British PM ignores petition by citizens with 2+M signatures calling for general election.
(twitter.com)
🧠 These people are STUPID!
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Well, just playing devil's avocado here.
He's right; that's not how their system works. They have an election, the party with the majority gets to choose their leader who becomes PM. The parliament needs to go with a vote of no-confidence to dissolve parliament and then the PM HAS to call an election.
The population of UK is around 68 mil, with perhaps around 50 mil (?) adults, not counting illegal immigrants.
A petition of 2 mil+ is a very powerful message from the public, but it's not enough for the PM to go, dayum, "they hate my guts, I'd better call an election." We know already that these people are not in there in order to serve the People anyway.
Falling support within Parliament, plus added pressure from the population in the form of such petitions and other public efforts, these can all add to force the PM's hand, but a petition alone isn't it.
Imagine if Farage got elected as PM, and some Marxist decided to put up a petition calling for a general election, and got 2 million votes. Would you expect that Farage would or should then call a general election?
Don't get upset that the system is being used by the corrupt, and don't complain when someone correctly says "that's not how system works". Righteous Americans know that the USA is NOT a democracy; it's a republic. A petition of 2 million pushing a PM to call a general election is democracy.
Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but we have to ask ourselves if we would support or approve this if the situation were reversed. If Farage or other Trumplian figure were PM of the UK, and an online petition calling for him to resign (ie. call a general election), would you support it? because "that is how the system works"?
I would not.
HOWEVER, there are places where there IS such a system is in place? Yes. In the USA, there are (apparently) 19 states that allow recall elections. So if a state official is screwing up bigtime (or is blatantly corrupt) the 'system' is set up to allow citizens to remove such elected officials.
(Note: of course, if the election system itself has been undermined and corrupted, this negates the effectiveness of such a system. Wasn't Newsom voted to be removed, but they rigged the 'recall election'?)
Apparently, Switzerland also has such a system in place, where citizens can actually vote on policies and proposals by their elected officials.
The system of recall elections should become an inbuilt part of all representative democratic system (i.e. people vote for representatives to govern on their behalf).
Britain doesn't have it.
Just remember, it took DJT and the White Hats 8+ years to build a large enough majority in the US to overwhelm the corrupt system to reclaim authority UNDER the system itself (which we now expect them to begin to dismantle and detoxify). It's going to take time for this wave to impact on other nations.
Even though it is not "how the system works" (the UK PM is actually right here), the petition itself still sends a big message and no doubt increases the pressure in that direction. But for anyone who really expected that such a petition would actually do something like get a PM to call a general election, you might want to put on some reality based glasses. We won't win the war with rose-colored ones.
Good points--thanks.
Is it possible for the Labour MPs to force a new leader? Not as good as an election, and Labour would still form Government, but might get a better/different leader.
Note that in Canada, the Conservative Party of Canada has such a provision which is how caucus ousted Erin O'Toole as leader, but the Liberal Party of Canada has no such provision so no revolt of Liberal MPs could force Trudeau to step down. Depends on the Party constitution, here.
Hmmmm...
A couple of points?
The 2 main parties differ in how they select their leaders, Labour leaders are selected by a vote of all theirs member nationwide and the Tory leaders are selected by the 1922 committee which are a group of influential backbenchers.
These leaders are selected before an election, not after. Until that toerag Roland Rat became leader before Starmer.
Thanks, Julia.
I was lazy. I know that the leader is chosen before the election. On the other hand, the leader can also be changed AFTER an election (between elections), right?
I did not know about the two different methods of selection, but I'm not surprised.
General question: how do you personally see the role, impact or effect of Farage and the whole brexit thing, on the direction of the UK? And is Farage (and his party) relevant currently?