Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation as Labour’s leader has sparked predictable but misguided constitutional demands and raised some more sensible arguments. Do we need a general election? (No.) A ‘Coronation’? (If avoidable, avoid.) Or some other means of adding legitimacy to a new Prime Minister? (Yes.)

A lot of the discussion seems to forget that the UK is a parliamentary democracy, not a presidential one. A Prime Minister is chiefly answerable to the House of Commons; this arrangement is tested from time to time by the whole House being answerable to the electorate. If he or she is appointed by any other group, you have a recipe for managerial mess. Imagine a CEO being appointed by customers but answerable to shareholders – or the other way round.

We have tried this twice in recent years. Mr Johnson and Ms Truss were appointed by Conservative members across the country – some 100,000 people, certainly not representative of the country and likely not of Tory voters either. The Conservative MPs, a majority in the House, to whom a Prime Minister would be accountable and who knew the candidates, clearly had big reservations: about Mr Johnson’s honesty and, reportedly, about Ms Truss’s ‘weirdness’. But they were landed with the choice made by this external, somewhat random group. In a more constitutional frame of mind, they might have said that they accepted the person as the choice for party leader but that they would select someone who had their support to be Prime Minister. But I’m not surprised that no one was that brave.

Why Andy Burnham creates a nightmare scenario for the SNP

Andy Burnham is riding high – but can he really change Britain?

Sorry, Labour, but Andy Burnham doesn't stand a chance

Mr Corbyn’s election as party leader made the same point the other way round. Labour could use whatever system they liked to choose whoever they liked in opposition. But he didn’t win a general election, so didn’t become Prime........

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