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It apparently eludes May that her position as head of the Green Party is a big help to voters in determining what she stands for. Instead, as though she had invented non-partisanship from this odd perch, she says “In Westminster parliamentary democracy, political parties are not an essential ingredient. I have often said that if I were to invent democracy from scratch, I would not have invented political parties at all. Their existence is not a necessary — or even desirable — part of responsible government.”

If she feels that way surely she ought not to lead one. But this inconsistency is nothing to her staggering misstatement of what representative government even is. “We hold to a system of responsible government, meaning not that the government behaves responsibly in some normative sense, but rather that individual MPs are elected to be responsible to their constituents. MPs are supposed to work for their constituents by holding government to account.”

Utter bosh. First, “responsible government” does not mean MPs are responsible to their constituents. It means the executive is responsible to the legislature, especially for money to maintain its operations and carry out its program.

Utter bosh. ‘Responsible government’ does not mean MPs are responsible to their constituents. It means the executive is responsible to the legislature

Second, a sadly common mistake, she speaks of MPs “holding government to account” as if legislators were not part of the state. But they are. Our Constitution, like the American one, divides the national government into three branches, including the legislative, because MPs are our agents within the state machinery, not a bunch of weirdos outside on the lawn.