Thursday 25 August 2022

Not Going To Engage?

Rishi Sunak has hinted that he might not vote for the Budget. He can backtrack a bit now, but that was obviously what he meant, and his point has been made. In that case, would a Truss Government have a Commons majority? Most of her party's MPs will never have wanted Liz Truss as Prime Minister, and if her rival would not necessarily give her confidence and supply, then presumably nor would at least some of his many supporters.

Voting rights officially kick in at 15, although there is no sign that anyone is checking, but there is no minimum age whatever to join the Conservative Party, and membership is sometimes given as an upper-class christening present. For a person who was under the age of 26, it may be bought for a mere five pounds. At £105, 21 years of such gold card citizenship would be a pittance to a silver-spooned godparent.

Yet in appointing a Prime Minister, why should the Queen honour the choice of people who were aged 15 or younger, and of any and everyone whose grownup rate of £25 a private organisation had agreed to take, including people whose nationality would not qualify them to vote or stand for Parliament, people who had lived abroad for decades, people who had never set foot in the United Kingdom, and people who were having official-looking envelopes forwarded to them in prison or in secure psychiatric institutions?

2 comments:

  1. It makes them furious when you question their right to appoint the PM.

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    Replies
    1. Something about a parliamentary rather than a presidential system, apparently. Britain must have had a presidential system until 2019, then.

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