United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[brucejoel99]

How does this even work mechanically? Parliament has been dissolved. How can Charles make someone the new PM if Parliament is out of session?

I don’t see how he could unless he has the authority to call parliament back into session or delay the election.

Parliament is already dissolved so there isn’t a government for him to appoint a PM to.

For an immediate appointment, the Tories first need to amend their party leadership rules technically requiring candidates to be MPs, since that'd be a bit tricky right now as, like you point out, there aren't any MPs rn. Likewise, the mechanism for Charles constitutionally appointing a PM is whoever has the confidence of the House of Commons... but there's no Commons rn (& it can't be recalled because it doesn't presently exist), so practically, he'd recommend Cameron with the still-existent Cabinet's agreement to Charles, & Charles would appoint Cameron to preside over Cabinet through the election, since constitutionally, the British executive is technically government-by-Cabinet, rather than one headed by a PM.

[Pericles]

Couldn't Sunak resign as Conservative Party leader but not as Prime Minister?

[brucejoel99]

Couldn't Sunak resign as Conservative Party leader but not as Prime Minister?

Yes. With the party maintaining any credibility? Who knows?

[Pericles]

Couldn't Sunak resign as Conservative Party leader but not as Prime Minister?

Yes. With the party maintaining any credibility? Who knows?

If only the King could just appoint Keir Starmer PM already lol.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I genuinely think after the D-Day sh**tshow the King might want to do Sunak slowly.

[GM Team Member and Acting PPT WB]

Just to give a rundown of the various minor left parties:

The Communist Party of Britain (CPB): The Marxist-Leninist faction of the old CPGB, which broke away from the main party in 1988 after it adopted a Eurocommunist platform. A fairly old-school Marxist-Leninist formation, it maintains ties with the Workers Party of Korea and is a signatory to the Pyongyang Declaration (organised in 1992 by the latter party).

It turns out I'm in a server with a CPB supporter, it's a normally non-political place for posting foxes but they posted this alongside the message "Literally the only party that actually gives a crap about us here":



(yea I know discord will kill this link in a few days, it's not too important, just a rainbow flag with a hammer and sickle saying "for LGBT liberation not rainbow capitalism" and their website)

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

I genuinely think after the D-Day sh**tshow the King might want to do Sunak slowly.

I imagine the King is quite ill and unable to see Mr Sunak until say, high noon on the first Friday of next month?

[Hnv1]

How does this even work mechanically? Parliament has been dissolved. How can Charles make someone the new PM if Parliament is out of session?

I don’t see how he could unless he has the authority to call parliament back into session or delay the election.

Parliament is already dissolved so there isn’t a government for him to appoint a PM to.

For an immediate appointment, the Tories first need to amend their party leadership rules technically requiring candidates to be MPs, since that'd be a bit tricky right now as, like you point out, there aren't any MPs rn. Likewise, the mechanism for Charles constitutionally appointing a PM is whoever has the confidence of the House of Commons... but there's no Commons rn (& it can't be recalled because it doesn't presently exist), so practically, he'd recommend Cameron with the still-existent Cabinet's agreement to Charles, & Charles would appoint Cameron to preside over Cabinet through the election, since constitutionally, the British executive is technically government-by-Cabinet, rather than one headed by a PM.

That seems very stringent. What would happen if Sunak passed away tomorrow? surely cabinet will simply vote for someone as caretaker with the king's assent.

What would happen if a war or some catastrophe happened and the country needed emergency legislation after parliament dissolved? will they just use royal proclamations until a new parliament is convened?

[TheTide]

I genuinely think after the D-Day sh**tshow the King might want to do Sunak slowly.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Note that the audience for this will not be notable for being very large.

I was right. The overnights were about 3.2 million which would be a lot for many kinds of programme but not for this kind of thing. I doubt many people have been particularly motivated to watch it later via the iPlayer, so we don't need to worry about the linear/non-linear issue significantly distorting matters.

[TheTide]

Note that the audience for this will not be notable for being very large.

I was right. The overnights were about 3.2 million which would be a lot for many kinds of programme but not for this kind of thing. I doubt many people have been particularly motivated to watch it later via the iPlayer, so we don't need to worry about the linear/non-linear issue significantly distorting matters.

 

I wonder what the viewing figures for debates (with this kind of format) would have been back in the days when 20 million regularly tuned in to watch some idiot murder some other idiot in some soap opera. I suppose it would have depended to a significant extent on the personalities.           

[IceAgeComing]

On some of the above constitutional questions - its worth noting that the government still exists during the election period and Ministers are still in post (although with realistic restrictions to their powers to make new long-term decisions until after they clearly have a renewed mandate; or a new Prime Minister and ministers are appointed. I think that theoretically Sunak could resign as Prime Minister and suggest to the King that someone else be appointed for the interim - it would be highly unprecedented and the King may well settle on it not being his role to help or hinder the Conservative party's election prospects in whatever decision he makes. In terms of a replacement I think it would be logical to suggest that it only could be a senior member of the previous government who'd also retain their position - and that they were explicitly a caretaker until things were resolved (so logically the only candidates would be Hunt, Cameron or Cleverly as holders of the great offices of state; or Dowden who is Deputy Prime Minister). This is purely academic as this won't happen - if he did resign as Tory leader it would be destructive to their campaign as the offer to the public would be 'vote for us and someone dunno who will be PM' with no guarantee that they'd respect the election manifesto - plus it reminds people of the chaotic Johnson/Truss/Sunak period of continual chaos.

If Sunak was to die then obviously you'd see a much more muted campaign (it'd stop completely for a few days and I think the fire would naturally be taken out) - as above they'd hurriedly appoint one of the above names to fill the constitutional role of the job until things work themselves out. Probably the closest things to this would have been the historic decisions made by the Tory party before they had a formal leadership process and had to replace dead or ill leaders quite quickly. Again academic as any leader in that position by health would have resigned before; and a big accident would be very surprising.

If there was a crisis that required some sort of emergency powers I'm sure that through a combination of the existing executive powers and the royal perogative you'd get by until either they found a hack to bring back the old Parliament (which would require the consent of the opposition and realistically a national government) or have an election which then would retroactively pass legislation to formalise the arrangements that were previously introduced (the UK can do retroactive legislation in a number of cases - happens all the time with tax loopholes as the most obvious example). That sort of crisis though feels like something that would be clearly developing over the course of months so I would suspect this would only be relevant if a Parliament naturally expired rather than an early election. Realistically the main thing that would require emergency powers would be a war where there was a risk of the use of nuclear weapons and at that point constitutional order is not that important in the big scheme of things.

If you look back at the old Emergency Powers plans in the 70s/80s in case of the Cold War going hot the first set of emergency powers were pre-drafted bits of legislation they'd have gotten through Parliament quickly but the last set that effectively would have given Council chief-execs and Junior Ministers absolute powers in certain regions of the countries would have been announced and implemented with no parliamentary process because you don't need those powers until the bombs are in the air and then you've not got time to do it by the book.

[Blair]

The post above is much better than mine but my broad understanding is that while there are practices & conventions the Monarch can largely do what they want around appointing a monarch; the Fixed term parliament act did slightly tweak it and gave Parliament a role, but now the King has the sole power; he can appoint who he wants, and they don't even need to be an MP or a Peer.

[Blair]

On gaffe watch a Tory councillor has attacked a labour candidate, who is a veteran, for being in France for a D-Day charity event- the Labour candidate who is an ex-para has now raised £2,000.

Another Tory candidate ,who some will now from twitter as being a very partisan hack, appears to have moved into an Airbnb and tried to very artfully do a twitter post about 'now being a resident of the constituency' which was done in the way that people do when they buy a house (e.g a picture of him by the front door with a key)

The D-Day Report in the Times is fascinating as it appears that palace courtiers are briefing against No.10 and the Prime Minister. Never great; for his many faults King Brian has always cared about the armed forces and this would have very much annoyed him I suspect.

Note that the audience for this will not be notable for being very large.

I was right. The overnights were about 3.2 million which would be a lot for many kinds of programme but not for this kind of thing. I doubt many people have been particularly motivated to watch it later via the iPlayer, so we don't need to worry about the linear/non-linear issue significantly distorting matters.

 

I wonder what the viewing figures for debates (with this kind of format) would have been back in the days when 20 million regularly tuned in to watch some idiot murder some other idiot in some soap opera. I suppose it would have depended to a significant extent on the personalities.           

I was going to say as so many people in politics are basically dense when it comes to normal media consumption it has been ignored just how big the decline in TV has been over the past decade; it's not even a case of people watching on catch up. Coronation Street only had 2.8 people watch the Christmas special when everyone is sat around the house- it got 8 million only a decade ago.

[MABA 2020]

This is all too funny, and if Sunak did resign (I know, not likely), for Cameron to open and close this particular period of Conservative government? Perfection

[Blair]

And a final thing; I do actually wonder how good the Conservatives intelligence is about the campaign.

The party use to obsessively poll and focus group everything but with the reported lack of funds you wonder what the quality is of their private polling.

They also lack the canvassers they had even a decade ago; the loss of so many councillors means you wonder how many people they actually have knocking on doors who are able to warn the party about how things are going.

Calling the election early would have upset the campaign plans of MPs over the summer; many would have hoped to use the 3 months to essentially campaign in way that incumbent MPs and which makes a small difference at the margins; Labour in 2010 credited it with holding onto a dozen or so seats.

Instead you will now have campaigns having to write their election material (for non-UK posters leaflets are still the main way of campaigning- every campaign gets at least 1 free leaflet a 'freepost' to each house in the constituency and can pay for additional letters/flyers) extremely quickly with candidates who won't have time to even do the basics e.g get a photo in different clothes in every rail station in the constituency, visit friendly businesses for photos and so forth.  

With the short campaign you will have postal votes landing in the next week too...

We could really do with some constituency polling; I feel that the canary will be the performance of the Lib Dems in seats they have never won but which they did very well in 2022/2023 locals and where broadly speaking you have a strong core of remain voters & people with mortgages. Once you start getting the Tory vote total quite low and add tactical voting you get to bloodbath territory.

[Estrella]

You can really tell that Sunak has never done a day of constituency campaigning in his life. It’s not all about abstract ideological grandstanding, you upper-class twit.

[Antonio the Sixth]

On gaffe watch a Tory councillor has attacked a labour candidate, who is a veteran, for being in France for a D-Day charity event- the Labour candidate who is an ex-para has now raised £2,000.

So Tories seem dead set on making "F**k D-Day" a consistent theme of their campaign huh? Interesting strategy.

[Torrain]

The candidates in Canterbury (including the incumbent) are doing a university hustings with an audience of undergrads. Which I'm sure will go fine.

[MillennialModerate]

I do think if they made Cameron leader they could get back A LOT of the moderate Tories who are voting Labour. Enough to win? Surely not even close. But def keep it closer to bring the Tories below a Blairslide

[brucejoel99]

How does this even work mechanically? Parliament has been dissolved. How can Charles make someone the new PM if Parliament is out of session?

I don’t see how he could unless he has the authority to call parliament back into session or delay the election.

Parliament is already dissolved so there isn’t a government for him to appoint a PM to.

For an immediate appointment, the Tories first need to amend their party leadership rules technically requiring candidates to be MPs, since that'd be a bit tricky right now as, like you point out, there aren't any MPs rn. Likewise, the mechanism for Charles constitutionally appointing a PM is whoever has the confidence of the House of Commons... but there's no Commons rn (& it can't be recalled because it doesn't presently exist), so practically, he'd recommend Cameron with the still-existent Cabinet's agreement to Charles, & Charles would appoint Cameron to preside over Cabinet through the election, since constitutionally, the British executive is technically government-by-Cabinet, rather than one headed by a PM.

That seems very stringent. What would happen if Sunak passed away tomorrow? surely cabinet will simply vote for someone as caretaker with the king's assent.

What would happen if a war or some catastrophe happened and the country needed emergency legislation after parliament dissolved? will they just use royal proclamations until a new parliament is convened?

After Parliament dissolves, legislation becomes impossible, because there's no Parliament to recall or have the confidence of. 'Til it's back, the Constitution shrugs... but His Majesty's Government continues in place 'til the election, with the King still acting on the advice of the PM & Ministers of the Crown (who are technically independent of the Commons), & the PM's appointment obviously isn't technically parliamentary business, with the King nominally retaining the authority to appoint Ministers of the Crown (the convention that the King appoints the leader of the largest party in the Commons to be PM is based only on the Government needing the Commons' support to pass a Budget, which isn't a concern during a dissolution period), so Charles could act on Cabinet's advice re: who to appoint to be a new PM even while the Commons isn't sitting. Presumably, if Sunak did randomly drop dead as the incumbent PM, Cabinet would come up with a name to recommend to Charles as the "caretaker" PM 'til the election, presumably one of the incumbent Great Offices of State (but this would be unchartered constitutional waters: say there was a genuine conflict within Cabinet as to who should be the new PM, & the Palace tells them that Charles isn't unilaterally picking & Cabinet has to sort itself out, & Cabinet just f**ks off anyway, No. 10 may very well just automatically revert to No. 11, with the Chancellor holding both offices 'til the election). Realistically, Britain can be effectively governed for a brief period of time without a Parliament, or even a PM, so long as there are incumbent Secretaries of State, given their executive powers.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I genuinely think after the D-Day sh**tshow the King might want to do Sunak slowly.

I've never noticed before that Hewson himself laughs in this clip. How very Australian!

I do think if they made Cameron leader they could get back A LOT of the moderate Tories who are voting Labour. Enough to win? Surely not even close. But def keep it closer to bring the Tories below a Blairslide

No. Bringing the Tories TO a Blairside is probably a tall order at this point.

[oldtimer]

Couldn't Sunak resign as Conservative Party leader but not as Prime Minister?

He can resign from his role as Party Leader but not fired from it at this point, but he can be forced to resign as Prime Minister if the Cabinet have balls.

The Conservatives would be leadersless but practically whoever gets designated as PM by the Cabinet will become the new face of the Conservative election campaign.

Signs to look at:

1.Sunak has a major election campaign meeting tomorrow.
2.If Reform are beating the Conservatives in opinion polls before Thursday.

So pencil Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday as possible forced resignation dates, after that there wont be much time to turn things around, so chances go lower.

[afleitch]

No. Bringing the Tories TO a Blairside is probably a tall order at this point.

Pretty much

https://twitter.com/drjennings/status/1799567667872793021

[Blair]

The Conservatives have very much suffered from a belief that during a campaign the polls will always narrow in their favour... it has basically been baked in that they would be able to get the lead down by pure virtue of being the Conservative Party.