You still often have one man with all the power in a parliamentary system. The Prime Minister. Take Canada as an example. JT had basically complete power over government. It's as rate for the prime minister party or coalition to go against him as it is for a president in the US to be impeached.
I think the trick has to be to just get better people into those positions. Which means better people need to have some incentive to get into politics. It's a tough one for sure.
The prime minister in the UK is regularly kicked out by their party, and it's the same in most parliamentary systems. Liz Truss introduced ridiculous ideological economic policies that caused a bond market revolt. Her party kicked her out within the lifetime of a lettuce. This is only possible in a parliamentary system. Most of her recent predecessors were similarly if less rapidly removed. In the past 40 years, only three prime ministers lost their job at an election. Six were either forced out or resigned. Of those, arguably only Tony Blair left through choice.
The UK is not Canada though. You have the House of Lords, we have a Senate. We are a (con)federation, and that adds a whole new political overlay that the UK doesn’t have.
The executive power of our PM relative to the body politik is much higher. We don’t have a tradition of backbench rebellion, and the PMO often wields more power than the cabinet.
The point is that a parliamentary system doesn't need to mean an unchecked leader
Australia's favourite spectator sport is not, in fact, cricket or AFL, but rather watching government knife their PM whenever the political winds change direction. In the last 8 years, 4 PMs have been rolled before they've reached an election, because the party loses confidence in them.
Many parliamentary systems wherein a PM is elected by the cabinet routinely demonstrate that they will use their power to remove a leader in whom they've lost confidence.
The notion that JT had complete control is just utter nonsense. Federal jurisdiction is sharply limited, the opposition party is expected to be able to introduce and pass legislation during a minority government (the ppc has just been acting incompetent; the NDP managed to pass national dental care despite only hold 16% of the seats), and provincial governments have been largely doing their own thing despite federal funding initiatives.
Any time the trick is to get humans "to just do" $thing, that $thing wont happen. Because humans.
There may be some parliamentary country where what you say is correct, but in general, yeah, no, that’s not how it works.
Remember Liz Truss, all 49 days of her? A PM who fucks up on a Truss/Trump scale generally finds themselves very rapidly seeking alternative employment. Truss was forced to appoint a borderline sane chancellor about two weeks after causing the bond yield to go crazy, and was gone within another couple of weeks.
Unlike UK, US has only impeachment and 25th as procedures. Perhaps a convention. There is no vote of no confidence.
There really isn't need to share misinformation on HN.
The PM has slight larger responsibility the a regular MP.
I'm not a big fan of JTs policies over the years but they were done via parliamentary support.
I wasn't really going after a political angle or the elections.
PMs in Canada wield a ton of power and AFAIK are rarely removed. I'm not sure what exactly you consider to be misinformation here. It's extremely rare for members of parliament to vote against their party.
Another example I can think of is Israel where the prime minister yields a ton of power.
I might be wrong but I think the use of the Emergencies Act was not approved in Parliament? How about the weapons embargo on Israel?
So you can read the emergencies act here https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/02/can...
It requires the house and Senate to vote amongst other requirements.
PMs are re-elected every 4 years and need to continue to win their riding just like every other MP.
The fact that MPs don't regularly vote against their party seems like pretty standard politics across the world.
The government can also call votes of no faith to remove the current PM which has indeed happened to the last 2.
I don't think you need malice to spread misinformation you just have not done sufficient research in this topic before making your comments.
Edit: I'm not familiar with the structure of Israel's government so I cant comment on how much power their PM has individually.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-premiers-cabinet-1....
"Once cabinet declares an emergency, it takes effect right away — but the government still needs to go to Parliament within seven days to get approval. If either the Commons or the Senate votes against the motion, the emergency declaration is revoked."
Seems like this was later approved by parliament... Do you have a link showing it was approved by senate?
Right now we have an unelected PM. Not sure how the re-election after 4 years is relevant. A US president also has to be re-elected.
I said I might be wrong on the emergency act. and indeed I was wrong (-ish). But you're correct that I need to do better research. I was going from memory and indeed the initial application was before the approval but you are still technically correct.
Were the reciprocal tariffs on the US also approved by parliament?
I think you mean no confidence? Yes. This is generally something that happens in a minority government.
Anyways, I still think PMs in Canada effectively have a lot of power. But I stand corrected on the extent of their power. It is pretty rare they are removed by their party/coalition but the government has occasionally fallen due to votes of no confidence - yes. There is a complete list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_defeat...
EDIT: Also I think you're being a little bit extreme in your "spreading misinformation" comment.
> The PM has slight larger responsibility the a regular MP.
Is clearly not accurate either.
> You still often have one man with all the power in a parliamentary system. The Prime Minister. Take Canada as an example. JT had basically complete power over government. It's as rate for the prime minister party or coalition to go against him as it is for a president in the US to be impeached.
It's true that the mechanism of power in Canada and Israel (the two parliamentary systems I'm familiar with) are different but the PMs do have a lot of power. Canada being a federation maybe a bit less (but the US is also a federation).
The PMs party rarely goes against him (and maybe the vote above is an example for that). But yes, as I said above no confidence votes do (rarely) happen in Canada. The US president's powers are also limited, they rarely seem to get anything real done. I don't know of an objective measure there to compare the "power" of a PM vs. a President. PMs can be removed by parliament (or rather the government forced to go to elections). US presidents can also be removed (in theory).
This was more of my opinion/countering the idea that parliamentary systems just magically fix everything. I don't think they do. But I'll try and improve my accuracy when making random comments.
EDIT2: https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/020d...
https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/020d...
"Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Therefore, honourable senators, I ask for leave of the Senate to end the debate on the motion to confirm the public order emergency proclaimed on February 14, 2022, and revoked earlier today, and to withdraw the order for the consideration of the motion, with the Senate resuming sittings following the rules, orders and practices that would otherwise be in effect."