We live in a parliamentary democracy, not a presidential one

The dismal Johnson story limps on, though any day now – perhaps even today – the 54 letters needed to force a confidence vote may have been submitted to the chairman of the 1922 Committee. A bolder prime minister than Johnson might call for that vote himself, as John Major did in the dark days of his premiership – and was rewarded by winning it.

Meanwhile, I have been thinking about Jacob Rees-Mogg’s bizarre intervention. Of course his suggestion that the Prime Minister today is a sort of president, so that a change of prime minister really requires to be followed immediately by a general election, was intended to put the wind up Tory MPs who would be defending marginal seats, but for a politician who seems happy to be described as the Minister for the Eighteenth Century, this was a revolutionary reading of the British Constitution.

What, one wonders, about the Crown? Has Rees-Mogg forgotten that we don’t have a president because the Queen is our head of state? Whatever the result of a general election or of the election of a new leader of the party with a majority in the House of Commons, a man or woman becomes prime minister only when invited by the monarch to form a government and receives the seal of office from the Queen.

Of course we recognise that this has usually become a formality since the Crown is now prudently removed from active politics. Yet it is not difficult to envisage circumstances in which the monarch might find it necessary to play a role in the formation of a government as George V did in 1931.

This is the United Kingdom, not a Republic in which the President is head of state. This headship takes two forms. In some countries where the head of state is also the head of the government – the US and France for instance – the president is directly elected. In the US, if the president dies in office or, like Richard Nixon is compelled to resign, the constitution provides for a chain of succession, and there is no new presidential election. In France in the event of the resignation or death in office of the president – de Gaulle’s resignation in 1969, Pompidou’s death in 1974 – a presidential election is necessary; Pompidou winning in 1969, Giscard d’Estaing in 1974. In other countries, such as Germany and Italy, the president is head of state but not of the government and so there is no election by popular vote but by a limited electorate of notables.

A president elected by popular vote is a monarch for the duration of his or her term of office and it is extremely difficult to remove such a president until his or her term of office has run its course and a presidential election is due. In the United Kingdom, even a prime minister such as Margaret Thatcher with a record of winning elections, one whose party enjoys a majority in the House of Commons, may be forced out of office if that party’s support is withdrawn. But, though many Tory MPs and voters were dismayed when Thatcher resigned, there was no requirement for her successor John Major to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament so that he might seek the approval of the country in a general election. Since then three prime ministers – Tony Blair, David Cameron and Teresa May – have been forced from office by, in effect, their own party, with no general election called to establish their successor’s authority.

Rees-Mogg poses as a Conservative. His reading of the quasi-presidential nature of the office of Prime Minister today is a radical interpretation of the Constitution. It is also absurd. It is true of course that the character and reputation of party leaders – of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition – loom larger in general elections than they used to, some of us voting for or against a party leader like Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn, but it is easy to exaggerate this. Observation suggests that there are some constituencies which will vote Tory and some which will vote Labour regardless of whoever is the party leader. This, after all, is why so many seats never, or only very rarely, change hands. We still live in a parliamentary democracy, not a presidential one. Even Rees-Mogg, representing a solidly Tory constituency, should recognise this, and accordingly desist from talking nonsense.