Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has said the electorate is right to want a vote on who should be the prime minister.
Speaking to GB News, he said: “It’s very interesting that opinion polls are showing that voters want a general election if there’s a change in leader. If Mr Burnham becomes Prime Minister, 48% say there should be a general election against 35% who think there shouldn’t be. 17% don’t know.
“When you look at the next question, should there be a contest for the Labour leadership, only 23% want Burnham unopposed, double that number want a contest, with a third not knowing.
“Now, what’s interesting about that second poll, is the argument against a contest is that it causes delay, that there’s indecision, and so on and so forth.
“But I think voters want to know more about whoever it is who is going to lead them and voters want to make that decision.
“I know the technicalities of the constitution. I know that we are a parliamentary democracy and that the Prime Minister is the person who leads the biggest party in Parliament and who can maintain the confidence of that party.
“I have probably known that since I was a five year old. It’s not a difficult or complex constitutional point, but our constitution evolves.
“Did you know that the post of prime minister was not referred to formally in a government document until Disraeli signed the conclusions of the Congress of Berlin in 1878, and the prime ministership began in 1721. So we had all that period with the prime minister being an informal post.
“It wasn’t recognised as an official government position until it was brought into the order of precedence at the beginning of the 20th century, so for the best part of 200 years it didn’t formally exist.
“Now it does formally exist, and it formally exists on the basis of a vote for a leader of a party at an election. Not the constitutional theory, but the constitutional fact.
“Voters are swayed not by the charisma and the genius of the local candidate, about whom they may well know remarkably little, particularly if that candidate is not an incumbent.
“They vote for the leader who impresses them most, and I think that when people look back at those who got it unopposed, be it Theresa May or Gordon Brown, they think ‘That didn’t really work’.
“They weren’t tested. We didn’t know anything about them, and then they turned out not to be successful prime ministers.
“And I think the electorate is right to be jealous of its prerogative to decide who the prime minister is. There’s a great line from Dr Johnson about how the king gave us a minister in Walpole and the people gave us a minister in Pitt the Elder.
“Nowadays it’s the people who give us the minister and the people should have the choice.”
