I can’t get over how insane it is that the sitting party gets to look at their polling numbers and decide if it’s a good time to have an election or not. I get why they are so insistent on keeping the monarchy because the rest of the system is kept together by tape and random bits of string
Somewhat true, but there’s lots of parliamentary systems that were never under British rule. Nobody has followed the US’s weird system. Not even ones where the US had a direct hand in setting up the democratic government, like Iraq.
The weird system of… predictable elections? Because that’s what we’re talking about. You can have predictable elections with a parliamentary system.
And any government is only as good as the people in it, as we can see from Brexit. They threw away their future because of a non-binding vote, which was very close and done only once.
Weird in having a whole bunch of compromises between big and small states, and separating the power of the executive and legislature. Countries looked at both of those and picked the one that’s more chaotic, but less clumsy.
There’s no reason why the current government should be able to pick the date of the election. What’s the reason behind that besides “The Prime Minister wants it that way”?
I dunno, with the American system you have like 2 year long campaigning cycle for president. There’s almost no break and it’s exhausting. In Canada when an election is called the campaign is only about 6 weeks give or take a week.
Also, if the government becomes dysfunctional, it can be dissolved and a new government elected. The US system doesn’t allow for that flexibility.
If your campaign is only 6 weeks, you have to be campaigning all the time too. Do you think people just say “oh there’s an election in 6 weeks? Maybe I’ll run for office!”? They have to have everything ready to go immediately. All politicians are campaigning all the time.
Parliament can always dissolve itself and call an election, and it’s an important mechanism for getting rid of the government.
The problem is that the prime minister also has a majority in parliament, and that means he can make parliament dissolve itself when he likes.
This was actually a problem for Johnson. Initially, he didn’t have enough of a majority and it wasn’t clear he could call an election without Corbyn’s support.
I can’t get over how insane it is that the sitting party gets to look at their polling numbers and decide if it’s a good time to have an election or not. I get why they are so insistent on keeping the monarchy because the rest of the system is kept together by tape and random bits of string
It’s not just the UK, it’s actually quite common wordwide.
Isn’t that because it was spread by the British in the first place?
Somewhat true, but there’s lots of parliamentary systems that were never under British rule. Nobody has followed the US’s weird system. Not even ones where the US had a direct hand in setting up the democratic government, like Iraq.
The weird system of… predictable elections? Because that’s what we’re talking about. You can have predictable elections with a parliamentary system.
And any government is only as good as the people in it, as we can see from Brexit. They threw away their future because of a non-binding vote, which was very close and done only once.
Weird in having a whole bunch of compromises between big and small states, and separating the power of the executive and legislature. Countries looked at both of those and picked the one that’s more chaotic, but less clumsy.
There’s no reason why the current government should be able to pick the date of the election. What’s the reason behind that besides “The Prime Minister wants it that way”?
I dunno, with the American system you have like 2 year long campaigning cycle for president. There’s almost no break and it’s exhausting. In Canada when an election is called the campaign is only about 6 weeks give or take a week.
Also, if the government becomes dysfunctional, it can be dissolved and a new government elected. The US system doesn’t allow for that flexibility.
If your campaign is only 6 weeks, you have to be campaigning all the time too. Do you think people just say “oh there’s an election in 6 weeks? Maybe I’ll run for office!”? They have to have everything ready to go immediately. All politicians are campaigning all the time.
It’s a consequence of parliamentary sovereignty.
Parliament can always dissolve itself and call an election, and it’s an important mechanism for getting rid of the government.
The problem is that the prime minister also has a majority in parliament, and that means he can make parliament dissolve itself when he likes.
This was actually a problem for Johnson. Initially, he didn’t have enough of a majority and it wasn’t clear he could call an election without Corbyn’s support.
So is dictatorships.
I’m just like a dictatorship we also know the outcome of this election before it’s even announced.
The guardian were saying that they decided “this was the best they’re going to get”
The Sun had something like Rishi picks his moment and “it caught starmer on the hop!”
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