The following is a brief 101 on what a Prime Minister does. Who actually selects the prime Minister, remember Gordon Brown and Theresa May both assumed the office following their own Party Political process they did not lead a campaign in a General Election to qualify for the invitation by Her Majesty the Queen to form a Government.
The Bold statement that ´´56% said he would be a disaster as Prime minister´´, quoted from the BBC today , does not make any sense it is a signal that no evidence is needed or understanding of how Democracy and Government works in the British Isles is needed in the Karaoke Politics of Britain in 2017.
The Prime Minister, Are we electing a Prime Minister, A Cabinet or a Government?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/intermediate2/modern_studies/government_and_decision_making_in_central_government/uk_parliament/revision/1/
The UK Parliament
House of Commons
House of Lords
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Life Peers are appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. They have the job for life and cannot pass the title on to their children.
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Archbishops and bishops sit in the Lords. They pass their membership on to the next most senior bishop when they retire.
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Elected hereditary Peers. The 1999 House of Lords Act removed all but 92 hereditary peers who were elected internally.
Powers of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
Special advisers
The Work of a backbench MP
Backbench MPs inside Parliament
Backbench MPs outside Parliament
https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmpolcon/writev/842/m2.htm
The role and powers of the Prime Minister
Prime Minister’s functions 2011
Constitutional and procedural
1: Managing the relationship between the Government and the Monarch and the Heir to the Throne.
2: Managing the relationship between the Government and the Opposition on a Privy Counsellor basis.
3: Managing the relationships between UK Central Government and devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
4: Establishing order of precedence in Cabinet.
5: Interpretation and content of procedural and conduct guidelines for ministers as outlined in the Ministerial Code and the draft Cabinet Manual.
6: Oversight, with the Cabinet Secretary advising, of the Civil Service Code as enshrined in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.
7: Decisions, with the Justice Secretary, on whether and when to use the ministerial override on disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
8: Requesting the Sovereign to grant a dissolution of Parliament (unless and until Parliament passes the Fixed-Term Parliament Bill.)
9: Authorising the Cabinet Secretary to facilitate negotiations between the political parties in the event of a ‘hung’ General Election result.
10: Managing intra-Coalition relationships with the Deputy Prime Minister.
Appointments
(Made in the name of the Sovereign but chosen by the Prime Minister).
1: Appointment and dismissal of ministers (final approval of their parliamentary private secretaries and special advisers) in consultation with the Deputy Prime Minister for Liberal Democrat appointments and the appointment of the Law Officers.
2: Top appointments to the headships of the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Headquarters.
3: Top appointments to the Home Civil Service; and, in collaboration with the Foreign Secretary to the Diplomatic Service; and, with the Defence Secretary, to the Armed Forces.
4: Top ecclesiastical appointments (though since Gordon Brown’s premierships, the Prime Minister has conveyed the preference of the Church of England’s selectors to the Monarch without interference).
5: Residual academic appointments: the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Principalship of King’s College, London; a small number of regius professorships in Oxford and Cambridge (the First Minister in Edinburgh is responsible for the Scottish regius chairs). Since the Blair premiership the No 10 practice has been to convey the wishes of the institutions to the Queen without interference.
6: Top public sector appointments and regulators (with some informal parliamentary oversight).
7: Appointments to committees of inquiry and royal commissions.
8: The award of party political honours.
9: Party political appointments to the House of Lords (independent crossbench peers are selected by the House of Lords Appointments Commission and the Prime Minister conveys the recommendations to the Monarch without interference).
Conduct of cabinet and parliamentary business
1: Calling meetings of Cabinet and its committees. Fixing their agenda and, in the case of committees their membership in consultation with the Deputy Prime Minister.
2: The calling of ‘Political Cabinets’ with no officials present.
3: Deciding issues where Cabinet or Cabinet committees are unable to agree.
4: Deciding, with the Deputy Prime Minister, when the Cabinet is allowed an ‘opt out’ on collective responsibility and subsequent whipping arrangements in Parliament.
5: Granting ministers permission to miss Cabinet meetings or leave the country.
6: Ultimate responsibility (with the Deputy Prime Minister and the leaders of the House of Commons and the House of Lords) for the government’s legislative programme and the use of government time in the chambers of both Houses.
7: Answering questions for 30 minutes on Wednesdays when the House of Commons is sitting on nearly the whole range of government activity.
8: Appearing twice a year to give evidence before the House of Commons Liaision Committee.
Policy strategy and communications
1: Keeper, with the Deputy Prime Minister, of the Coalition’s overall Political Strategy.
2: Oversight of No 10 Communications Strategy and work of the Government Communication Network.
3: Pursuit and promulgation of special overarching policies particularly associated with the Prime Minister eg. the ‘Big Society.’
Organisational and efficiency questions
1: Organisation and Staffing of No 10 and the Cabinet Office (including the Prime Minister’s relationship with the Deputy Prime Minister and the two senior Cabinet Office ministers dealing with policy strategy and public service reform).
2: Size of Cabinet, workload on ministers and the Civil Service.
3: The creation and merger of government departments and executive agencies.
Budget and market-sensitive decisions
1: Determining with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary of the Treasury the detailed contents of the Budget. By tradition, the full Cabinet is only apprised of the full contents the morning before the Budget statement is delivered.
2: Interest rates are now set by the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer possess an override under the Bank of England Act 1998 if the ‘public interest’ requires and ‘by extreme economic circumstances’ but this has never been used.
National security
1: Chairing the weekly meetings of the National Security Council (which also serves, when needed, as a ‘War Cabinet’).
2: Oversight of the production and implementation of the National Security Strategy.
3: Oversight of counter-terrorist policies and arrangements.
4: Overall efficiency of the secret agencies, their operations, budgets and oversight and the intelligence assessments process in the Cabinet Office.
5: Preparation of the ‘War Book’.
6: Contingency planning to cope with threats to essential services and national health from whatever sources.
7: With the Foreign and Defence Secretaries the use of the royal prerogative to deploy Her Majesty’s Forces in action (with Parliament, by convention, being consulted if time allows).
8: With the Foreign Secretary the use of the royal prerogative to ratify or annul treaties, to recognise or derecognise countries (though in certain circumstances, the House of Commons can block treaty ratification under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010).
Special personal responsibilities
1: Representing the UK at a range of international meetings and ‘summits.’
2: The maintenance of the special intelligence and nuclear relationships with the US President under the terms of the 1946 Communications Agreement, the 1958 Agreement for Co-operation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defence Purposes and the 1963 Polaris Sales Agreement.
3: The decision to shoot down a hijacked aircraft or an unidentified civil aircraft which responds neither to radio contact nor the signals of RAF interceptor jets, before it reaches a conurbation or a key target on UK territory (plus the appointment of two or three deputies for this purpose).
4: Authorisation of the use of UK nuclear weapons including the preparation of four ‘last resort’ letters for installation in the inner safes of each Royal Navy Trident submarine and the appointment, on a personal basis rather than the Cabinet’s order of precedence, of the ‘nuclear deputies’ lest the Prime Minister should be out of reach or indisposed during an emergency.
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Prepared 15th March 2011 |
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ON THE MAY 2015 UK ELECTION.
‘Democracy is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’.” Joseph Schumpeter, Quoted from Roy Madron , Super Competent Democracies who in turn Cites. “Participation, and Democratic Theory” by Carole Pateman. Dr. Pateman says that, Schumpeter and his followers: … set the current Anglo-American political system as our democratic ideal (with) a ‘democratic theory’ that in many respects bears a strange resemblance to the anti-democratic arguments of the last (i.e. 19th) century. No longer is democratic theory centered on the participation of ‘the people’; in the contemporary theory of democracy it is the participation of the minority elite that is crucial and the non-participation of the apathetic, ordinary man lacking in the feelings of political efficacy, that is regarded as the main bulwark against instability.´´
I highly recommend that anyone that wishes to work out the game that New Labour (neo lib Blair Rebels against Corbyn ed.2017)now plays and why should try to get hold of a Copy of Roys book, any progressive publishers out there should get in touch with Roy and do a UK edition if he is amenable.
was often noted to scoff