PM Elections are Broken

How could we fix them?

The Issue

The election of the incompetent, far right, Liz Truss as PM clearly demonstrates that our current way of electing PMs is broken and undemocratic.

If you are a Conservative supporter and feel this is directed at your party, it’s not. The problem is broad. Imagine a moderate Labour government had been elected, the PM left and a Jeremy Corbyn-like PM was elected by the Labour party members. Same issue.

A Potential Solution

If a new PM must be selected then the law should require that the new PM is ONLY elected by the MPs of the party in government. NOT the party members, or anyone else (unions etc).

While not perfect its more democratic to have MPs, who have been elected themselves, make the choice. Rather than others such as party members who were elected by no one.

This would also likely lead to less far-right or far-left replacement PMs, because the MPs tend to have a greater eye on the next election and know the competence of the candidate. The problem with party members is they tend to be more extreme and ideological in their choices. That is fine when a party isn’t in power since the public gets to vote on the party member’s choice.

Why not require a general election?

This is certainly democratic. But it has a huge flaw – if a new PM forces a general election then the party in power will likely hang on to ever a terrible leader, rather than risk a general election. For example, we’d still have the lying Boris Johnson as PM.

Why not require all MPs to vote?

Requiring all PMs, including the opposition PMs to vote has the same issues as a general election requirement – it encourages a party to hang on to a terrible leader.

Notes:

These are my own views, they don’t represent Liberal Democrat policy.

There are of course other important electorial issues, such as how general elections work, but this is beyond the scope of this post.