In this brief YouTube (above), Ottawa journalist Dale Smith goes in wholeheartedly on why MPs (and MLA, MMPs and the others in the provinces) have and always have had the right and the power to remove a party leader, even one picked by a mass party vote (particularly one picked by zombie voters with last-minute memberships supplied). He doesn't emphasize the MPs parallel (and equally vital) right to choose the fired leader's replacement. But that will come.
Here's examples of me making the case from, yeesh, the 1990s on. And in 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal, too, of course. And this blog, passim.
The idea remains well outside the Overton window however. The standard understanding of political scientists and journalists was on show recently at Paul Wells's Substack, where Alex Marland discusses his theories of why party discipline is so strong in Canadian politics and never gets around to the leadership selection/deselection process.
