Comment by edent
13 days ago
The UK has no constitutional method to remove a PM.
The USA does have a constitutional method to remove a President.
Nevertheless, in living memory all Presidents have survived their impeachments. Whereas (with the exceptions of Major, Brown, and Sunak) all UK Primes Minister have been removed while in office.
It makes an interesting study in the effectiveness of a written and inflexible constitution.
A PM can be removed by a vote of no confidence.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/votes-of-no-confidence/
> The UK has no constitutional method to remove a PM.
It absolutely does. Now, it's rare that it is used, because normally the party will dump the leader first (or simply implicitly threaten to). But it exists.
>The UK has no constitutional method to remove a PM. I not sure this is correct, a vote of confidence in Parliament. Will bring down the government. Hence the PM.
But that doesn't bring down the PM personally.
The last VONC to pass was in 1979, and Callaghan continued to lead Labour (albeit to defeat) in the General Election.
What do you mean "personally" ? Are you expecting a process to behead the Prime Minister or something ?
The Government led by that person falls. Parliament can in principle pick a new government, but in practice is likely to trigger a General Election instead and replace all the MPs. Since the Prime Minister is chosen by those MPs, the new one even if it's the same person, clearly does have their confidence, at least for now, right ?
Anyway, even when the PM survives a confidence vote that's often bad for them, if some of "your" people vote "No confidence" (as must happen for a Majority government) or even if those who've promised Confidence to you (in a Coalition) actually renege, you're done even if you carry the day in the House. This is also true for internal processes. You can, and often Tory PMs do, win a 1922 committee vote and then resign by next week because you'd expected to win by a huge landslide and instead it turns out dozens of people you'd thought were solid have doubts after all.
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Because the PM technically isn't anything but the leader the majority party has chosen for itself, they don't even have to be an MP.
This is muddied a bit in modern times with press and overseas engagements and higher salaries for PMs than MPs.
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Parliament can also impeach ministers. It hasn't bothered trying for about 180 years because a vote of no confidence is simpler, but it hasn't given up the power (and it's hard to argue that it's somehow fallen into abeyance through lack of use, as there's precedent for a gap of a couple of centuries between impeachments).
Sorry but today anyone can shit on the USA. Compare the UK to working democracies. Italy has clearly a written constitution and has seen way more Prime Ministers than the UK.