Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

I'm happy to debate this in another thread, but we've been told to stick to the PM

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

Discussing his cabinet picks is fine, so long as it’s not going on and on about another one specific issue, with one of his picks.

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

I don't think the system should be reformed. It needs to be clear that we don't elect PMs. There should just be an understanding from the Government not to push their luck and assume they've been appointed to do whatever they want when they want.

The issue with Truss was she tried to bulldoze through a completely different agenda claiming she had a mandate for this because Tory Members elected her for it. That blew up so they change PM again and this time with a different agenda. He has paid lip service to following the mandate from 2019 but let's see what actually comes out.

We need to allow governing parties to change leaders - especially when it becomes clear the leader is a buffoon - but if these changes precipitate a big shift in ideology and policy then they should seek a mandate from the entire country rather than this self-absorbed melodrama we've seen from them this summer. A lot of this chaos has happened because the Tories wanted to have an internal debate on who they should be as a party.

We elect parties on a general idea of who they are. We don't hand them the keys for 5 years to use the country as a test subject which they can use to experiment with their internal competing ideas.

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

Rishi Sunak brings back fracking ban lifted by Truss.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-b2210893.html

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

We might also see triple-locked pensions not triple-locked again: https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/sta...50247009189889

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

Doing as he's told by Agent Schwab.

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

Indeed, it’s completely disingenuous to portray the passing of the torch from Johnson resigning in disgrace, then Truss being unable to govern and Sunak taking up the mantle being the ordinary set of circumstances as envisaged in a completely unwritten constitution.

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

I think there is also a question of how much can a country change before it's better to just go back to the public and say that you need a new mandate.

It'll be disingenuous to hold the Tories to everything in the 2019 manfesto after COVID, after Ukraine and with high inflation across the world. That's why I think parties should govern to a theme/idea rather than explicitly the words as written in a prior time.

However, if the change is so fundamental that it requires a fundamental shift in governing approach then wouldn't it be healthier to seek a new mandate?

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

Hardly.

Our constitution is decorated by pageantry and crown authority but the reality is the King can’t do this without advice, and the advice is always that the leader of the largest party in the Commons is the choice for PM.

The largest party in the Commons is put there by the electorate which understands it is voting for a batch of local MPs who will support one of a range of published manifestos for a period of up to 5 years. And the electorate also understands that manifesto commitments do not override prevailing political or economic conditions, and also that the next opportunity to judge the party of government against its manifesto is the next election.

I know some people want to constantly paint this place like some sort of banana republic but the mess of the past few weeks ultimately shows that we are anything but. Truss and her fellow travellers tried to tear up the rules and conventions by force of will and they failed. The worst political instability in decades has simply demonstrated just how stable a system we fundamentally have.

If Sunak can stabilise the ship in the coming weeks, then he should have the two-and-a-bit years left to led the party elected to government, to try to implement its manifesto. And then we will get a vote on whether to allow them to continue. Meanwhile nobody is going to park tanks on College Green, take over the BBC or start yelling viva la revolución from the palace balcony.

If there’s one lesson to be learned here it’s that the constitutional position of the PM must be respected, and that means changing the leader mid-term must only be a job for those whose confidence the incomer requires, namely the Commons. Polling the wider party membership risks electing a Liz Truss and also gives succour to those who want to make ill-informed demands for a nationwide say in the process.

The USA can’t even agree whether to intervene to put down its own tin-pot revolutionaries right now … I think we’re safe enough.

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

More like adhering to the manifesto the Conservative government were elected on in 2019.

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

Snipped as I know how the system works.

Regardless of how many words you choose to describe it it’s neither a mandate from the party membership (who indeed chose someone else when he was on the ballot) nor from the electorate itself.

If anything the Truss debacle undermines our democratic credentials rather than reinforces it. By your measure she had a mandate to deliver until she didn’t. Removing the right of a party membership to elect it’s leader is profoundly undemocratic. In turn when it picks a PM it evokes more images of Putin’s Russia than home of the self-styled mother of all Parliaments.

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

Indeed :tu:

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

I'll quote another member of this forum in response to that.

We're in an energy crisis, there nothing wrong with pivoting on Shale Gas.

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

Unsuccessful Rwanda plan is one way of putting it, we gave them.20 million extra on top of the agreed 120 million a few days back, for what? It's barely been mentioned how much has been wasted on this pointless exercise

Re: Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister
 

Until the Tories bring in a properly Conservative prime minister, I'm not voting for them again.