IdleRich
IdleRich
It's funny that there have been several times over the last ten or fifteen years where the party in power switches leader and thus the country gets a new prime minister who has never won a general election. And whenever that happens the other party makes a huge thing about how the country has had a new PM undemocratically foisted on them, while the party that did it points to the fact that we have a parliamentary system in which we all vote for our local MP (and their party) and the party with the most votes forms a government and so on, in other words, we don't vote for the leader cos we don't have a presidential system and so it was the Tories who won the election and who are in power and that doesn't change if the leader is Johnson or Truss or whoever.
For what it's worth, I tend to think that the second position is probably the correct one - although, there is a case to be made that loads of people didn't understand that and really did cast their vote for "Boris" rather thsan whoever their local MP was (if they even knew) - but my main point isn't which is correct but how shamelessly MPs change their position on this issue depending on which argument benefits them. I find it one of the things which is most illustrative of how little those involved in parliamentary politics care about what is actually wrong or right.
Almost the same thing comes up when an MP crosses the floor and defects to another party. In that case the party who has lost an MP almost invariably says that there should be a by-election, and I have to say that in that instance they are probably within their rights to do so. I would be pretty pissed off if I voted for - let's say - the BNP candidate and he won, but then a bit later he said "I've stopped being racist and I actually think immigration is a good thing, I'm gonna join the Lib Dems and campaign to re-join the EU". It would feel as though he won under false pretences and saying "you voted for me to be your MP regardless of my party" wouldn't really wash.
For what it's worth, I tend to think that the second position is probably the correct one - although, there is a case to be made that loads of people didn't understand that and really did cast their vote for "Boris" rather thsan whoever their local MP was (if they even knew) - but my main point isn't which is correct but how shamelessly MPs change their position on this issue depending on which argument benefits them. I find it one of the things which is most illustrative of how little those involved in parliamentary politics care about what is actually wrong or right.
Almost the same thing comes up when an MP crosses the floor and defects to another party. In that case the party who has lost an MP almost invariably says that there should be a by-election, and I have to say that in that instance they are probably within their rights to do so. I would be pretty pissed off if I voted for - let's say - the BNP candidate and he won, but then a bit later he said "I've stopped being racist and I actually think immigration is a good thing, I'm gonna join the Lib Dems and campaign to re-join the EU". It would feel as though he won under false pretences and saying "you voted for me to be your MP regardless of my party" wouldn't really wash.
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