After each future general election the House of Commons will meet to elect by secret ballot a person who will be recommended to the monarch to be Prime Minister.
The monarch appoints as Prime Minister the person who can command majority support in the House of Commons. However in a party political system this is the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons rather than the person with majority support among all MPs.
However three of the last six Prime Ministers have in fact not emerged following a general election but rather from some form of party political vote just within whichever party had a majority in the House of Commons.
- James Callaghan became Prime Minister in 1976 following the resignation of Harold Wilson. In the first ballot with six candidates Michael Foot beat Callaghan by 6 votes but in the second ballot with three candidates Callaghan beat Foot by 8 votes. In the final third ballot Callaghan received 56% of the vote against Foot's 44%.
- John Major became Prime Minister in 1990 after Margaret Thatcher resigned, despite her getting 208 votes representing 53.8% of the electorate of Conservative MPs, as this was not the required 15% of the electorate ahead of her challenger Michael Heseltine. In the second ballot John Major achieved fewer votes than had Margaret Thatcher, 185 representing only 49.8%, but his challengers Heseltine and Hurd then withdrew and he was declared Leader of the Party.
- Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007 following the resignation of Tony Blair. In the Labour Party voting process John McDonnell, the only challenger to Brown, failed to secure enough nominations in order to get onto the ballot and subsequently conceded defeat. A special Labour conference then declared Gordon Brown as Leader of the Labour Party.
Small effects within the two main political parties have therefore determined half of our Prime Ministers over the last 35 years. Indeed the House of Commons itself has no real role in choosing the Prime Minister. The whole process of appointing a Prime Minister has therefore become dominated by the growth in the grip that the political party leaderships and their whips have on the House of Commons.
Although the Prime Minister is meant to be the person with majority support in the House of Commons, the current party political system does not lead to this being so. If a political party even has 60% of the MPs in the House of Commons then if only about half of the majority party vote for their leader this means that this person is only supported by 30% of the Commons.
It is clear that Callaghan and Major had the support of only approximately half of their party and Brown's popularity in his party was never tested before he became Prime Minister (but appears to be very soft now he is in the role). None of them could therefore be said to command a majority of the House of Commons. The support only becomes manifest because of party political loyalty and the operation of the whips to ensure that all of the majority party's MPs vote in the Commons for the leader elected even if they did not vote for him or her in the party's own election.
The ability to elect a leader within a party to become Prime Minister also polarises general elections into contests between the individuals chosen by each party rather than concentrating on the key and especially longer term issues facing the country.
The proper process for recommending a Prime Minister to the monarch is for all MPs to be able to participate in the election of the Prime Minister immediately after each general election. This should be by secret ballot (as is used for the election of the Speaker) so that each MP can be unfettered in the way that they cast this vital vote. The Jury Team will legislate to achieve this and make it explicit that the monarch should appoint as prime minister the person who had achieved a majority in a secret ballot of the whole House of Commons. This will empower all MPs, give them a real role and responsibility in selecting the government and will mean that the person appointed has majority support. That person will then form a government.
The person elected would serve for five years, unless the House of Commons voted for a general election, and would be eligible once for re-election. In the event of the Prime Minister resigning for health or other reasons during the five year term the House of Commons would firstly decide whether to call a general election and, if it did not so decide, it would then elect a new person to be Prime Minister.
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