Quote:
Originally Posted by DaleDe
How is the current leader of the Party selected? That is more or less exactly what our Primaries are about. We are selecting the leader of the party. In the US we never elect a party, we elect people and then that serves to name the leader of the party if the person gets elected. In the congress the party with the majority of people in it then is considered the majorty party and they select a majority leader for congress (separate person in senate and house).
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Each party chooses its own method to elect a leader. In the case of the labour party (of which Gordon Brown is the leader) I believe (and please correct me if I'm wrong, anyone!) that the leader is voted for only by labour Members of Parliament. Some other parties have a vote of all party members.
Our parliamentary elections work pretty much the same as yours - the country is divided into "constituencies" which are roughly equal-sized in terms of the number of people in them (the borders gets adjusted every 10 years to maintain that). Each constituency elects a member of parliament, who (normally) represents a particular party. The party which ends up with the most seats (generally) forms the government, and the leader of that party becomes Prime Minister.
One interesting difference between our systems is that, although a government can stay in office for a
maximum of five years here, it's the PM who decides when to call an election, so he (or she) naturally does so at a time that they consider to be most favourable to their own chances of being re-elected. We don't have elections at fixed times, as you do.