So Gordon Brown will be Prime Minister without even an election amongst Labour party members.
You have to go back to 1963 and Grouse Moor devotee Sir Alec Douglas-Home for the last example of a new Prime Minister "crowned" without an election, even of party members.
It is a ludicrous situation. Ming was right to call for a General Election and I see that call was soon echoed by little Georgie Osbourne from the Tories.
As well as being outrageous that our Prime Minister will be unelected (except as MP by 24,278 people in Kickcaldy and Cowdenbeath), I believe this is a strategic error by Labour. The forelock-tugging days of Macmillan are over. Gordon Brown will have the "lack of mandate" millstone around his neck until the next election.
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The Labour Party
ReplyDelete27th February 1900 - 16th May 2007
Rest in peace.
Surely back to 1963, when Alex Douglas-Hume de-Lorded himself to become Prime Minister in succession to Macmillan on the endorsement of the 'usual channels' in the Tory Establishment, also known as the Magic Circle'.
ReplyDeleteYou are quite right Edis. Such a thought passed through my brain as I was exercising at lunchtime and I came back with a note to change it (now done) when I saw your comment. Thank you. I think Today sent me down the wrong path because they mentioned Macmillan.
ReplyDeleteI do not see it as a big problem from a democratic point of view. What odds would you have got from Ladbrooke's back in 2005 that Brown would have become PM at some point in this Parliament. Surely most people thought this would happen in a way that they could not have predicted back in 1987 that John Major would become PM in 1990. As for a vote in Parliament - well technically this has not happened but the nominaations are of course a way of expressing a preference...
ReplyDelete"Surely most people thought this would happen in a way that they could not have predicted back in 1987..."
ReplyDeleteIsn't that a contradiction?