The Inexorable Rise of the Ignorant

Ah, it's Friday and I feel like railing against fuckwits again.  To be precise, those fuckwits pushing that petition for an immediate general election.  It's yet another demonstration of the utter ignorance of a disturbing number of Britons.  I say Britons, but a not insignificant number of those backing this pathetic exercise are actually from outside the UK and therefore have no say in the country's choice of government anyway.  But, to get back to the point, the fact that there are idiots out there in the UK who think that general elections are called simply because a (very small) minority of voters didn't like the result of the last one (held only four months ago) and are throwing a whiny hissy fit, once again demonstrates the widespread ignorance of the UK's constitutional arrangements amongst the public.  This idea that a public petition is somehow enough to force the resignation of a government stems, ultimately, from a misconception to what we are actually electing in a general election.  To reiterate once more: we do not elect prime ministers or governments directly - we elect a new parliament which, in turn, effectively elects a new government and PM in that it is the candidate that can command a Commons majority that gets to form a government.  Hence, only parliament itself can force a general election, either because its term has expired, or because the government can no longer command a majority and therefore would lose a vote of no confidence.  You see, it's really quite simple.  But, to put it even more simply, we don't have direct democracy in he UK, we have parliamentary democracy.

As I've noted time and again, if you want to comment meaningfully upon the UK's political system then at least have the decency to try and understand it first.  But then, plenty of people who should really fall into this category of understanding the constitution, were still happy to use the petition to advance their own agendas: Kemi Badenoch, who is apparently leader of the opposition, so really should know how the UK's political system works, for instance, and Nigel Farage, currently a Member of Parliament, so he too really should know better, but then again, there's never yet been a bandwagon he could resist jumping aboard.  Then, inevitably, there's Techno-Jerk-in-Chief and Trump-Ass-Kisser-Extraordinaire Elon Musk, who seems to have decided to declare war on the democratically elected Labour government of the UK simply because, well, they refuse to acknowledge him as some kind of supreme genius before whom the world should kneel.  But, in his defence, he isn't just ignorant of the UK's constitutional arrangements, but also of just about everything.  Especially anything involving human beings.  But, to get back to the original point - again - I'm growing tired of this kind of fuckwittery that tries to find ways to circumvent the constitution and, indeed, democracy itself.  Of course, it all goes back to Trump and his fanatical, crackpot, supporters, who popularised the idea that if you don't like the outcome of an election, you simply deny it and try to undermine its legitimacy.  With US voters being idiotic enough to return him to power instead of consign him to political oblivion, the sort of people who organise stuff like this moronic petition will just feel emboldened to continue their own anti-democratic campaigns, so I fear that we're going to see a lot more fuckwittery in the foreseeable future.