Americans get too excited when they read headlines like this. Nobody voted for Rishi, they voted for the Tories what felt like a decade ago. The Tories have had a revolving door policy, and new rubes keep taking the PM position after the last one leaves/is forced out. Some portion of that 70% are Tory voters who just want another spin on the PM wheel.
How long has it been since the last election?
Last election was in 2019, and they’re usually every 5 years. The next one has to be set for no later than January 2025, but could be earlier than that.
Ummm… Why the variable timeline? I don’t really understand US politics, and I’m an American. I’ve no hope of really understanding the UK system… Still, how do you not just vote in a new government/PM/MPs on a set schedule? That’s the most not British thing I’ve ever heard of. I thought you guys love routines.
We have the same system in Australia. Constitution sets a maximum govt term but a parliamentary majority can call an election at any time before then.
Ok, but why does the same party stay in power if a vote happens early? Seems like the conservatives have had control of England for the last 40-50 years, basically since Thatcher.
You’re right but only because New Labour was basically Conservative.
So the same thing as the “Neo-Liberals” in the US, gotcha.
So, voters elect Members of Parliament during general elections not a prime minister, the political party that wins the most seats in the House of Commons usually forms the government. Since we don’t elect the PM the king ‘invites’ the leader of the majority party to form a government since they’ll likely have the support of the majority portion of MPs, that person becomes the prime minister.
This leads to the slightly unusual situation where the incumbent party can essentially decide to replace the prime minister at will, this is usually accomplished by either an internal party process (1922 committee for the Conservative Party) or if the prime minister decides to ‘resign’. The incumbent party can then elect a party leader using whatever process they like iirc, once they have chosen a leader the king asks that person to become prime minister.
tl;dr the uk electorate don’t choose the prime minister directly, you elect a local MP, and the party leader of the majority party becomes PM so replacing the party leader replaces the prime minister.
ETA: the government can call a general election early and have done in the past but it’s not always in their best interest if they think they’re going to lose
Thanks for the explanation. I assume this is the compromise that England arrived at sometime around the signing of The Magna Carta?
The UK. Not just England
Think back to the time George W. Bush was around and we had Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - both from the Labour Party
Blair I remember, Brown I don’t. I thought Blair was a Tory.
Is that because he is a twat?
No, it’s because he’s a Conservative MP
A distinction without a difference
Same thing.
Conservative MP is only a subset of twat species, and I would say a more severe variety.
Not all twats are conservative but all conservatives are twats.
Conservative MP is a euphemism.
Surely the next Tory PM the British voters elect won’t try to implement all of the terrible and unpopular policies that the tories openly espouse!
Two nitpicks
1st: the UK never voted for Rishi Sunak. Truss (also unelected) left and the Conservative party internally chose their new leader, who they appointed as PM since they’re the party in government.
2nd: most people in the UK vote against the Tories and always have. All they need to do is get a couple of percent above the next most popular party and it gives them 100% say. The worst part is that if another anti-Tory party comes around, all it serves to do is split the anti-Tory vote more, and hand them more power.
It’s our voting system that is broken. People in general do not like the Conservative party.
To clarify for those who never lived in Britain and as I explained above:
- In the UK even as little as 37% of votes cast (which can be less that the votes from 1/4 of voters, due to abstention) can translate into a 50% + 1 majority in Parliament and the country has no written Constitution, so a simple majority in Parliament can easilly changing laws around things most people consider essential, unlike in countries with Constitutions were certain things can only be changed with 66% or even 75% - depending on the country - of parliamentary votes.
People in, for example, the rest of Europe, get all surprised when the UK government just makes demonstrations de facto unlawful and add extreme requirements for labour strikes so that it’s extremelly hard for unions to organise them, because in most of those countries, unlike the UK, changing such essential rights is not something a party that only got 25% of voters on their side can do whenever they feel like it.
This time it will be different!!!
did you know that any time a child is born in britain that child has a 10% chance of becoming a tory PM when the sitting one resigns in shame?
What do you mean “any longer” ?! We never wanted him. 4th choise of one party.
He wasn’t even elected in the first place.
Hardly feels like it matters…is the next person going to be just as bad, it’s exhausting…
Start the lettuce.
Then call for an election and kick the Conservative sods out of the chambers.
Looking as who is voting, you’re not going to remove any Tories.
The blue Tories are absolutely finished. The red Tories are definitely getting in next election.
What is this turnout for? There aren’t general elections every two years.
That number seems low considering how incompetent the Tories are.
When only the elderly vote, you get shit government.
I’m not from the UK but from what I have seen the UK seems to really be heading in the same direction as the US where there are two absolutely awful parties to vote for and one is like 10% better.
Only if you buy into the Murdoch press. Similar thoughts tend to be expressed about Australia’s Labor party also, when the actual reality is markedly different.
The last labour government that was in power was the most right wing, neoliberal one there has ever been, and yet they still massively improved the country over the shit state that Thatcher and Major got it into.
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Over doubling of NHS funding, bringing it up to being the highest ranked health service in the world for a time.
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Homelessness massively cut down, with rough sleeping virtually
irradiated(EDIT) eradicated. Bizarre autocorrect there lol -
The minimum wage and a bunch of other workers rights improvements.
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Parliamentary processes made more transparent
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Devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales, NI
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Massively improved schooling
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Massively reduced crime, especially violent crime.
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Longest period of sustained low inflation since the 60s despite having a rapidly growing economy
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More years in economic surplus than the Tories
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Didn’t interfere with the BBC, even going as far as to put in place a Conservative chairman, because he was the best suited for the job, rather than appointing a mouthpiece for the Labour party.
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Help for childcare costs
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Drastic improvements for people with disabilities in terms of infrastructure, schooling, care
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Expansion in LGBT rights, including the right to adopt
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probably a bunch of stuff I’ve forgotten.
I’d much, much much rather have an actually competent government that broadly seeks out to improve people’s lives, even if they do have failings (e.g. failure to do much about the housing crisis) rather than the Conservative party, under whom the UK has got worse in practically every single way.
Young naïve me got excited by the hung parliament back in 2010 thinking Lib Dems even in a coalition could get so much good done.
Then Nick Clegg folded to the Conservatives on literally every issue like the soggy biscuit he is.
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Seems like a simple answer to vote for the one that’s 10% better
Something something bOtH sIdEs.
I am from the UK and let me tell you, we’ve been there for a while. We had a progressive in the 10% better party that made it actually substantially better but the media decided that supporting Palestine is tantamount to antisemitism and basically crushed his chances. Obviously backed by the stupidity of the average voter, who decided that some vague assertions of antisemitism were more important than the numerous failings (e.g. brexit) and verifiable racism of the other party.
Aside from that brief period, we’ve been forced to hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils for a long time. Starmer is generally disliked and nobody knows what he stands for (Because the answer is basically nothing) but he is still going to wipe the floor with the Tories. That isn’t because he’s good, just because the Tories are really that useless.
That is where we are now.
I mean okay but just like the US, you get what you voted for.
Honestly that’s the thing about when the UK talks shit about US politics - yeah, we have our problems but yall VOTED to destroy your economy and close your borders to your own detriment and you currently have a revolving door PM where one of them got outlasted by a head of iceberg.
In all fairness Britain are the only self-proclaimed Democracy (“Oldest in the World”, they tell us) with an even more undemocratic political system than the US, because in addition to a First Past The Post voting system, they also have a monarch with - as was exposed a couple of years ago - real power as head of state, an unelected Second Chamber with inherited and nominated-for-live positions and, probably worse, no written Constituition so any party in Parliament with a simple 50% + 1 majority can pretty much do whatever they want.
The FTPT + No Constitution combination is probably the worst part, as it means that a party with a mere 41% of votes of cast (so about the votes of only 1/4 of voters, due to abstention) - such as the current ones - can get a parliamentary majority (so, more than 50% of seats) and do things that in other countries would require constitutional changes (which generally require 66% or 75% of votes, depending on country), so things like changing the local definition of Human Rights.
Mind you, the Brexit vote isn’t at all affected by these things, so your point still stands unaffected by those considerations.
I appreciate the response, because this is actually fascinating. As much as I think America’s system is broken, it’s more to do with political spend and gerrymandering than literal centuries of aristocracy deciding it.
It mostly boils down to First Past The Post (single-representative electoral circles) IMHO - There is no such thing as Gerrymandering in countries were the matemathical method to allocate parliamentary representatives is Proportional Vote - such as The Netherlands - because all votes count the same and the party voted for or the party other people in the same area voted for makes no difference at all.
FPTP systems directly boost the number of representatives for the two major parties by quite a lot (for example, the Tories in the UK have around 60% of members of Parliament with only around 42% of votes cast) and indirectly because people switch their vote from smaller parties to “electable candidates” thus giving even more votes to larger parties which they would never get in a Proportional Vote system.
From there a ton of broader problems arise in terms of the behaviour of politicians (such as corruption) or simply not at all acting for the interests of their electorate (because people have no realistic option to replace one politician by a significantly different one, at most only by one serving the same lobbies but with a different discourse in the moral field). You even get insanelly adversarial politics (the more they’re alike in caring not economic equality and good quality of life for most people, the loudest the theatre they make around moral issues)
I also lived in The Netherlands which has Proportional Vote and its very different: even decision making tends to be all around seeking consensus (win-win solutions, if you will) rather than adversarial theatre on morals and behind-closed-doors deals on sharing the cake.
a monarch with - as was exposed a couple of years ago - real power
What is this in reference to?
He wasn’t voted for
Kind of, but if the president resigned and there was no VP lined up, so the party just kinda has a chat amongst themselves about who to replace them with (invariably causing the worst pieces of shit the public wouldn’t vote for to rise to the top)…
Also, US presidents don’t seem to resign in shame, so there’s that.
For what it’s worth, in 2019 a majority of people voted for parties other than the Tories. They received 43% of the vote, and their leader at the time was Boris Johnson.
The last two Prime Ministers weren’t elected by voters, though I suppose you could argue that the majority of voters didn’t elect Boris either.
The comments I’m seeing saying something like “well you voted for this” are incredibly misguided. We have a fucking terribly archaic voting system that doesn’t serve us at all, there are several large pushes throughout the UK trying to change that.
First past the post has to go. I believe it’s the most important issue in our country right now, because it’s stopping us from dealing with the actually important issues. To wit: we’re debating sending 100 refugees or less a year to Rwanda as a matter of the utmost urgency while the world is catching fire, in any metaphorical sense you care to mention. Geographical concentration of voters should no longer confer political power where the open internet exists.
There are two problems with the urgent need to change this broken broken system though: 1. I don’t know what better to replace it with, and 2. I don’t have enough faith in the British public anymore to actually agree on the more important issues once it’s gone.
Side note: the argument doing the rounds about “but the far right will get in” is irrelevant because our last two home secretaries have been irreconcilable, despicable far-right headbangers. They’re already in.
just skip to the next already.
And prepare his replacement straight away and streamline the process.
That’s 30% lower than members of Rishi’s personal bathroom.
