Becoming PM

Technically we elect our local MP to Parliament and the party or coalition that ends up with the most seats in the House of Commons chooses a Prime Minister, typically the leader of the party with the most elected MP’s.

We have seen over the years that a party can replace it’s leader, at one point it felt like this had become a weekly occurrence.

The Labour party is about to embark on switching holder of the top job. But there is something a little different about the path this takes.

Rather than appointing someone that campaigned on a manifesto and won a seat during a General Election, we are seeing someone come with their own ideas on the direction the country should take, having being elected an MP by a very small number of people in terms of the overall electorate and who will then again be appointed as Prime Minister by an even narrower group of people.

Unlike some countries we do not elect a president, but you can bet that it is the person at the top of the incoming party that people have in mind when they are voting and many may not even be aware who their local MP is when they vote for them. It is the leadership of this one person and the direction they set that I suspect the vast majority vote for.

This begs the question if changing mid-term is acceptable, when it is such a small number of people making the decision and the person was not part of the original team, nor did they campaign to be elected on the same manifest.

Andy Burnham may well have said the things that matter to a tiny constituency and convinced them to elect him, but these are national issues and therefore to have legitimacy he should surely seek a mandate via a General Election.

Of course he won’t take the risk and with sentiment shifting clearly toward the simple answers to complex problems, shouty mob, he might be right to hold off or risk a Rishi Sunak moment.