I think there's something fundamentally wrong with British culture. How do they keep electing such garbage politicians? It's like every decision they make looks awful to everyone but Brits only realize it after the fact.
While you are not wrong it's worth noting he was not elected by the public and even worse before he was basically handed the job he ran (internaly) on a platform of fixing the economy he fucked as chancellor of the exchequer
I hate this excuse, everyone knows how parliaments work. You vote for representatives that form a government. Everyone votes for their own constituency only but not everyone ends up with dickheads so consistently.
He lost the only party member leadership vote he took part in. He lost to someone completely detached from reality, that immediately sought to destroy the value of most people pensions that only benefitted a few hedge funds looking to profit from the UKs demise.
Britain elects parties who then choose the leader. Thats how weve had so many different PMs. Its not like for example where the people elect an individual for four years.
We had a PM who lasted less time than a lettuce. All chosen by the conservative party
USA doesn't really elect our leaders either. It's basically the same, we have a bunch of people that are expected to vote the way their local population votes but they don't have to, they can vote anyway they want. Popular vote means nothing. Only difference is once elected they get the whole 4 years.
Another commenter said this but the last two prime ministers were only chosen by the conservative party membership, not by general election. So about 30,000 people have decided the ruler of the country for the past couple of years. You can argue about PMs before then but First Past the Post voting also has a lot to answer for.
It bugs me when they say that they are doing this and that “for the will of the people” when the majority of the people didn’t vote for them. And even if they did, it might have been for a different reason than the thing that they are talking about at the time.
We only get to elect our local member of Parliament, who represents a party. They elect the actual prime-minister, and when one is kicked out before election time, they get to pick another one.
That's how we've had so many without having multiple elections, cause we didn't pick them.
Also, for some reason loads of young people just don't vote, meaning the old fogies who do vote the Tories in over and over, who (in theory) benefit them but fuck everybody else...
In actuality they fuck everybody except the rich, but as long as they say and do some racist/xenophobic things now and again, the old fogies run to the polls to vote them in over and over.
Americans get too excited when they read headlines like this. Nobody voted for Rishi, they voted for the Tories what felt like a decade ago. The Tories have had a revolving door policy, and new rubes keep taking the PM position after the last one leaves/is forced out. Some portion of that 70% are Tory voters who just want another spin on the PM wheel.
Last election was in 2019, and they’re usually every 5 years. The next one has to be set for no later than January 2025, but could be earlier than that.
1st: the UK never voted for Rishi Sunak. Truss (also unelected) left and the Conservative party internally chose their new leader, who they appointed as PM since they're the party in government.
2nd: most people in the UK vote against the Tories and always have. All they need to do is get a couple of percent above the next most popular party and it gives them 100% say. The worst part is that if another anti-Tory party comes around, all it serves to do is split the anti-Tory vote more, and hand them more power.
It's our voting system that is broken. People in general do not like the Conservative party.
To clarify for those who never lived in Britain and as I explained above:
In the UK even as little as 37% of votes cast (which can be less that the votes from 1/4 of voters, due to abstention) can translate into a 50% + 1 majority in Parliament and the country has no written Constitution, so a simple majority in Parliament can easilly changing laws around things most people consider essential, unlike in countries with Constitutions were certain things can only be changed with 66% or even 75% - depending on the country - of parliamentary votes.
People in, for example, the rest of Europe, get all surprised when the UK government just makes demonstrations de facto unlawful and add extreme requirements for labour strikes so that it's extremelly hard for unions to organise them, because in most of those countries, unlike the UK, changing such essential rights is not something a party that only got 25% of voters on their side can do whenever they feel like it.
I'm not from the UK but from what I have seen the UK seems to really be heading in the same direction as the US where there are two absolutely awful parties to vote for and one is like 10% better.
Only if you buy into the Murdoch press. Similar thoughts tend to be expressed about Australia’s Labor party also, when the actual reality is markedly different.
The last labour government that was in power was the most right wing, neoliberal one there has ever been, and yet they still massively improved the country over the shit state that Thatcher and Major got it into.
Over doubling of NHS funding, bringing it up to being the highest ranked health service in the world for a time.
Homelessness massively cut down, with rough sleeping virtually irradiated (EDIT) eradicated. Bizarre autocorrect there lol
The minimum wage and a bunch of other workers rights improvements.
Parliamentary processes made more transparent
Devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales, NI
Massively improved schooling
Massively reduced crime, especially violent crime.
Longest period of sustained low inflation since the 60s despite having a rapidly growing economy
More years in economic surplus than the Tories
Didn't interfere with the BBC, even going as far as to put in place a Conservative chairman, because he was the best suited for the job, rather than appointing a mouthpiece for the Labour party.
Help for childcare costs
Drastic improvements for people with disabilities in terms of infrastructure, schooling, care
Expansion in LGBT rights, including the right to adopt
probably a bunch of stuff I've forgotten.
I'd much, much much rather have an actually competent government that broadly seeks out to improve people's lives, even if they do have failings (e.g. failure to do much about the housing crisis) rather than the Conservative party, under whom the UK has got worse in practically every single way.
I am from the UK and let me tell you, we've been there for a while. We had a progressive in the 10% better party that made it actually substantially better but the media decided that supporting Palestine is tantamount to antisemitism and basically crushed his chances. Obviously backed by the stupidity of the average voter, who decided that some vague assertions of antisemitism were more important than the numerous failings (e.g. brexit) and verifiable racism of the other party.
Aside from that brief period, we've been forced to hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils for a long time. Starmer is generally disliked and nobody knows what he stands for (Because the answer is basically nothing) but he is still going to wipe the floor with the Tories. That isn't because he's good, just because the Tories are really that useless.
Honestly that’s the thing about when the UK talks shit about US politics - yeah, we have our problems but yall VOTED to destroy your economy and close your borders to your own detriment and you currently have a revolving door PM where one of them got outlasted by a head of iceberg.
In all fairness Britain are the only self-proclaimed Democracy ("Oldest in the World", they tell us) with an even more undemocratic political system than the US, because in addition to a First Past The Post voting system, they also have a monarch with - as was exposed a couple of years ago - real power as head of state, an unelected Second Chamber with inherited and nominated-for-live positions and, probably worse, no written Constituition so any party in Parliament with a simple 50% + 1 majority can pretty much do whatever they want.
The FTPT + No Constitution combination is probably the worst part, as it means that a party with a mere 41% of votes of cast (so about the votes of only 1/4 of voters, due to abstention) - such as the current ones - can get a parliamentary majority (so, more than 50% of seats) and do things that in other countries would require constitutional changes (which generally require 66% or 75% of votes, depending on country), so things like changing the local definition of Human Rights.
Mind you, the Brexit vote isn't at all affected by these things, so your point still stands unaffected by those considerations.
Kind of, but if the president resigned and there was no VP lined up, so the party just kinda has a chat amongst themselves about who to replace them with (invariably causing the worst pieces of shit the public wouldn't vote for to rise to the top)..
Also, US presidents don't seem to resign in shame, so there's that.
For what it's worth, in 2019 a majority of people voted for parties other than the Tories. They received 43% of the vote, and their leader at the time was Boris Johnson.
The last two Prime Ministers weren't elected by voters, though I suppose you could argue that the majority of voters didn't elect Boris either.
The comments I'm seeing saying something like "well you voted for this" are incredibly misguided. We have a fucking terribly archaic voting system that doesn't serve us at all, there are several large pushes throughout the UK trying to change that.
First past the post has to go. I believe it's the most important issue in our country right now, because it's stopping us from dealing with the actually important issues. To wit: we're debating sending 100 refugees or less a year to Rwanda as a matter of the utmost urgency while the world is catching fire, in any metaphorical sense you care to mention. Geographical concentration of voters should no longer confer political power where the open internet exists.
There are two problems with the urgent need to change this broken broken system though: 1. I don't know what better to replace it with, and 2. I don't have enough faith in the British public anymore to actually agree on the more important issues once it's gone.
Side note: the argument doing the rounds about "but the far right will get in" is irrelevant because our last two home secretaries have been irreconcilable, despicable far-right headbangers. They're already in.
Then again, he is a role-model for a successful second-generation immigration family I guess.
Can someone from the UK tell me how Brexit-Voters reacted to chanting racist slogans against immigration and then their voted party gave them a second-generation immigrant as a PM? Did their head explode or do they not have the capacity to see it as a bit ironic?
He became PM through an internal Tory vote for a leader, after the previous PM stepped down. She became leader in exactly the same way and had only lasted a seven weeks since her predecessor was forced to quit.
The Tories are truly awful, and their choice of leaders has shown that.