It is pretty authoritarian, heavy-handed and undemocratic, I just think people generally have trouble with that because Western countries are supposed to not be like that.
I mean were it a non-western country with this level of surveillance, in the open corruption, expectation to conform, number of unelected PMs, orchestrated suppression of political opposition, regulation of the press etc. we would have no trouble calling it worse things.
All PMs are "unelected", or at least not elected via a general election, beyond their election as an MP. There's a reason they're called a Prime Minister, not a president or similar. The UK doesn't directly elect the head of the UK government, and it never has. The PM is elected is the leader of the party that gains enough seats in parliament to form a government. Enough seats is determined by the simple question of "would the formed government have a reasonable ability to pass legislation in parliament, as is needed to conduct the business of government", nothing else.
This is the UK chosen form of democracy, the US may prefer a more direct form of democracy, but that's not without its issues either.
Yeah, I know. That's nitpicking. What I meant was the number of PMs who didn't have to campaign in a general election, at the very least not for a good while after taking office, I assumed that was clear.
I’m not really sure you can separate the two. The UK parliamentary system doesn’t require the PM to campaign, and never has. I don’t think you can call PM “unelected” when the system doesn’t, and has never, required them to get a direct mandate from the people.
Many would argue that the recent trend of PMs trying to appear presidential, and running general election campaigns based on their personal brand, as problematic. As the PM isn’t meant to be an important part of a persons vote. They’re voting for their local MP not the national PM.
Also every PM had to campaign in a general election. They need to be an MP to become PM, that requires them to run in a general election and win their seat.
> I don’t think you can call PM “unelected” when the system doesn’t, and has never, required them to get a direct mand
Just because a system doesn't require something doesn't mean it is legitimate or democratic. It's a personal opinion for sure, but I would call that undemocratic. Many of the systems we in the West consider autocratic do have some sort of 'representation' after all.
> As the PM isn’t meant to be an important part of a persons vote. They’re voting for their local MP not the national PM.
The PM does have a fairly huge impact on how the country is being run, where it is headed, its foreign policy etc. do you want to argue otherwise?
My point is the UK has had multiple PMs in a row who didn't have to make a case for their agenda in front of the people. I call that undemocratic despite what its system says, no system would consider itself authoritarian, that's a judgment passed onto them by 3rd parties.
I think the general expectation in the UK was that this is tolerated because when a new PM comes in, they're expected to win a mandate for their agenda in a general election ASAP.
> Also every PM had to campaign in a general election. They need to be an MP to become PM, that requires them to run in a general election and win their seat.
A MP running for a local seat is something quite different from being a PM, but anyway this is just one aspect of why I think the UK isn't quite as democratic as it presents itself.
> Just because a system doesn't require something doesn't mean it is legitimate or democratic. It's a personal opinion for sure, but I would call that undemocratic.
I think you risk arguing using a “No true Scotsman” fallacy. There are many forms of democracy, and many countries generally considered democratic don’t require the direct election of their governments leader.
For example the German chancellor is not directly elected. The Dutch prime minister is also not directly elected, neither is the Spanish Prime Minster, or the Prime Minister of Norway. Are they undemocratic as well?
If you look around most long established “democracies”, you’ll find that directly electing the head of government isn’t actual the default.
Indeed the most powerful directly elected politician in the world happens to be the Major of London. They have a surprisingly broad set of powers of a single directly elected politician.
> The PM does have a fairly huge impact on how the country is being run, where it is headed, its foreign policy etc. do you want to argue otherwise?
I most certainly would, as has been quite clearly demonstrated by the long succession of PM the UK has recently had. If the PM is so all powerful, why do they keep failing to get anything done, and keep getting replaced?
> My point is the UK has had multiple PMs in a row who didn't have to make a case for their agenda in front of the people. I call that undemocratic despite what its system says, no system would consider itself authoritarian, that's a judgment passed onto them by 3rd parties.
As a direct consequence of not having to put their agenda in front of the entire UK public, they’ve all failed to achieve anything of note. The only recent PM who could be argued to have achieved anything is Boris Johnson with his signing of the EU Brexit agreement, but he did that after winning a general election!
Every PM since then has been struggling to keep their party together, and struggling to pass anything in parliament, because they lack a strong mandate from the people, and parliament is punishing them for that.
> I think the general expectation in the UK was that this is tolerated because when a new PM comes in, they're expected to win a mandate for their agenda in a general election ASAP.
Until recently this was explicitly illegal. The fixed term parliament act prevented governments from ending their term early and calling an election. Explicitly to prevent the type of abuse that Boris Johnson engaged in, by calling elections when it’s most politically convenient for the government, and thus most likely to result in another win, and an extension to their time in power.
Allowing governments to call elections when it suites them is terrible idea for a democracy. It’s so trivial for the ruling party to abuse.
> A MP running for a local seat is something quite different from being a PM, but anyway this is just one aspect of why I think the UK isn't quite as democratic as it presents itself.
The UK electoral system could certainly use some work. But direct democracies aren’t inherently better. The US uses direct democracy for electing their president, but I’m not sure I would hold up the US as the pinnacle of democracy, not with the endless gerrymandering, political devision, and drive by parties to win at all costs.
You keep arguing that the PM has no power, yet I seem to remember a certain one who had economic ideas that caused markets to panic and pension funds to almost implode.
It seemed to me like Johnson had quite the effect on how the pandemic was handled for another example.
Yet you keep arguing they have no influence.
Yes, they're not Saudi kings, nobody's arguing that. Yet you're underselling their power.
Also, it seems to me that you may be confusing democracy with tradition. Anyway, agree to disagree.
These days I have a hard time telling the difference between either, because no one in a democracy will ever vote for crazy policies like having surveillance cameras pointing at themselves or having increasing harsher laws on freedoms both online and offline.
If so many important things are not up for the vote, is it really a democracy?
>>If so many important things are not up for the vote, is it really a democracy?
Exactly. For me, this is the myth of democracy. A party campaigns on a manifesto containing a few cherry-picked policies, aimed at appealing to enough of the electorate, to get them elected [quite often with less than 50% of the vote]
And, assuming they have an overall majority in parliament, this then means that every decision they subsequently make over the next 4 years is legitimised in advance because "you voted for this".
The only true democracy would involve regular referenda, whenever major new policies were proposed. This should be technically feasible with current technology. But, given the last time we had a referendum in UK the people didn't vote for the option they were meant to, I'm doubtful we'd ever see such a thing implemented.
I'd rather have that flavour of democracy than the one that voted someone like Trump into power. Hell, he's still managing to wreak havoc over there even post-potus.
