The cabinet hashes out its differences in cabinet meetings, the content of which are secret, and then presents a united front to parliament and the public. The principle voice of the cabinet is the Prime Minister ("first among equals"). Under this system the press has no right to advance notice of cabinet meetings and the government has no obligation to submit ministers to scrums following cabinet meetings.
Parliament still gets its crack at the ministers and the press still gets to scrum them. In this system, the government benches face the opposition benches across an aisle designed to be two sword-lengths wide and the cabinet is confronted in an ancient practice called Question Period. At the start of each day's business, the opposition has an opportunity to ask questions of the government. The opposition uses question period to score points, to bring out issues and to generally harass and embarrass the cabinet ministers.
Unlike the Congressional system, the cabinet is part of the legislature and is therefore continuously subject to the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate.
The press scrums the members of parliament in daily scrums in the hall just outside the House chamber. The press focuses on the Ministers and on their opposite numbers in the opposition parties shadow cabinets. The scrums are sometimes rough-and-tumble.
There is a definite difference between a cabinet meeting and a caucus meeting. The doctrine of cabinet secrecy does not apply to caucus meetings.
The so called "tradition" of post-cabinet-meeting scrums is a recent Liberal party device between it and a tame media.
Anyway, the press has an obligation to do its own fact gathering, not merely rely on press releases and scrums.
BTW Yanks might find Hansard to be enlightening. (This is the parliamentary equivalent of the Congressional Record.)Debates of the House of Commons are not in the gentlemanly courteous style of Congress. They are neither as courtly nor as polite as we are accustomed to seeing in US Senate debates.
It is not for nothing that the opposition benches and the government benches directly face each other and it is not for nothing that the aisle is traditionally two sword-lengths wide and that the second most numerous party in the House is called "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition". Opposition is essential to a parliamentary system, the system depends on it. Trent Lott and John McCain style "bipartisanship" is foreign to the system.
Very informative. I find it refreshing that your politicians do not engage in feigned civility towards one another. Better they're fighting one another than engaging in pack behavior and feeding upon their 'flock'.
If we were to adapt this system to US politics, I might personally reduce the space between the two sides to a single sword-length, and require that they arm themselves. It would make for better theater, and the only laws that would get passed would be those that a legislator would risk his life to see writ (not to mention improving the species by engaging in a bit of self-imposed 'ethnic cleansing').
'Bipartisan' is indeed the most frightening adjective in the US vernacular. It's double-speak for 'the tyranny that one party could not possibly impose upon the electorate without the active collusion of the other'.