I think it’s worth remembering, on this question of “who will be the next Prime Minister” and whether or not Gordon Brown has lost his mandate (indeed, on the very question of whether Brown has been our “unelected” leader until now and, if Labour should change their leader in a coalition government, would that new Labour leader be, again, an “unelected” Prime Minister): we do not vote for a Prime Minister in this country. We vote for a Parliament. We vote for the Party member in our local constituency, and then the Party – not the public – choose their leader who, if they are in government, will then become Prime Minister.
On the subject of Gordon Brown – he has repeatedly won, and won again last night, his seat in his constituency, thus he has been elected. That the Labour Party felt it right to make him their leader is up to them, and if they choose to change him and select another leader, that is their right too.
That may not be democratically sound, but that is the system that we’ve got, and the Conservative/media notion that Gordon Brown is “unelected” and “has never won an election to be our Prime Minister” rings slightly false whenever it is repeated.
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