Question from the American here. Does it ever bother folks that you don’t get a direct say in who the prime minister is? It’s a superior system to the bullshit we’ve got going on down here, and clearly, being able to directly vote for the head of state/government doesn’t guarantee shit, I’ve always felt like it not being able to choose the PM was kind of shitty
I think people who are unhappy with election results for other reasons sometimes make it an issue, disingenuously. But it doesn’t seem to me like anyone genuinely has a problem with it. PMs have considerably less power than presidents, and how much power they have is at least partly down to how the party chooses to govern itself. A PM who’s party has little power would be quite ineffectual. Maybe that isn’t great, but I’m not aware of a system that isn’t worse in that regard. Maybe the French system is slightly better, but their president’s power still depends a lot on majority party backing, at least for domestic issues. (And that’s a high-level not-super-informed opinion.)
In practice in Canada, the party leader shapes the party, and the electorate votes for the party shape they see, knowing who made it that way. In effect, we practically are voting for our PM. We’re just tempering that choice against local concerns. But even then the local MP who most aligns with our values is probably going to share a party with the party leader we’d most like as PM. We’re only divided against ourselves when that local MP happens to personally be a lousy politician while someone else is doing a much better job of representing their constituents.
Yeah, I was familiar with, like, the nuts and bolts part. It was the emotional reaction, I guess, I was looking for. So most people just don’t have a problem with it?
In the us, we used to not be able to vote for senators. We elected the house, and the house elected the senators, and that shit didn’t fly. Lol. One thing about Americans, we want to have opinions on shit. Even when we shouldn’t, we gotta voice ourselves. If we tried to switch to a Westminster system here, people would be up in arms about not being able to vote directly for the PM, like we were about senators. Even if it’s a better system. It’s not the greatest trait our country has.
It doesn’t bother me. Everyone has the chance if they don’t have a membership in another party, to become a member of the party of their choice and vote for the leader that may or may not become PM. So we do get to vote for PM in that way.
I read somewhere that the PM only gets about 25% of the decisions made making which seems to be different than the usa. I prefer it to be that way.
There are some ignorant people here who haven’t bothered learning about our parliamentary system that mistakenly thinks ours works like the usa… and thankfully we don’t - and they seem to come out of the woodwork on occasion and object. So you may hear some rumblings like that.
Question from the American here. Does it ever bother folks that you don’t get a direct say in who the prime minister is? It’s a superior system to the bullshit we’ve got going on down here, and clearly, being able to directly vote for the head of state/government doesn’t guarantee shit, I’ve always felt like it not being able to choose the PM was kind of shitty
I think people who are unhappy with election results for other reasons sometimes make it an issue, disingenuously. But it doesn’t seem to me like anyone genuinely has a problem with it. PMs have considerably less power than presidents, and how much power they have is at least partly down to how the party chooses to govern itself. A PM who’s party has little power would be quite ineffectual. Maybe that isn’t great, but I’m not aware of a system that isn’t worse in that regard. Maybe the French system is slightly better, but their president’s power still depends a lot on majority party backing, at least for domestic issues. (And that’s a high-level not-super-informed opinion.)
In practice in Canada, the party leader shapes the party, and the electorate votes for the party shape they see, knowing who made it that way. In effect, we practically are voting for our PM. We’re just tempering that choice against local concerns. But even then the local MP who most aligns with our values is probably going to share a party with the party leader we’d most like as PM. We’re only divided against ourselves when that local MP happens to personally be a lousy politician while someone else is doing a much better job of representing their constituents.
Yeah, I was familiar with, like, the nuts and bolts part. It was the emotional reaction, I guess, I was looking for. So most people just don’t have a problem with it?
In the us, we used to not be able to vote for senators. We elected the house, and the house elected the senators, and that shit didn’t fly. Lol. One thing about Americans, we want to have opinions on shit. Even when we shouldn’t, we gotta voice ourselves. If we tried to switch to a Westminster system here, people would be up in arms about not being able to vote directly for the PM, like we were about senators. Even if it’s a better system. It’s not the greatest trait our country has.
I mean, I can’t really speak for 41 million people, but yeah that’s my perspective/anecdotal observation.
Of course you can! Just say it louder than other people, it works for politics in the US…
It doesn’t bother me. Everyone has the chance if they don’t have a membership in another party, to become a member of the party of their choice and vote for the leader that may or may not become PM. So we do get to vote for PM in that way.
I read somewhere that the PM only gets about 25% of the decisions made making which seems to be different than the usa. I prefer it to be that way.
There are some ignorant people here who haven’t bothered learning about our parliamentary system that mistakenly thinks ours works like the usa… and thankfully we don’t - and they seem to come out of the woodwork on occasion and object. So you may hear some rumblings like that.
On the whole, we are happy with our system.