Question about tactics at the end of AoV

Jonathan_S wrote:

Duckk wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/33/1

Hmm. Now rereading that I'm less certain of the exact mechanism by which the "current government" can call for elections.

* Can the PM, as head of that government, do so unilaterally?
* Does it have to be a cabinet agreement/vote to do so?
* Or is it actually a separate vote in Lords that the current government (by virtue of it's mandatory working majority) is just expected to pass?

Except that you would normally expect elections to be called if the current government falls (loses a vote of confidence in the Lords). And given that they were in a time of war, it is hard to believe that there was not a clear line of succession already established in the event of the death of the Prime Minister. As an example in the US: During the Cold War, if the President was assassinated and simultaneously the country was attacked by the Soviets, would the fact that the vice president hadn't taken the oath of office, and was therefore not yet the president, have stopped him from being authorized to launch the counter-attack? Not a chance.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Hmm. Now rereading that I'm less certain of the exact mechanism by which the "current government" can call for elections.

* Can the PM, as head of that government, do so unilaterally?
* Does it have to be a cabinet agreement/vote to do so?
* Or is it actually a separate vote in Lords that the current government (by virtue of it's mandatory working majority) is just expected to pass?

Except that you would normally expect elections to be called if the current government falls (loses a vote of confidence in the Lords). And given that they were in a time of war, it is hard to believe that there was not a clear line of succession already established in the event of the death of the Prime Minister. As an example in the US: During the Cold War, if the President was assassinated and simultaneously the country was attacked by the Soviets, would the fact that the vice president hadn't taken the oath of office, and was therefore not yet the president, have stopped him from being authorized to launch the counter-attack? Not a chance.

The US has an official list of accession, which details in what order the VP, Speaker, Senate President and rest of the cabinet steps up to the Presidency, as long as they are US-born citizens.

The UK does not. The latest attempt died before it even got to committee. There may simply not be a constitutional mechanism in place in the SKM - after all, it is pretty rare for a PM to get assassinated on the eve of total victory. Manticore's public assassinations seem to have been more directed at its royalty - and we know the rules of succession are quite well defined there!

Thing to remember is that, under a strict reading of the British constitutional situation (and, I believe, that of Manticore as well), the Prime Minister is not the equivalent of POTUS. The sovereign is the head of state; the Prime Minister exercises executive authority on behalf of the Queen. There is an automatic and instantaneous succession of supreme executive authority upon the death of the monarch; the PM is less urgent because the government can quite readily function without one for a while, unlike in the US when the lack of a President would literally decapitate the executive branch, hence the need for instant succession.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Duckk wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/33/1

Do you have all of the infodumps memorized

From the infodump:

The House of Commons is on a regular schedule... sort of. By law, no more than 4 Manticoran years may pass between general elections. That, however, is the maximum amount of time which may elapse between them; the current government can, at its own discretion, call a general election whenever it chooses (although the law requires a minimum period for campaigns to be conducted), and the Prime Minister (a member of the House of Lords) is the head of the current government. That means that a peer of the realm is in charge of deciding when to hold an election for the House of Commons. For obvious reasons, the question of exactly when to schedule such an election is a matter of very careful calculation in the Star Kingdom's political processes.

As a new government had not been formed yet, Willie was the head of government, and could have called a general election. This would have allowed the San Martin nobles to be seated (a refusal on the part of the Lords to seat all of the new nobles would have been taken very badly by a great number of people, although I guess High Ridge was stupid or short-sighted enough to do just that).

It doesn't really affect whether Willie was acting PM or not, but his seat in the House was the cadet seat of White Haven, and was based on the fact that Hamish and Emily didn't have a child. He'd been heir apparent at White Haven for about a half century, at that point; but the "Grantville" honors were bestowed based on his long service to the kingdom.

One thing that is interesting is that Willie became "Lord Grantville" while Honor was off in Silesia--quite a while before Hamish and Honor were having a child, and long, long before the Earl and Countess married the Duchess.

Had he not already been seated in the Lords as a Baron, though, he would have been out of the Lords once Raoul was old enough to pass a competency exam; in which event, he wouldn't be eligible for the office of PM. Which might have happened, in oh, about 1932 or so. . . .

You know, in the next series of books.

Nice how the author sidestepped all that.

Rob