Andy Burnham proves (again) that direct presidential elections are not the way

Given the choice, South Africans would go for US-style elections. The UK tells us the electorate should never be given that choice, because sometimes it needs a victim.

I write about direct presidential elections about once a year on average.

That’s not just me being hyperfixated on a minor detail about how democracy is run.

The US is never going to change its approach, nor – please for the love of all that is holy – will the UK. But in South Africa, I can tell you for a fact, there is very much a live debate about switching, and there are a couple of other places on the African continent that could flip from indirect to direct if anyone cared to push for it.

There is significant inertia, to be sure, especially where there is a well-entrenched ruling party. But – as is the case in South Africa – a party starting to lose its grip on power could well eye the relative popularity of individual leaders in a calculating sort of way.

And people would absolutely go for it.

In part, yes, because the pageantry of US elections is attractive. Mostly, though, the idea of direct elections resonates when you feel powerless, when you don’t trust the ruling party but have little prospect of unseating it, when your system has been failing you for a while.

In other words, this is something that should never, ever be put to a referendum in South Africa. Currently, because Andy Burnham.

It is quite extraordinary, the impact he has had on the UK zeitgeist. This was a country staring down the barrel of a Reform government because the party in power had chosen its leader poorly. God knows how that general election would have turned out, and what would have happened afterwards, but it would have been disruptive, divisive, and nasty in all kinds of unprecedented ways.

Had whatsisface, that previous guy, starts with a K I seem to recall? Had that guy held a direct presidential-style mandate, we might have had the exciting opportunity to find out what happens when a populist right-wing party with some truly funky ideas takes over a key economy.

Instead, like Liz Truss before him, that dude is gone. No long-drawn process, no election, remarkably little drama, just a dramatic change in direction and emphasis.

The popularity bounce cannot last, and the whole thing may still converge back to exactly where Labour was under whatsisface. At this point, though, the new broom has brought hope and a difference in tone and all those good things that sitting leaders have tried to engineer as a “refresh” but have so rarely achieved.

I confess, I too have found it annoying to be led by someone I did not get to choose, and I may have, at times, gone on a bit about the structural problem inherent in a leader who must please a party first and an electorate second. There are things wrong with indirect elections.

In the world as it stands right now, though, you need nimble policy. And sometimes, just sometimes, you need a sacrificial victim, someone you can ritually execute to placate an electorate that looks set on making a terrible mistake.