What was your point?
That the Prime Minister is first among equals? That the PM effectively chairs the cabinet? There hasn't been proper cabinet led Government in the UK for a long time, Thatcher certainly didn't use a committee system, nor did Major or Blair. The PM leads the cabinet, sets the agenda and most likely leads the manifesto. What exactly is your point regarding primes inter pares?

So Brown appears to have an increasingly presidential attitude to the role of PM? I disagree, I would contend that Blair was much more presidential in outlook, Brown does appear to listen to his Cabinet.

Why does being a Scottish MP exclude him (in your view) from being Prime Minister of the UK? You haven't dealt with that point. Westminster governs the entirety of the UK, if it purely governed England then you might have a point, but at the moment you don't.
(dozers, do fuck off ur a nob m8, Fri 5 Feb 2010, 11:36, 1 reply)

That is my point
That the PM should be first among equals. Hope you didn't have to look that up incidentally. As for Thatcher, she just filled her cabinet with yesmen, and look where that got us. But I won't rehash everything we all know here. The idea behind a cabinet lead government is that responsibility and culpability are all equal. If someone screws up, the whole cabinet screws up, rather than having one head rolling, which in my eyes leads to a scapegoating culture where blame is thrown around like some kind of shit-covered live grenade, perhaps people should just get down to it and get on with running the country instead of saying "I didn't screw up, you screwed up!"

From what I see of Brown, he's just trying to be Blair, and to quote Legless earlier, he should not have invited Thatcher to tea. That proves how he wants to be, and wants to act. By that action alone he wants to act presidentially, if he isn't doing it already. Much like his much-lampooned predecessor. And I'm damned sure he doesn't set the agenda, something tells me the toadying little snotrag couldn't string a paragraph together if he tried. Much more likely to be Mandelson, the slimy toad that he is.

Finally, being Scottish doesn't disbar him from being an MP. I never said he shouldn't be, that seems to be something you've picked up on. Yes, I am aware of your dress-wearing, haggis-munching, whiskey quaffing, Burns-praising heritage. The fact we pick up on his nationality is nothing to do with the fact, if he was Welsh, Irish, Cornish (or far more likely from the planet Zobb) we'd still use that as an epithet- which is precisely my point from earlier- it's just a turn of phrase. Like calling Hitler an Austrian shortarse, or GW Bush an American simpleton. Perhaps, you should read earlier posts before attempting to pick them to shreds.

I'll leave you with an XKCD cartoon:


( jim_bob can herd cats., Fri 5 Feb 2010, 12:43, closed)

You suggested that Brown being an MP from north of the border
Was shaky grounds for him as PM. Your words, refer back to your original post. And I didn't have to look up Primes Inter Pares, I have some Latin knowledge and have studied the UK & US systems of Government. Thanks for asking though.

Yes, collective responsibility at cabinet level is the ideal and of course should be aimed for. Things change however, and as there is no written constitution in the UK (which of course there should be) it's a fact of political life that the way in which the Government operates will change.

And as long as we have people decrying that they didn't vote for the Prime Minister it will be a fact that there will be presidential style election campaigns (see the current David Cameron billboards for example, he says he'll cut the deficit, not that a Conservative Government will cut it). Politicians are in it to win votes, if they can do this by relying on their looks and personality over actual policies then that is what will happen.

In my view, what the UK needs is perhaps for schools to teach the basics of the electoral system, not as part of a Government and Politics A Level or Higher, but as part of a general education. If more people understand that they vote for a local representative, not (in over six hundred cases) a party leader then maybe we'll see a move back to consensus rule over presidential. I've already seen someone on here comment that Gordon Brown was never elected and that his name's never appeared on a ballot paper. That made me sad when I read it.

So, yes, we are in agreement that the PM should be first among equals. Where we differ is that I think it's unfair, childish and mendacious to lay the blame for presidential style politics in the UK at the feet of Gordon Brown. He has many faults, but he is not the source of all evil. Neither is Mandelson.

Deeply unpopular guys, but I still trust them more than I do David Cameron. Never trust a Tory.
(dozers, do fuck off ur a nob m8, Fri 5 Feb 2010, 13:00, closed)