So, huge sighs of relief and trebles all round. Michael Gove will not be Prime Minister. Phew!
So, the next Prime Minister, and presumably the country’s future direction with it, will be chosen by the 0.2% of the population in the Tory party from amongst Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom. So we’ll get our second female Prime Minister.
The rest of us, the 99.8%, eavesdrop on the process for the next two months, with our hearts in our stomachs.
What a disgraceful way to choose the country’s future direction!
For what it’s worth, Andrea Leadsom was the only Leave speaker who didn’t receive the sharp end of my tongue when she appeared on the telly. However, judging by her platitudinous “major speech on the economy” today, that could be because she isn’t encumbered by the baggage of deep thought.
Theresa May is certainly a “safe pair of hands”. However, according to Kenneth “off air” Clarke, she doesn’t know much about foreign affairs, which would seem to be quite a useful subject to know about, in the current circumstances.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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53 Comments
That’s the problem with our Parliamentary democracy only the MP’s own constituency get to choose whether they are fit to be an MP and only the Party get to choose whether they are fit to lead and therefore potentially be PM. As our PM’s become more presidential maybe it is time to have a directly elected PM? The problem would of course be the rise of the populist types such as Boris…
Of course there should be a general election, but I doubt there will be as it would put back boundary changes that the Tories need to secure power for a decade..
We need a new way to appoint the Prime Minister. Even if we had a general election what if the choice was between Leadsom and Corbyn? None of them have the confidence of the Commons or the country and would only be there on the basis of enthusing the hardcore party members.
The Commons should vote for one, like the way it works in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. It’s in our national interest. Or we could have a directly elected PM.
Whatever else we might think about Tories generally, with two women in their final race for leadership, the question needs to be asked why some other political parties need to resort to ‘dumb as a brick discriminatory’, All Women Shortlists.?
What a pass we have come to in this country when the prospect of Theresa May as prime minister feels like the least worst option currently before us. Let’s not forget that we are watching the Tory Party reverting to form as the nasty party – whichever of these two wins the contest.
“The next Prime Minister won’t be Michael Gove but will be a human being”.
Not sure that’s true about Leadsom, Paul.
Leadsom seems to have some pretty extreme opinions but that is not the only mark against her. She just doesnt have the experience. Leadsom as PM would be a disaster for her Party & her Country. If The Tories want to jump off a cliff thats their business but I strongly object to them taking me with them.
We can leave EU without 50% of the population voting to leave.
We can have a leader of the opposition without their members of parliament voting for him.
We can have a prime minister elected with 1% of the population.
This is considered democracy, they will be overseen by an unelected House of Lords.
The EU leave campaign was based on since proven lies. The EU exiters had the audacity to claim the Eu was undemocratic.
Would democracy not be better served with a confirmation referendum, or better still a general election,where we could all pick our Prime Minister. I wonder if the Liberal vote would surge as they have been the honest party and definitely were a brake on the Tories.
We should have open primaries for party elections.
“The EU exiters had the audacity to claim the Eu was undemocratic.” – how many EU MEPs can the UK populace vote out – under 10% – how is that democratic for the UK voters? How many UK MPs can the UK voters remove = 100%.
@Leave The EU: That comment is beyond stupid. By your standards, how many UK MPs can people in Scotland vote out? Under 10%. See how utterly ridiculous your argument is?
Much to my amazement I agree with David Raw. There’s a first time for everything…
Gove was human and certainly less objectionable than Leadsom, although the entire choice of conservative leadership candidates has been utterly dire.
Our political system isn’t really about electing Prime ministers. It is about electing individual representatives to sit in the House. A Prime minister who it’s thought can command the authority of the House will be asked to form a government. They can stay until they fail. I don’t think there is much need for a vote in the House, the devolved bodies’ approach just makes life easier for her Majesty. What we forget is that the PM doesn’t have to be the leader of the largest party. Just someone who can command a majority in the House. If there were enough Tory rebels Leadsom could be brought down fairly quickly and Labour moderates and maybe the Lib Dems might give support to a moderate Tory leader.
Who elected the Deputy Prime Minister from 2010-2015? Oh yeah, a tiny number of Lib Dem party members. Who elected Gordon Brown as PM? Just 24,000 voters in Kirkcaldy. That’s the parliamentary system we operate, it’s not a presidential executive. Of course we shouldn’t have open primaries for party leaders. Party leaders need public support or their colleagues dump them very quickly. Even the most iconic of Tories, Thatcher, was removed when she became an electoral liability. It’s not undemocratic unless parliamentary government is undemocratic. If the Tory members pick a dud, as they have done several times, they get punished at the next election. That is democracy, it’s not a disgrace. The country elected a majority Tory government, which doesn’t change. It has never elected a PM before so no reason it should do so now.
If Leadsom wins the party vote but just a third of MPs, she’s almost in a Corbyn situation with Tory MPs nowhere near as tolerant as their Labour counterparts. So she has to be inclusive both in Cabinet and policies to survive. May has a stronger hand but will be dumped if she’s trailing in the polls for too long. I’m not a fan of either candidate nor of the current office-holder but their route to the PM job is legitimate.
Stevan,
The difference is that we have party politics in this country. Our voting system is completely unrepresentative but generally parties go into an election with a platform, and even if the Leader changes mid term the voters know roughly what they are getting.
The Tories replacing Cameron with May or Leadsom, who then gets on with the Tory manifesto of 2015, is no different to what I expected after the General Election. I will not like what they will do but I do not expect them to call a General Election just because of a change of leader
However what we have now is VERY different. Apparently the decision to leave the EU was too big for Parliament to decide, so we had a referendum. If that was so important, so is the future relationship with the EU after Brexit, which will determine the future of all citizens for generations to come. May and Leadsom are presumably now going to tell the Tory party members what they hope to get out of the negotiations (or as much of the truth as they dare…). But none of this was in the Tory manifesto. And so the fate of Britain will be determined by 150,000 people while the rest of us can only stand by and watch.
That is why there should at least be a General Election before Article 50 is triggered
One point that’s been missed is Cameron’s insistence he wouldn’t resign as PM if he lost the referendum. Of course wily old (and less old) members of this forum knew it was an outrageous lie designed to shutdown debate and his position woukd be untenable if there was a Brexit vote.
Nevertheless some less wily, less political “ordinary” citizens took Cameron at his word.
Then we wonder why politics is held in such low esteem.
The history of the Tory party since the fall of Blair can now be summed up in the words of Richard O’Brien in Rocky Horror – just a step to the left … and then a jump the right …
Really, this is the most ‘conservative’ Conservative leadership contest for quite some time (with the admitted likely exception of 2003, the Howard coronation); in 2005, David Davis was distinguished by his passionate support for civil liberties; in 2003 Clark stood for the traditional pro-Europeans and Portillo as the first of the socially tolerant ‘modernisers’. None of those strands are really represented this time.
That said, I think May does have something to commend her as a person, and I regard her as less inherently untrustworthy than most of the alternatives. But, policy-wise, its going to be all about courting the swivel-eyed loons, for both candidates.
Argh.
Sorry, Clark-IDS was 2001.
Leadsom would be the Tories’ Corbyn. As such, she might be best for the Liberal Democrats. . .
@Alisdair McGregor – Scotland is not an independent country: it is part of the UK – also please do not bother replying further to me – I have better things to do than communicate with someone who has to use ad hominems to try and prove their point and says more about the person using them, than their intended target.
Hi @Leave The EU – I am not a big fan of using Latin tags but I understand that an “ad hominem” attack means playing the man rather than the ball.
Alastair McGregor certainly didn’t do that. He attacked your argument – vigorously and perhaps a tad aggressively – but there was nothing personal in the attack.
In fact, he is right. As part of a bigger democratic institution (the EU), it means that the fact that our part of it (the UK) can’t have its way all the time. That doesn’t make the insitution undemocratic any more that the British parliament is undemocratic because Scotland can’t control it (and usually votes the other way). The fact that one of these involves an international organisation with various countries participating and the other is a national parliament is irrelevant to the argument.
Finally, it seems to me that to accuse another of an ad hominem attack when it was not, is itself an ad hominem attack…….. #justsaying
Hi @Kevin Colvill
I am not sure that Cameron resigning is a point that would cause people to hold politics in low esteem. No leader can say – I will resign if X vote goes against me because the vote then becomes all about the leader. Its the same at general elections. This is one of those polite fictions that I think everyone can accept. To put it another way, would it really improve the esteem of politics if Cameron clung on to being PM in circs where his vision of the future had been rejected?
If, as she should do, Ms May wins then she will face Tim Farron across the chamber. What are the odds against two candidates who were both beaten in North West Durham by Hilary Armstrong in the same Parliamentary General Election ending up head to head leading their own parities?
(I write this as leader of the team who beat Hilary Armstrong a couple of years previously when she stood in Bishopwearmouth ward in Sunderland for Tyne & Wear County Council)
paul barker 7th Jul ’16 – 7:24pm…………..Leadsom seems to have some pretty extreme opinions but that is not the only mark against her. She just doesnt have the experience. Leadsom as PM would be a disaster for her Party & her Country. If The Tories want to jump off a cliff thats their business but I strongly object to them taking me with them…………
The disaster has already happened; we are now ‘scrabbling’ for the lifeboat …
In ‘Exit’ negotiations with the EU the real work will not be done by the PM, whoever they are, but by the faceless advisors on both sides…Leadsom still seems to believe that, under her leadership, the EU will give the UK all that it wants…Free Trade, control over movement, etc. (the very things that Cameron wasn’t given when we were a PAYING member)…May will be less strident but will get ‘neither more, nor less’, than Leadsome…
My electoral region is Scotland, my vote could therefore only influence the MEPs picked from the Scottish list, no influence over anyone else… Anyway it’s not the voting system that made the EU Undemocratic, it was the fact that the only elected body (the EU parliament) didn’t have the authority to propose the creation of or the repeal of legislation, it was a very weak body with the real power concentrated in unelected commissionaires.
I hope leadsom wins, but whichever one of them wins I hope the feminists will stop all their glass ceiling nonsense.
The most powerful person in Scotland is a woman.
The most powerful person in the uk will also be a woman,
The most powerful politican in Europe (the German leader) is also a woman.
The most powerful person in the world (the US president) will in all likelihood also be a woman.
I’ve no problem with this because all those ladies got there on there own merits, not because of discrimination based on arbitrary characteristics that they did not choose.
I think both may or leadsom could both be good PMs, I think the Tories will pick leadsom.
Mark Goodrich 8th Jul ’16 – 2:17am “I am not sure that Cameron resigning is a point that would cause people to hold politics in low esteem. No leader can say – I will resign if X vote goes against me because the vote then becomes all about the leader.”
Charles de Gaulle said several times that if he did not get the resultant vote that he wanted he would resign as President. He oscillated between a parliamentary election and a referendum before eventually choosing a referendum. The electorate took him at his word although the question on the ballot paper was about reform of the Senate. Jacques Chirac later reduced the Presidential term to five years, which is more democratic.
David Cameron had already said that he would not be standing at the 2020 general election (for PM? or for MP?) so he was already fin de siècle. Ken Clarke’s accurate assessment of his leader’s future in the event of defeat in the referendum was on the record, repeated several times and unhelpful to the Remain cause which he supported. He is not standing at the next general election, which he seems to assume will be in 2020.
David Cameron agreed with the then SNP leader to reduce the voting age to 16 for the referendum in 2014. Having participated in the most important decision of their lives they needed to 18 to vote in the general election in 2015.
Parliament could have taken steps to allow voting at 16 for the EU referendum, but did not. Historians and cynics say that politicians usually want to change the electoral system for political advantage, but DC did not. He was wrong in principle, wrong on judgement and right to resign.
Allowing citizens of Malta and Cyprus to vote, but not allowing citizens of the Republic of Ireland to vote was either complacent or stupid. He should know that Ireland is not, now, in the Commonwealth. It is unlikely that he is ignorant, but could his famous lack of attention to “details” be part of his decision making?
Opinion polls in the Irish Times of 9/7/2016 show widespread support for Ireland staying in the EU, reflected by their main political parties.
Citizens of other EU countries resented being refused a vote on their futures when canvassed on street stalls.
It is worrying that the Education Secretary supported Michael Gove.
‘What a disgraceful way to choose the country’s future direction!’
Consider what went before. A few grandees of the Tory party popped over to Buck House and advised the monarch who to send for. Actually electing the Tory leader is something that the last beneficiary of that system, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, introduced.
‘Republic of Ireland ….. is not, now, in the Commonwealth.’
Left it in 1937, I think, about the time it replaced our king with a local president as head of state.
One unique feature it has is that its whole territory was, for 120 years, part of the United Kingdom.
@Richard Underhill
“Allowing citizens of Malta and Cyprus to vote, but not allowing citizens of the Republic of Ireland to vote was either complacent or stupid. “
Irish Citzens resident in the UK were able to vote in the referendum, just as they may vote in General Elections. http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/upcoming-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum
In Nick Clegg’s resignation speech he was absolutely right about the need for Liberalism today. As LibDems we have, rightly, tried working with the electoral system, despite its failings. But things are changing. I fear we need to do more in the way of mobilising grassroots feeling, regardless of voting intention, to be the voice of Liberalism — that includes resisting the “nasty party”, speaking up for the 48%, and mobilising those who voted Leave and now feel betrayed that they were lied to/duped.
The people chose the Conservative party to govern at the general election. The Conservatives promised a referendum on membership of the EU.
The people have chosen the future direction of the country at the referendum.
Following the referendum the Conservatives continue to govern and will be implementing the country’s referendum decision whoever the prime minister.
The Independent summarised the situation nicely today:
“And welcome to the only two people left standing at the end of the Westminster Chainsaw Massacre. One, a Home Secretary of six years service, whose greatest hits include driving “Immigrants Go Home” billboards around racially charged neighbourhoods and whose unrivalled longevity in the role owes most to a unique approach to it in which every potential cock-up has been outsourced to G4S, and the other an anthropomorphised Daily Mail Comments section.”
The above of course ignores the fact that May is the architect of the Investigatory Powers Bill, voted against repeal of Section 28, and is prepared to use the futures of EU migrants already in this country as bargaining chips in Brexit negotiations.
Both May and Leadsom are on record as being against gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples.
Conservative party members will now choose which one of these wonderful people will be our Prime Minister.
Éire technically remained a member of the Commonwealth until 1949, when it shed the last vestiges of the monarchy (the acceptance of George VI as nominal head of state for the purposes of diplomatic accreditation). However, it had not actually utilized Commonwealth functions since the early 1930s. Up to 1949, however, there was no bar to the Irish re-engaging with the Commonwealth at some point; there would have been no need for them to re-join if they had so chosen.
@Mark Goodrich
If someone called your wife/mother stupid for not agreeing with them, that would be absolutely alright in your opinion?
Thought not.
I guess it depends if you think you live in a country/state first and foremost called the UK or the EU – my nationality is British.
Regards,
Philip
When will commentators on this and other threads wake up to the fact that there will be no negotiations about our future relationship with the EU. Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty makes it clear that the future relationship with the departing EU member will be decided by the remaining (27) members meeting without the member seeking to leave. In short the EU tell us what they will accept and what rules we will have to follow and what it will cost us. It will be a take it or leave it offer that reflects what the EU thinks will be in its interests.
My guess is that we will be offered some access to the single market, how much depends on what the EU thinks will be in its interest. In order to get it, the UK will have to accept free movement [the only changes in that will be the ones the EU wants not what the UK wants] and EU rules on products and how they are produced. Whether they will tell us we have to be in Schengen or use the Euro remains to be seen. I suspect the cost will be roughly the gross cost of our current membership, but with no rebates and no grants. The result will be that we will have become the caricature the leavers painted where we will have to do as the EU says but with no control or input into EU rules.
What will be interesting is what the new PM will do when faced with the reality of Brexit!
I suggest that people go back a bit to discussions about who would be the likeliest successor to Cameron. Mrs May was either no 3 or no 4 in the possibilities depending on which poll you took. Mrs Leadsome was nowhere to be seen. 9 or 10 in the lists, perhaps.
Now Messrs Osborne (frit) Johnson (exposed) and Gove (slightly barking) have all ruled themselves out in one way or another and plenty of the ‘in betweenies’ didn’t even put themselves forward because, frankly, being Prime Minister of a country which has just shackled you in a pointless referendum is a battle between ego and sanity in which sanity prevailed. Mesdames Leadsome and May apparently have no such ‘problem (sic).
Mick Taylor,
You’re so right that you might be wrong!
Article 50 says exactly what you say it says. It also says that Britain must first invoke it and make an irrevocable commitment to accepting the EU’s conditions for leaving. Only then will Britain find out what those conditions are.
If those terms were proposed by business enterprise A to enterprise B, they could not possibly be accepted! Enterprise B would no doubt respond “we cannot deal with you on your proposed terms, here are alternative proposals from us, which you should accept if you want to proceed.” If all else failed, I think enterprise B could go to court and have enterprise A’s terms struck out as unfair.
So I think Britain will reject Article 50.
The EU will then say “So, you’re staying then!”
I don’t know how this pans out, but it won’t be simple.
Tony Dawson,
I think there’s an element of “The boys have all gone off on a testosterone-fuelled bender and done crazy things, so, we Tories had better offer the nation a pseudo-feminist remedy. They’d better trust our woman, because we don’t want to admit that we are all useless and deserve to be thrown out. So let’s play the woman card and see if it fools the public.”
“there should at least be a General Election before Article 50 is triggered”
No, a majority of voters gave a direct instruction to Parliament to issue an Article 50 notification. Whilst I’m personally happy if it’s never issued, no further public validation is needed. The flavour of exit is for Parliament to decide and since a majority of MPs are Remain, that flavour is likely to be as close to the status quo as it is possible to get and still “leave”. The danger of an election now is a UKIP and far right Tory surge that replaces a sympathetic Parliament with something far more dangerous to our interests. Paul Nuttall as Deputy PM, is that really what you want? Don’t kid yourself it can’t happen – the SNP is proof anything is possible after a referendum, and they lost the referendum. Do not give UKIP a mandate to apply their version of Out; an early election is as daft as the timing of the referendum was.
Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that in a moment of harebrained madness PM Leadsom negotiates a poor deal, persuades her party to authorise an Article 50 notification and survives any coup attempts to the next election. Our economy starts disintegrating. Worst possible scenario. An incoming government then renegotiates EFTA/EEA membership with a full mandate. We breath again.
“Stevan Rose:
“No, a majority of voters gave a direct instruction to Parliament to issue an Article 50 notification.”
Stevan you have exposed a true scandal. Ballot papers must have been issued in different parts of the country which said different things. I voted in an advisory referendum about our future in the EU. You, apparently, voted in a mandating referendum about Article 50. Where can we find these criminals who interfered with the ballot paper distribution and stopped us voting about the same thing?
@Tony Dawson – of course, you are correct that Parliament could theoretically choose to ignore the referendum, that was given by the Prime Minister for the voters, with the clear intent of following the result… if you are prepared to potentially have UKIP in government by 2020 – sounds far-fetched? See SNP in Scotland for a “sea change”.
All the best.
And still folk here have not heard of the WTO that makes all of the EU remainer posturing obsolete. We don’t need treaties to trade and we don’t need any specific deals with the EU! But if we want treaties then….hey…already 12 countries are lined up ready to do it now including China, India, US that couldn’t ever get the EU dinosaurs to do a deal. Alas these 28 member states cannot ever agree on anything!
I’m not sure what is supposed to be wrong with Gove either. What did he do that was so awful? Some of us are happy that empty-headed Cameron is gone. If only clueless George would go too and take his loudmouth appointee Mark Carney with him. Come back Mervyn King please….even for a little while!
@Tony Dawson. You may be right by the letter of the law but the vast majority of voters see the result as a mandatory instruction and they will punish a Parliament that simply ignores that instruction. I’m very happy to be part of an election campaign to get a mandate to reverse the decision but I’d oppose any attempt to simply ignore the vote, to the extent voting for a Leave candidate myself if I had to. I’m guessing this is a one way opinion, that you’d not be perfectly relaxed had the vote been to remain but the Tories sent an Article 50 notification anyway and took us out before the next election.
@Stevan Rose – But only a minority of voters have been either misled or are deluding themselves over the real status of the referendum result. Remember as the referendum was only advisory ALL responses, including no response are valid!!! Hence only 17m out of 46m showed a preference that the UK should leave…
Part of being in government is actually not necessarily giving the people what they say they want but what they actually want. It’s the same in business – hence why Ford gave the people a motor car and not a faster horse.
Leave the EU
I too find your argument about “undemocratic because you can only vote out 10% of the membership (presumably of the European Parliament) illogical. I can only (or the people of a particular town) may only be able to vote out 20% or 15% of a District Council. Is that undemocratic too? In any large organisation a good working definition of democracy is that you usually lose.
Your more recent comment seems to acknowledge the illogicality of your original position, but you then imply that you don’t want to share a democracy (or not, as the case may be) with people of other nationalities. In a very small world, with many joint problems and issues crossing boundaries, that seems like cutting off your nos to spite your face. A bit like the Brexit vote, really.
@Roland. You can wriggle with the legal status of the result all you like but as far as the voting electorate are concerned they gave the Government an instruction to Leave, whilst leaving the precise nature open to negotiation. The closeness of the result points at EFTA/EEA as a solution acceptable to a majority of voters. If you want opinions you have an opinion poll or a public consultation, or a constitutional conference. This Parliament cannot ignore the instruction or the next one is liable to be packed with UKIP MPs who will go for an extreme version of out. Only 16 million of 46 million prefer to remain after all. But I ask if your opinion is a one way deal as well. Had Remain won and the Tories issued an Article 50 notification anyway because the result was only advisory would you be relaxed and concede gracefully?
@Tim13 – the UK is a country and the people of the UK can vote out all MPs and district councilors, etc..
My country and nationality is British, not “a European superstate: EU” – ergo me not being able to vote out for example Dutch MEPs indicates a democratic lack.
There is no sigh of relief from me about Michael Gove not being the next Prime Minister. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be (looks and talks odd, alienates too many people, wielded the knife on Boris – the knife-wielder hardly ever wins the Tory leadership). But I wanted him to win because I want the Tories to lose the next election, whether it’s this year or in 2020.
“Leave the EU”
The reason that you don’t get anywhere in your repeated attempts to argue the lack of democracy in the EU is that you are committing a fundamental logical error, known as “begging the question”. That is, you say you are opposed to the EU because it is not democratic. But to support your claim that it is not democratic you have to reject the legitimacy of the EU as a body, when its illegitimacy is exactly what you are trying to prove. You’re arguing in a circle, and thereby proving nothing.
i think the thoughts above show that the uk needs a written constitution (as, in my view, a major democratic overhaul …)
@Malcolm Todd – my country is the UK and nationality is British – for example Holland is a foreign country and people.
If the EU were my country and my nationality likewise, and not the UK, I would not claim that Holland was a foreign country and its people likewise.
@Stevan Rose – My position has always been that the In/Out referendum was an unnecessary step, with a further round of EU treaty negotiations before 2020, the natural move would of been to wait until then and hold a referendum on the proposed treaty changes. This was what all the major political parties had agree to prior to 2010.
I suggest the biggest mistake wasn’t so much the signing of Maastricht by Major but the signing and the way in which it was signed, of the Lisbon treaty by Brown.
So to answer your question, if Remain had won, my position would have been and still is, we remain but no further integration/transfer of powers from Westminster without an express mandate from the British electorate.
I’m perhaps coming at the problem from a slightly different perspective, prior to Lisbon there was no Article 50 exit route, post Lisbon there is still no way for the EU to expel members, hence they have to accommodate the UK (provided the UK has a leadership who are willing to stand up for UK interests and as we have seen over the last 40 years, that hasn’t happened very often – which doesn’t bode well Leave or Remain) and those nations who supported our viewpoint (remember the deal Cameron achieved didn’t just benefit the UK, hence why it got widespread support within the EU).