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| What he said. |
It's about a quarter of a century since I began asserting that parliamentary democracy cannot function properly unless the executive is held to account by the legislature that represents the citizenry. And that it must follow that party leaders have be constantly accountable to the party caucuses that they lead.
It has been, shall we say, a minority opinion.
But late last week, while I was enjoying a little R&R in Stratford, Andrew Coyne produced a column with the clear and simple title "If we want better leaders, give caucus the power to both hire and fire"
Read the whole thing, if you have not already, and I will spare you my (as yet undrafted) "Blame Canada" essay, the one that links the recent humiliations of the British parliamentary system to the unfortunate fact that Britain has lately been moving to adopt the Canadian system of extra-parliamentary selection of party leaders -- with the inevitable consequences.
Not that I expect Coyne's advocacy to produce sudden transformations in Canada, let along Britain. Any reasonably ambitious MP has to calculate it's a lot easier simply to raise enough capital to buy all the "memberships" needed to make him/her a party leader than to go through the arduous process of demonstrating to the caucus that he/she has the necessary combination of leadership skills and traits. Also, if you buy the leadership, there's not that accountability problem most of the time.
But the Truss moment has dulled enthusiasm for continuing with that Canadianization process in Britain for a while.
Stratford? Great. I'd tell you to go, except the season was just wrapping up.
