History of replacing prime ministers

The other week, while I was away, the prime minister of New Zealand resigned (and because she was Jacinda Ardern superstar, it was international news). The next day the new prime minister of New Zealand took office.  No year of delay. No lame interim leader. No vote-buying orgies. No corrupt multi-million-dollar campaigns with rules being rewritten and credentials rejigged in party backrooms. The people's elected representatives in the governing party met and considered who was best suited to seek the confidence of the elected Commons, and then the work of government proceeded without interruption.

This week another internationally prominent woman, Nicola Sturgeon, the government leader in Scotland, resigned. And the press does not seem able even to report when a new leader will emerge, or how.  Scotland isn't even self-governing yet, but it sounds like it's already it's gone all Canada on this matter. Pity.

If I'd been blogging yesterday, I'd have noticed the anniversary of the adoption of the Canadian flag in 1965. (Is it fair to guess that the rise of the flag and the decline of the monarchy have gone hand in hand throughout that period?) Canada has unfulfilled responsibilities, but it exists, and the flag that symbolizes that seems worth acknowledging.  Charlie Pachter too!

Update, February 23:  Dale Smith has an on-point tweet 

What did we do? We disengaged from the process, and listened to charlatans who kept insisting that Americanising our leadership contests was a good thing. https://t.co/s7HGkMAKnK

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) February 23, 2023

History of Team Brutus

Boris considers his "team"

As the Alberta "United" Conservative Party vote-buying orgy/leadership review goes on ("Even Mr. Kenney’s supporters acknowledge that shifting to mail-in ballots plays in his favour, which is part of the reason why he is facing allegations of cheating"), abuse pours in upon UCP backbench caucus members who are simultaneously considering whether the caucus should simply remove Kenney from the leadership.

“The idea that you have a caucus with people in it who publicly express that they do not want the current leader is so insane and crazy and out of the political normal,” said Ken Boessenkool, who served former Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a senior campaign adviser, and former British Columbia Premier Christy Clark as Chief of Staff. “Politics is a team sport.”

Boessenkool has good reason for believing leadership accountability is insane and crazy and all. He's a strategist, and loyalty to the leader who employs them is how strategists earn their retainers. But the "team" he refers to are all elected representatives of the people of Alberta, not hired flaks. When the leader is putting them out of favour with their constituents and likely to cause them to lose their seats in the next election, to whom does the "team" owe loyalty?

As a Canadian political strategist, Boessenkool more or less has to avert his or her eyes from examples from beyond his own employer's office suite. Even the Conservative Party "team"in Ottawa recently fired its leader, though that only triggered the leadership campaign of Pierre Polievre, whom most of the team appears to despise. (More work for the strategists, however.)  And look at Britain, mother of parliaments, these days: "To back or to sack: The Tory Party in disarray over Boris Johnson" goes the headline, describing the caucus members can't decide to fire the prime minister from leadership now or wait a little longer.

Responsible Government in Pakistan and Canada

Imran Khan is no longer the prime minister of Pakistan. His party and its coalition partners lost a confidence vote in the Pakistani legislature the other day, and now an opposition coalition is putting together a new government.  

The crucial event in the defeat of the Khan government was the defection of some of Khan's own backbench supporters. Once they committed to supporting a non-confidence motion, he looked like toast.  

In recent days there has been a flurry of activity - and what some argue were tactics straight out of Machiavelli's playbook - which resulted in several Khan allies deserting his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, tilting the scales firmly in the opposition's favour.

Khan, however did not go quietly, or even accept that he might have to. Both in Parliament and in the courts, he argued that he could not be removed from office even by a majority vote in Parliament, telling huge crowds of supporters the looming vote against him was all a matter of foreign conspiracy and corrupt thieves. Khan actually declared that his backbenchers were not allowed to vote against him. 

The government is seeking a Supreme Court ruling that would not only bar dissident PTI members from voting under an anti-defection law, but also disqualify them from parliament for life.

But the court said no, the confidence vote went ahead despite Khan's edict cancelling it, and now he's out of power.  

I do not know the internal politics of Pakistan that eroded Khan's support.  But I can't help wondering if Canadian politicians would borrow from Khan in similar circumstances.  

Parliamentary democracies all over the world operate on the principle of responsible government: "Responsible government means majority government, but of a particular sort -- majority rule, not by the electorate, but by a majority of the electorate's elected representatives." 

Evidently Imran Khan doesn't think this applies to him: he's the people's prime minister. And that's an idea that has a lot of currency in Canada now.  There's actually a guy who says he's running for prime minister when he's really in the midst of trying to sell enough party memberships to secure his party's leadership. How likely would he be to accept that the hacks on the backbenchers (his caucus support is more or less zero) should have any influence upon him? 

Prime Minister Harper frequently said during election campaigns that whichever party leader won the most seats got to be prime minister. And on election nights the media has regularly followed his lead, anointing as prime minister someone who will only command minority support until the House meets and votes.  If the NDP removed its support of Justin Trudeau and a few Liberal backbenchers chose to go with them, would Trudeau accept he could be legitimately be replaced in office by whomever the majority of the House preferred over him? Would Jagmeet Singh accept defeat if their positions were reversed and he were about to lose a confidence vote? Would Doug Ford or Francois Legault?

Yeah, probably, I guess. We still have a way to go in overriding those norms. But not such a long ways.  Populist, majoritarian, "let the people speak" attitudes are widespread and confident in Canada as elsewhere.

On the other hand, the Pakistani parliament did speak, and Prime Minister Khan is out of office, at least until he can reassemble a majority coalition. Two cheers for parliamentary democracy

The idea of accountable leadership returns

Nice to see Andrew Coyne taking seriously the decision of the Conservative Party caucus in Ottawa to adopt the Reform Act's rules by which to assert the MPs' authority to remove the party leader whenever they deem it expedient and 20% of caucus steps up to trigger a vote.

I very much doubt the Conservative decision will trigger a "revolution," but it's a step in the right direction. (Regular leaders of this blog will be only too familiar with the reasons why. Newcomers can search the labels leadership or parliament for explanations why parliaments cannot function effectively unless party caucuses can hire and fire their leaders).  Indeed, Coyne acknowledges that much remains to be done.

Only when caucus also has the power to elect a new leader will the balance between caucus and leader have been more fully restored. Too radical? It’s no more than the way Westminster systems are supposed to work – the way our system did work, for much of our history.

Indeed, it’s no more than the way democracies are supposed to work. In a democracy, leaders govern with the consent of the governed. But a Canadian party leader, though he holds the power of virtual life and death over caucus members, is chosen by an altogether different group, the fabled “grass roots,” many of whom join just long enough to vote for a leader and then are gone.

In recent years, Coyne has tended to neglect these arguments and to propose that proportional representation is the only way to revive Canadian politics. But in Canada leadership autocracy is a greater problem than misalignments between party support and party seats. Since MMP  --the only form of proportional representation likely to be enacted here -- would actually enhance leadership power by enabling leaders to appoint their hacks and flunkies to the House of Commons, it's good to see the Globe columnist returning to his older enthusiasm. 

The columnist Dale Smith speaks constantly of "the (garbage) Reform Act" because it attempts to legislate what should need no legislation -- the MPs' inherent power to control their leaders-- and because it sets high thresholds for the initiation of caucus reviews. True enough.  But baby steps, baby steps.  Let MPs assert a little authority, and the appetite will grow with the eating.  Things are only impossible until the become inevitable. 

(The caucus of Japan's ruling LDP recently removed and replaced its leader in a process that took a few weeks, cost nothing, and will likely assist the enduring success of a party that changes leaders frequently and rarely loses power.  It's how real parliaments function worldwide.)  

Thanks to Andrew Stewart who reads the Globe closely so I don't always have to!

October at the LRC

I've been meaning to note the recently very impressive Literary Review of Canada and particularly its current (October 2020) issue.

There is a long essay in it by Conservative Party stalwart Joe Martin, "Thank You, Next" in which he reviews the long sad history of leadership changes in his party and concludes: 

it is time for the Conservatives to truly shake things up — not to develop more policy positions, although that too is needed, but to try a different method of choosing a leader.

He's come around to the idea that the caucus should hire and fire the leader.

Let’s reduce the alarming concentration of power in the hands of party leaders. Let’s transform members of Parliament from a group of “nobodies,” to quote Trudeau père, to legislators who are responsible to their electors — and who can truly hold their leaders to account in victory and defeat.

Regulars of this blog will recognize this as an argument I have put forth, ah, a few times, and Joe is kind enough to give me a shout-out. Indeed, he's told me an essay of mine in Canada's History influenced the writing of his essay. We'll see if he has any influence within his party. 

It's also striking how his essay dialogues with other pieces in the magazine.  Scott Griffin (of the Griffin Prize) laments the end of the "honourable resignation" in which a politician would resign from cabinet on a principle and return to the backbenchers.  But Martin's essay makes clear why that no longer happens.  Given the imbalance of power within party caucuses, going willingly to the backbenchers cannot be a way to stand up for principles. It's simply political suicide..

Martin's ideas also dialogues with a review by Ron Hikel of Nelson Wiseman's Political Odysseys, a history of Canadian political parties.  I have not read the book, but I browsed in it and, like most Canadian political science writing, its analyses seem uninterested in the issue Martin raises.

History of the decline of parliamentary democracy

With Boris Johnson in intensive care, commentators from the New York Times to Lawyers Guns and Money are having the vapours about a British constitutional crisis. Britain has no constitutional line of succession! In fact, there is no British constitution at all!  This cannot be tolerated in the midst of a pandemic!

Britain, with no written constitution, does not have a codified order of succession. That legal lacuna has prompted questions during prior episodes where prime ministers fell ill or underwent surgery, and now looms large at a time when Britain faces its greatest crisis since World War II.

This is from the New York Times' London correspondent, but it is also, well, drivel. 

Parliamentary government is cabinet government. The British cabinet is the British government, If the prime minister dies, absconds, loses the confidence of cabinet, or is abducted by aliens, there is a political problem but no constitutional problem. 

The cabinet continues to meet, continues to function. Whomever the cabinet (with consideration of the party caucus and popular opinion) chooses to defer to as the new first minister is promptly invited by the sovereign to take up the office. Should Boris Johnson be unable to carry on, there will be a brief political contretemps within the Conservative Party, and no constitutional crisis at all.  

But power has been centralizing in prime ministers's offices around the world for a long time -- particularly in Canada, but more recently nearly everywhere. With the presidentialization of prime ministers and the increasing legitimization of extra-parliamentary selection processes for party leaders, the assumption grows that there must be a constitutionally identified "vice-president" -- or else crisis looms!.  

History of leadership "races"

I'd rather talk about cutting minimum wages

A representative for Jason Kenney, when questioned about putting up a dummy candidate to undermine a rival in the contest for leadership of Alberta's United Conservative Party, said everything the Kenney team did was:

perfectly normal in a preferential ballot election and was within the rules of the 2017 UCP Leadership Election.

He's probably right. As always in Canadian political party leadership races, federal and provincial, the real scandal is what's legal. After all, when the point of the contest is that the side which buys the most votes wins, corruption is pretty much baked in. 

At Policy Options on leadership accountability

Regular readers will be familiar  (wearily so?) with my views on parliamentary leadership accountability and the need for backbenchers to hold leaders, including prime ministers, to account --and when necessary to be prepared to fire them and choose their replacements.

This is just to say that if  you want to share these views with your friends, colleagues, and your elected representatives, you no longer have to link to posts from this blog  (or send them a copy of 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal, not that that is a bad idea).  Link 'em to the prestigious, authoritative, (and proof-read) online magazine Policy Options, which has just this afternoon posted my "Proportional Representation Won't Solve Canada's Accountability Problem."

Update, February 21:  Vancouver Sun columnist weighs in on these matters here

History of parliamentary leadership accountability

The Guardian reports that New Zealand's opposition Labour Party, facing an election and low in the polls, made a smooth, efficient, and legitimate leadership change the other day, with Andrew Little stepping down and MP Jacinta Ardern being selected unanimously by Labour's parliamentary caucus to succeed him, all in the course of a single caucus meeting,  The leadership change took no time, cost no money, and ensured that the new leader of the party actually had the support of the elected Labour Party representatives of the people, and would remain accountable to them -- even as prime minister,

Compare the long, slow, expensive, ethically dubious vote buying lollapalloozas Canadian federal and provincial parties have been engaging in lately.

The Labour MPs chose a 37 year old woman to lead them.  But New Zealand is not entirely enlightened.  Talk show hosts immediately began grilling her as to whether being party leader or prime minister would interfere with her opportunities for parenthood.

Update, August 9:  In the week+ since the parliamentary Labour caucus made this change, Labour had risen in the polls from 24% to 33% and Ardern is even with Prime Minister Bill English in voter preferences.

History of accountable leaders

As it looks more and more like the Conservative leadership "race" will make one of the Boaty McBoatface candidates leader of the opposition,  Andrew Coyne returns to the idea that MPs should choose leaders.

It is simply bizarre, when you think about it. Government with the consent of the governed is a bedrock principle of democracy — except when it comes to members of a parliamentary caucus, who must submit to be led, under the rules by which all of the parties now choose their leaders, by someone chosen by an entirely different group: the members of the party at large, many of whom may have only just joined the party, and may never have anything to do with it again.

But it's unthinkable, political scientists and Hill journos will chorus.... Only until we are willing to think about it.

Routine Proceedings has a great log of the twitterstorm Coyne provoked.

History of accountable leadership

Some guy, an Islamophone, and a misogyst, on a stage

A gang of incompetents and nobodies -- fourteen, at last count -- is spending eighteen months and hundreds of thousands of dollars, trying out all kinds of extremist positions, in an effort to buy themselves the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada in one of those orgies where untold thousands of "members" get to participate for a ten fifteen-buck fee. (Update: about 85,000 individuals are known to have signed up; how many tens of thousands of newly purchased votes may be dumped into the process at some strategic moment remains secret.)

The prime minister of New Zealand, John Key, announced this week that he no longer wished to be prime minister.  On Monday his successor, likely to be Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Bill English, will be selected by his party caucus.  Time: one week.  Cost: zero.  

Not only will the new boss be chosen by a selection committee (the caucus of elected MPs) that actually knows the strengths and weaknesses of the potential candidates, but perfect parliamentary accountability will be maintained. The caucus members making the selection remain answerable to the voters, and the prime minister they have selected will remain constantly accountable to them.

Well, almost constantly accountable. New Zealand had a long record lively party caucuses and of prime ministers and party leaders stepping down, not on their own timetables, but when their caucuses concluded they had outlived their usefulness and ceased to support them.

After New Zealand adopted  proportional representation, however, party caucuses acquired blocs of MPs who did not represent any constituency but were appointed to the House by their parties. It was quickly determined that they should not make up their own minds on issues and must support the party line. MPs still get to vote on party leadership -- but since the adoption of PR and the introduction of party-appointed MPs, no prime minister of New Zealand has been removed by his caucus. Hmmm

Leadership Accountability vs Term Limits

Readers of this blog and my books and articles (this and this, for example) on constitutional and parliamentary history will know, maybe ad nauseum, that I hold that parliamentary systems work better when leaders are accountable to caucuses and (therefore) governments are accountable to legislatures.

Impact of this has been pretty much zip nada, but a couple of straws in the wind blew my way recently.  It's all apropos of the proposal, to come up at the Conservative convention, that the political parties should impose term limits on their leaders who are serving as prime ministers.

This seems so dumb as to be self-defeating. But if it came from anyone but the Tories, I suspect lots of leftish and progressive folk might say, yes, term limits, always a good idea.  So I like seeing pushback on constitutional grounds from Dale Smith (emphasis added):

After all, term limits are largely unnecessary because our system can dump a prime minister at any point by means of a vote of no confidence – something that can’t happen in the American system, as they don’t have a system based on confidence, but rather on defined terms, with the relief valve of recall elections in some cases. Otherwise, they are forced to wait out a term until the next election, while in a Westminster system, it can happen with a snap vote in the Commons. Of course, we do have the problem in this country particularly around being able to dump a leader who is not the PM because we have moved away from the caucus selecting the leader .... to systems of either delegated conventions, one-member-one-vote, or the latest Liberal abomination, the “supporter category.” Caucus selection kept leaders accountable to them, and it kept them in check, whereas they accumulated more presidential powers as the base that elected them grew larger and they felt more empowered by their “democratic mandate.”

and John Pepall:

With a party leader in Canada, he or she is imposed on the elected MPs and in practice is irremovable except by a party that only convenes under ever-changing rules with a fluid membership, if there is membership and not simply “supporters,” as is increasingly the fashion.

Party organizations were developed in the 19th century to organize support for like-minded candidates in elections. The elected MPs then chose their leaders and answered to the voters for their choices. Parties, though feeble and ramshackle institutions, now insert themselves between the voters and those they elect, and presume to dictate to MPs whom they must follow and what they should do.

Update, May 30:  Interesting, how the Liberals' move this weekend to do away with memberships has actually been producing skeptical attention from journalists and political scientists who observe that while mass party membership conventions barely controlled leaders, no members will mean no control at all.  What a shock to see a genuine political scientist observe that at one time MPs hired and fired party leaders without outright denouncing the whole idea as medieval. Professor Peter Loewen in the Ottawa Citizen:

At the start of our country and for some time after, the power to choose leaders and to dismiss them rested with members of Parliament. The consequence was that although parties were generally ideologically coherent, there were always MPs who would disagree with their leader. Having selected the leader, and having the power to deselect the leader, they were afforded this liberty. Leaders who unduly trampled on the rights of MPs — or who just performed poorly — could find themselves quickly removed.

Hopeful thought: maybe the death of the party member will inspire some MPs to resurrect the idea of the active caucus.

Party leadership: from membership to mailing list

I agree with the journalist Dale Smith often enough on parliamentary matters (not on the monarchy!)  to wonder if he follows this site.  But maybe not. There is the monarchy, after all.

On parliamentary leadership, he is quite right that the direct result of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's clever plan to change the Liberal Party of Canada from a membership organization to a mailing list will be to even more completely exempt party leaders from accountability. Not much of the press coverage and commentary will notice this.

Paying $10 to get buy-in to the party membership is “elitist.” My head is exploding right now. As with the way the Liberals blew up their leadership selection process to absolutely obliterate any trace of accountability, they are moving to the exact same thing with their party policy process, and shifting to a Big Data approach that eliminates any incentive for the meaningful participation in the process that our system is built around.

Right about the accountability gap.  But that second part, suggesting that there actually is room at present for "meaningful participation in the process" buys into press-gallery magic thinking: that existing Canadian leadership processes produce accountability and participation.  Actually, they are vote-buying contests. The moment someone wins the contest, the process is over, and the leader isn't accountable at all.

We might even speculate that this proposed further dilution of accountability might even have indirect results. It could spur some imagination and courage in backbenchers and caucuses, who indeed are free to remove and to replace parliamentary party leaders at any time to choose to exercise their authority.

A parliamentary leader who is not accountable to the parliamentary caucus is not accountable.

Update, April 5:  Worth noting that at the same time, the Conservative Party is making party memberships more expensive and more difficult to acquire:

While the Liberals look to further open up their party to all comers, the Conservatives are going in the opposite direction. For the current Tory leadership contest, only those who’ve been party members for six months will be eligible to vote, and the membership fee has been hiked to $25. Each member must pay by cheque or credit card in a bid to prevent leadership campaigns from paying for mass sign-ups of new members.

This attacks the most corrupt aspects of leadership vote-buying, but at any price it is leadership selection by vote-buying, and the accountability problem post-convention is unaffected.