Britain must change its political system

After several recent US elections, many have challenged the viability of the electoral college system which formally allocates votes which determine who will become President.

With several uncertain elections and a history changing  Brexit referendum whose conclusion is anything but certain, it is necessary to examine whether Britain ought to thoroughly revise its electoral system.

It is high time for Britain to consider a republican form of government, one that can be accomplished with or without abolishing the figurative role of the monarchy.

Here is the proposal to consider. 

Recent elections in Britain have been increasingly less about a party’s manifesto than about a vote of confidence in the policies, personality, credibility and public confidence in a party leader.

In this week’s UK election, the overall mood was one which gave Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a big thumbs up while rejecting Prime Minister Theresa May. This happened in spite of a mainstream media campaign of defamation against Mr. Corbyn.

A revision of the political system of Britain could easily fix this conundrum and end the deadlock that has transpired in recent elections.

If British voters directly elected a President, he or she would represent Britain abroad, set important foreign policy and security issues, have the ability to issue emergency and necessary decrees and set a programme for a legislative agenda.

Such a President could appoint a government which would be responsible for implementing legislation and creating policy for individual ministries (Foreign minister, Finance etc).

The government which would be appointed by the President would be answerable to two houses of Parliament. The lower house would be elected by a combination of party-list proportional representation and some single member constituencies. This Parliament would represent the over all  feelings of regions of the country and act as a body which would draft, debate and pass legislation to be approved by the President and implemented by the government.

An upper house of Parliament would hold special committees dealing with specific issues requiring crucial expertise ranging from international relations, security, trade, the military and ecological issues.

This upper house would have the ability to remove government officials and the President in the event of an unlawful act.

If one wants to keep a Queen or King as figurehead, this is still possible. The President would simply need to consult with the monarch as one figuratively does now.

For anyone who thinks that such an approach is not novel, it is not.

The political system I described is that of the modern Russian Federation with one exception. The idea of an authority technically higher than even the President is not part of the Russian political system.

That element was borrowed from Iran whose supreme leader is the spiritual head of the state.