brown to change the election system?

[kinell]

recently watching gordon brown he repeatedly insists that we should vote for HIM as the person best qualified to turn around our fortunes

heres me thinking that we have a constituency based electoral system where (in principal) we vote for our local mp who we believe will act in our best interests

gb now says vote for ME to save britain (and so ignore local candidates)

perhaps we should remember that he has weazeled his way to being prime minister when the people who voted labour in last time we in fact voting for tony blair

so, nobody voted for him as pm last time

thankfully it looks like that result will be repeated on thursday

[jno]

most PMs since the war first got the job without being elected, so nothing odd about Brown there.

As for voting for a PM instead of local candidates, that's what all these TV debates have been about. More like the US presidency.

[kinell]

jno

my memory worse than yours i think

i am struggling to recall the most prime ministers since the war who have taken over the reins from a prime minister who has resigned mid-term (or died) and clung on desperately without letting us have a timely vote on the issue

gb says that we didnt need an election when blair quit......why?

because we have 'a constituency based electoral system' and you didnt vote for blair so you dont need to approve of me as pm in a vote

until now apparently....

vote for ME..

[jno]

I've found a little list

http://warelane.wordp...cted-prime-ministers/

13 of them, and most didn't even have an internal party election. As I recall, Brown did offer to stand for election in the party but nobody would run against him. But I don't think he likes this beauty contest stuff himself at all, he knows Clegg and Cameron are much more photogenic. He has to go along with it, though.

[modeller]

Most people vote for a party not the person in fact it has been found most people don't even know who their MP is , let alone know anything about him. Our PMs are the leaders of the ruling party who can and do change them.
Our PMs actually have more power than US Presidents because they are the leader of the ruling party. Whereas in the US the President may lead a minority government which is why they frequently can not get their legislation passed.
When GB said vote for him I believe he was referring to his time as chancellor and his handling of the economy.

[modeller]

jno I found your list of unelected PMs very interesting and in each case
the circumstances leading up to it.

[VHG]

> let alone know anything about him

No women MPs eh.

[boxtops]

but we didn't know when TB was voted in, that he'd cooked up this cosy deal with GB that at some point he would resign and hand over. Not very democratic to me.

[VHG]

>When GB said vote for him I believe he was referring to his time as chancellor and his handling of the economy.

Yes he made SUCH a good job of managing the economy didnt he.

The UK government borrowed 163 BILLION pounds last year (I know some can be blamed on the banks)

http://news.bbc.co.uk...business/8636701.stm.

[jno]

yes, modeller has a good point about British PMs being in many ways more powerful than US presidents. Brown would never have had the trouble Obama had in pushing through healthcare reforms. Just how good a thing this is may be open to question.

[modeller]

VHK I didn't say he was a good chancellor . I said that's what he was referring to. He also inferred that the other two had no experience of running the economy.
If I had to choose his main failure I would say allowing the banks and building societies to lend money without any real control. That caused the boom in house prices and the subsequent banking collapse.