I haven’t been following this closely, just reading the headlines, really.
Can someone give a one-paragraph cliff-notes on what is going on here?
Thanks.
Same here. Parliament governments confuse me
A previous government of her party decided to have a referendum on whether or not Britain should remain a part of the E.U. That government was shocked by the plebiscite because it narrowly voted to leave the E.U.
However the wording of the proposal was so vague it left completely unclear what the trade relations should be with the continent, and there are about 7 different flavors of option, none of which have anything close to a parliamentary majority.
She kept putting up different options and they all failed. The only unified group is the “hard Brexit” camp, which wants to sever all official relationships, but the economic life of the UK would be badly damaged, something the Brexiteers don’t understand.
In a Parliamentary Democracy, you don’t vote for the leader directly, you vote for the Party (via choosing your local MP). The Party with the most MPs elected forms the government; that Party’s leader then becomes the PM.
The Tories have a majority in the UK Parliament, so they’re currently running things. If their leader loses the support of the Tory caucus (i.e., all the MPs), THEY can get rid of that leader and choose a new one, without a national election being called (because they still have their majority in Parliament, nothing’s changed there).
The caucus can get rid of their leader by either asking that person to resign voluntarily, or they can give them the boot by holding a caucus vote. In this case, May chose the first route rather than be kicked out.