Constitutional systems have all kinds of titles for the individual with key operational Executive power - Chairman, Prime Minister, King, President, General, Emperor, and so on. And many systems have another individual, without operational power but with the power to intervene in special circumstances. Confusingly, the titles chosen for this individual (King, President, Emperor, Supreme Leader) often overlap with those chosen in other systems for the operational Executive.
Nonetheless, a really key distinction in broadly democratic systems is this: is the individual with key operational Executive power directly elected or not? When that individual is directly elected, we typically describe the system as "Presidential". Presidential systems operate in France and the US, amongst others. When that individual is not directly elected but is, instead, chosen by and dependent on the continuous support of a number of elected representatives, we typically describe the system as "Parliamentary". Germany has a Parliamentary system, in this sense. Up until now, so has the UK.
In the modern era, most Prime Ministers have been selected by the governing Party without going to the Electorate. For example, if we consider the past five Prime Ministers, three - Callaghan, Major, Brown - have been chosen in this way. Only two of the past five have become Prime Minister directly as a result of a General Election - Thatcher and Blair - and in each case that was only so because the governing party changed. There was a similar pattern in earlier times: when the governing party changed leader, the Prime Minister changed without an Election; an Election was only the driver of change in Prime Minister when the Election caused a decisive change in the political balance of the Commons.
This illustrates the central dependence the Prime Minister has, in our Parliamentary system, upon the continuous support of his or her Members of Parliament. For us to have Prime Ministers such as Brown that did not obtain their power as a result of a General Election but, instead, as a result of shifting political support amongst MPs is not a strange or otherwise anomalous situation. It is the norm of the British Parliamentary system.
It is now David Cameron's policy that that should change. In the future, he proposes that all changes in Prime Minister in Britain should be associated with a new General Election within a few months. Clearly, this means a switch from a Parliamentary system - in which the Prime Minister is not elected by the voters - to a Presidential system - in which the Prime Minister is so elected.
Were that to happen, it would be a profound constitutional change - arguably a more radical constitutional change than anything offered by Labour or the Liberal Democrats at this election, and one with widespread ramifications for the rest of the constitution. Obviously, because it is a General Election period, it is not feasible for the Conservative Party to conduct any sort of productive internal debate about the merits or otherwise of David Cameron's proposals for switching away from our traditional system of Parliamentary democracy to a Presidential model. We look forward, therefore, to having a vigorous debate within the Party and in the wider country after we have won the Election, in advance of bringing forward any formal legislative changes in this area.
