Lib Dems. They did, of course, find time to mention that Labour had been fined too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38234883
Well the Electoral Commission was far too busy investigating the Lib Dems for a probably genuine mistake (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/07/lib-dems-fined-20000-for-undeclared-election-spending) to bother with the Conservatives actual fraud. I did write and ask them but they haven’t bothered to answer!
Maybe someone with more clout could write and ask.
If Tony Blair’s biggest foreign policy disaster was the, what I and many others hold to have been the illegal, invasion of Iraq, clearly his biggest domestic failure was the failure to put the Jenkins Report to a referendum.
I have always viewed this action as both pusillanimous (Blair bottled it, and listened to Labour Party dinosaurs, such as John Prescott – usually sound, but not on this) and unconstitutional (no one Party, and certainly no one man, even if he were PM) had the right to make that decision – only the electorate had.
Blair would surely have won that referendum, and the elections from 2005 onwards would have been under Jenkins’s AV+ system.
This probably means Blair would have led a Lib-Lab Coalition in 2005 (though he actually won a 60 seat majority on just 21% of the total electorate – no wonder the Tories were angry, and probably then decided to throw the spanner in the works that they are in process of doing with gerrymandered boundaries and a stitched-up register with 50 less constituencies, so as to engineer permanent Tory rule).
However, it also means that the 2010 and 2015 results – typical examples of Gramsci’s “mutant forms” that come into existence in the period between one paradigm and another – would not have occurred, and instead we would have probably also had coalitions in both those elections, but very different ones from 2010, as there would have been a significant number of Green Party MP’s, who could have formed part of a truly progressive administration.
It is true, of course, that there would also have been a significant number of UKIP MPs, but that’s the price you pay for democracy, and besides, with such representation, UKIP might have found itself forced to behave in a more constructive manner, as compared with their current rabble-rousing and basically destructive mode.
And finally, a modification of Jenkins from 500 single-member constituencies to 250 two-member ones could have seen a male and female Party list in each, giving us a Parliament with gender balance, and 50% men and 50% women MPs.
Blair bottled it, and missed the chance to truly reshape the constitution for the good, and for the good of all. Profoundly depressing, given the current copy d’etat politics we are now experiencing.
Self interest ruled, yet again
What makes you think that the public would have backed AV+ in 2005, when they rejected AV in 2016 by 2 to 1?
Michael Crick of C4 News is the person whose been pursuing the Tory election expenses scandal (and he seems to have unearthed most of the evidence). I’ve just had a look at Michael’s C4 News profile but there’s no facility to email him. However, he is on Twitter. So, if someone who tweets (I don’t) want’s to tweet Michael perhaps he’ll tell us what’s going on or whether this story has been conveniently buried.
https://www.channel4.com/news/by/michael-crick
Let’s see….
To be technical it is Her Majesty who determines who is Prime Minister, and by convention this is the person who can command a majority in the House of Commons. In short, legal and legitimate. Whether this is actually the best way to go about determining who becomes the leading politician who runs the show is another matter.
That’s the game
I was questioning whether the rules have been followed
She is just as legitimate as Brown, Major, Callaghan, Douglas-Home, Macmillan, Churchill, Chamberlain, Baldwin, Lloyd George, Asquith, Balfour, and that’s just the 20th century. Surely a political economist does not need reminding that we have a Parliamentary Democracy in this country where Parliament decides* who the Prime Minister by virtue of the fact that the Prime Minister must be supported by the majority of members of Parliament.
*Yes, the Head of State appoints, but it is Parliament that decides, it’s pointless the Head of State appointing a Prime Minister who cannot get a majority vote from The House. As demonstrated by the ritual where the Head of State asks a prospective PM: “can you form a government?”
But was her government legitimately elected?
Did you read what I wrote?
Are you suggesting, then, all those named may have rigged the relevant elections too?
Labour were fined 20k almost strait away for over election spending this shows that the whole system is corrupt
It seems to me there truly are grounds to wonder about the legitimacy of Mrs May’s Prime Minister-ship on grounds that she wasn’t actually elected to be leader of the Conservatives, when David Cameron stood down, never mind standing as leader of the party at a general election: She merely assumed the role as the last one standing when all the other contenders dropped, or were pushed, out of the competition. Beyond that, there is cause to question the legitimacy of the Conservative government given its last electoral manifesto was to lead the country within Europe, whereas now, initiated by the meaningless ‘Brexit means Brexit’ interpretation of last year’s referendum result, the same party’s government is now seeking to lead the country into an isolationist position outside of Europe. Perhaps Cameron, instead of merely resigning in person, ought to have called a general election. Theresa May arguably should have done so in his stead, and still could. That she shows no sign of doing so does rather suggest she has little respect for democracy, despite all her bluster about having to honour the will of the people’s referendum preference.