4 ms·
This all very true but I just wanted to add one more thing I think is a strength of parliaments. In a parliament majority, the buck stops with the Prime Minist
by streb-lo 6y ago
This all very true but I just wanted to add one more thing I think is a strength of parliaments.
In a parliament majority, the buck stops with the Prime Minister and win or lose his performance is on the line in the next election. There's no (effective) hand-waving about opposition or other excuses to deflect accountability. Elections are a black/white referendum of the incumbent's performance.
In the US it's a lot easier to muddy the waters and a lot harder for people to arrive at a clear conclusion and often nobody is happy.
"YES I don't like X BUT it wasn't Y's fault it was Z"
- fatbird 6y agoI agree with this, and I would further add that "confidence votes", where if the vote fails, the gov't falls, are another valuable safety hatch. Budgetary votes are always confidence votes, but anyone can move for a vote of no-confidence if they have the votes. With a majority gov't, this is hard to do unless the majority is slim and a couple people are sick (or "cross the aisle", switching parties), but with minority gov'ts it's a significant risk--the PM can't afford to alienate a large enough number of MPs to falll to a confidence vote, which is literally a ten-minute affair if it occurs. US politics has nothing of this effectiveness.