The Tories Latest Constitutional Gimmick is Daft

Sunday, 25th April 2010

Ian Leslie says much of what needs to be said about the Tories new and gimmicky tweak to the constitution - that anyone who becomes Prime Minister between elections must call an election within six months - a proposal that, as Leslie puts it, is "at once carelessly radical and hopelessly irrelevant."

It's also yet another indication that we now have an uneasy, perhaps even unhappy, hybrid political system that is neither fully Presidential nor fully parliamentary. We can see which way the wind is blowing, mind you. And this raises other questions too: all the party leaders pledge to restore parliament and increase its ability to scrutinise and perhaps even check the executive.

Yet as "legitimacy" questions increasingly dominate the election campaign and its coverage whoever becomes Prime Minister is likely to suppose that they have a genuinely personal mandate that parliament as a whole lacks entirely. The office of Prime Minister, already over-mighty, has been strengthened by this campaign.

Then again, this Tory policy - which I predict will never actually become law - is bonkers. Would it have been a good thing if Churchill had been forced to call an election in 1940? Or Jim Callaghan in 1976? Or John Major in 1990?

In any case, didn't the Tories campaign on a platform of "Vote Blair, Get Brown" in 2005? It was quite clear that Brown was going to succeed Blair and this was, the Tories suggested, a good reason for not voting for Labour. The notion that Brown is an "illegitimate" PM is and always has been, quite ridiculous.

The public may not wear him being replaced by another "unelected" PM such as Johnson or Miliband but that wouldn't make any such PM "illegitimate" in any constitutional sense. We have elections pretty regularly anyway and there's no need to have more of these affairs than is absolutely necessary.

Filed under: Election 2010 (599 more articles) , Tories (273 more articles)

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DavidDP

April 25th, 2010 4:07pm Report this comment

"Would it have been a good thing if Churchill had been forced to call an election in 1940?"

Given normal elections were suspended for the duration anyway, this point doesn't have the impact you want it too.

As to the others, it may well have been a good idea to have had an election post-PM change.

teledu

April 25th, 2010 4:28pm Report this comment

Blair had promised pre the 2005 election to stay as PM for the full term; that morally - if not constitutionally - makes Brown an illegitimate PM.

Rhoda Klapp

April 25th, 2010 5:44pm Report this comment

Yes, let's remake our constitution one ill-considered soundbite at a time.

Alex, you are not always right, but I think you have it this time. Now what happened to saturday country?

Ben G

April 26th, 2010 9:51am Report this comment

Agreed, a daft policy which makes you wonder what other mad ideas they'll have. Besides, PMs in this country aren't directly elected.

It is, however, coming to the point where we need a new constitution. The trouble is, letting the current lot of politicians write it would be a disaster.

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