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by petercooper 6136 days ago
If you think that's annoying, I can beat it:

http://www.ted.com/talks/gordon_brown.html

Not only does he have the stage manner of an uncaring dentist, it's worth remembering he's an undemocratically elected leader espousing all sorts of nonsense about democracy.
1 comments
a-priori 6136 days ago
he's an undemocratically elected leader

Care to explain what you mean by that?

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ZeroGravitas 6136 days ago
I assume what is meant is that Tony Blair stood in the election, his party won and then later Gordon Brown was chosen to replace him by the party, not by the ordinary voter.
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a-priori 6136 days ago
Oh, I suppose someone who doesn't understand the Westminster system might think that... but it's important to understand that the people never elected Tony Blair to the position of Prime Minister either.

(I should point out that people might not understand the Westminster system even if they live in a country that uses it. In Canada last year, there was a fiasco about how three opposition parties wanted to form a coalition government to replace the Prime Minister without an election. Perfectly legal, but a lot of Canadians were convinced that it was a sort of coup. The current Prime Minister exploited this and ended up keeping his seat.)

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petercooper 6135 days ago
but it's important to understand that the people never elected Tony Blair to the position of Prime Minister either.

That's legally true but pragmatically false. Sure, we vote for the MP to represent our local seat and then a majority of MPs results in a leading party, but that's not how elections are pitched.

Back in 1997, we had a worse than useless Conservative party headed by John Major and a fresh, rebranded "New Labour" party headed by Tony Blair. People voted for Labour MPs in their droves to get Tony Blair into power. He was not technically democratically voted to the position of PM but that was considered the natural result of voting Labour.

We did not, however, vote for Brown in any form, legally or pragmatically. Indeed, it was not even considered at the time that he would be a successor. The same situation occurred with both Callaghan and Major but I personally feel the British public has less of a taste for the old school Westminster style and has a better feel for the almost presidential style brought in by Blair.

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