Accidentally backing Boris

Can I vote for the Prime Minister?

Its a simple question, and our Parliament's website has a simple answer:

You cannot vote for a Prime Minister. Which means a PM is not elected by the public and as the clip above shows, not even by those who live in the constituency they are standing.

So, how do they get elected? They don't. The position of PM is a function of parliament.

According to the parliament website again, by convention the leader of the party who wins most seats is 'usually' appointed PM by the Queen. That 'usually' is hardly conclusive... so how does the Queen (or future otherly gendered monarch) actually decide who to appoint?

Royal.uk has the answer for us:

The position of PM is a function of Parliament, of who MPs are willing to accept as PM. This is true not just after a General Election, but at any point during a parliament's term when a new PM is needed.

Faced with this people will often claim that a PM gets a mandate from the people during an election for their manifesto. This is a pretty spurious claim for a number of reasons:

• First, a party can win the most seats without getting the most votes. Thanks to our lovely First Past The Post voting system they can do this even if they win a majority of seats.
• Second, no manifesto can predict what the future holds. We have no idea at an election what challenges will confront parliament which either require some unforeseen action, or put an end to a predicted one. At best it is a vague guess at what a party would like to do. It tells us a bout a party's values and ideas, but it can't tell us what they will do in gov.
• Third, the final decision to implement any policy is not actually up to the government. It's up to parliament. Parliament gets to amend and vote on every policy, and they can reject it if they don't like it. No manifesto can prejudge what parliament will look like, or how it will vote.

In all respects the PM, and the PM's government (entirely appointed by the PM, with no real say for parliament, let alone the public) gets what authority they have from parliament, they are reliant on them for passing laws, they are held accountable through parliament's committees, and ultimately by being always subject to the possibility of a vote of no confidence - a kind of reversal of the procedure by which they were appointed, where the parliament advises that the PM no longer commands their confidence.

Having confidence is important because the Govs job is to manage the day to day mechanism of government, to put proposals to parliament that are in line with what they believe parliament want to do see done, and ultimately execute the decisions made by parliament about those proposals... hence the fact that they are called the executive. This is also why manifestos are useful, because they help understand what MPs desires are.

It is not the PMs job to decide what parliament - what the public's representatives - want to be done for them. Even if it is written down in a manifesto, people can, and do, change their minds after consideration and under different circumstances (and sometimes just because they want to).

Why am I writing about this? Because, right now it is desperately important we understand the relationship between ourselves, parliament and the PM.

The PM, Boris Johnson, is about to suspend parliament to avoid them legislating against crashing us out of the EU with no deal.

Let's be clear: without a parliament there is no democracy. It is parliament that we elect and it is parliament that speaks on our behalf. You can have a government without democracy (just look at China). It is the democratically elected parliament, and its role in decision making, which makes us a democracy.

If parliament is denied the ability to decide how to deal with failing to reach a deal with the EU by the 31st of Oct, then probably the biggest constitutional change in the modern history of our country will be decided by a PM who has shut down democracy to do so. And there is a choice, several:

• Leave without a deal
• Ask for an extension
• Revoke A50

All are feasible solutions, and any decision should be decided democratically - which means by our parliament.

Even if you believe that the referendum was binding (politically - if you think it's legally binding then you are just plain wrong) then that binding is on parliament, not the PM. It is parliament who are answerable to the public. All of parliament. Every single MP. It is they who must bear the responsibility of making that choice, because only they have democratic legitimacy to do so. It is not for the PM to decide to remove that responsibility from them.

Parliament represents the public. The whole of parliament represents the public, not just those MPs from the governing party (or parties). The public has many voices many different opinions and many varying needs. It is parliaments job to represent the public as best it can and find a sensible path through those differing opinions and needs. It is not the governments job to do this, although, when they are not behaving like egotistic clowns they are supposed to govern in the country's best interest. In essence it is because there is no such thing as "the will of the people" that democracy rests in the hands of MPs in parliament, not in any one manifesto, or party leader, or specific election.... or vote.

This has, rightly, sparked outrage (though strangely less so amongst leave supporters, who claimed that we had to leave the EU to assert parliamentary sovereignty), but unfortunately has also increased the number of people making the argument that Boris Johnson is an "unelected" PM. Well, yes he is, but so are all PMs. They need to stop doing this.

I'm not (just) saying this because I'm a tedious political nerd who thinks we should get things right; I'm saying it because they are unwittingly shoring up PM Johnson's key argument about Brexit.

Johnson claims that he has a mandate from the British people to enact Brexit, come what may, hell or high water, do or die, etc etc. He claims this mandate from the referendum - a public vote.

By arguing that the PM is illegitimate without a public vote, we are saying that the office of PM gets some legitimacy from the public, that without a public vote the PM has less legitimacy. We are feeding the myth that the PM is elected by the people. We are placing the office of PM on an equal, if not higher, standing than parliament. This is dangerous. If the PM can get legitimacy from a General Election Vote, why can he not claim legitimacy from a public referendum vote, especially when he led the "winning" campaign?

By relegating the role of parliament in being the body to empower the PM, we also help legitimise the idea of the PM shutting down parliament. By tying the selection of a PM/Gov to elections we encourage people to think that the PM is somehow part of the embodiment of our democracy. They aren't. But Johnson wants the public to believe they are. And by doing that it stops people understanding the full import of what shutting down parliament actually means.

In a way the fact Johnson is an unelected PM does make this attack on parliament worse... but it's not because Johnson is unelected, it's because all PMs are unelected. Let's be clear and stop feeding his narratives. Let's tell people that it is THEIR parliament that THE government is trying to shut down.