#mod fiver

There will be a General Election in the UK sometime this year, and I have spent my bank holiday pondering the question of how in the hell Harold Saxon's campaign worked.

Bear with me!

Harold Saxon's campaign would make sense if there were a presidential system in the UK.

But there isn't. We have a parliamentary system, meaning the Prime Minister is the leader of the political party with the most seats in parliament.

Additionally, there is no set date for the General Election, only general parameters--for example, there was a snap GE in 2019 after the previous GE in 2017.

But the next GE must take place before the something or another of January 2025.

This leaves a few problems for the Master:

Who called the GE?

Which Party was he a member of?

How did he become an MP in the first place?

And how did he become minister of defence??

This, of course, all rests on the idea that Doctor Who takes place in "our" universe more or less. Perhaps their concepts of presidency and premiership are backwards to ours idk.

There are two ways to become Prime Minister in the UK: by taking control of Parliament in a General Election while being the leader of the party with the most seats in Parliament (like Blair) or win a leadership election while your party—which already holds the majority of seats in Parliament—is in Government (like Sunak). 

A leadership election is usually put to the party’s membership (e.g. Starmer) but can be put to your members of Parliament instead (e.g. also Sunak). 

But, again, it’s not like a presidential election. You’re trying to convince your members to vote for you—not the whole country. 

And, in the case that he was the leader of a party set to take control of the House of Commons (and he’d already won a leadership contest), he’d need to ensure members of his party won their seats. 

So then, Martha must conveniently live in his constituency—that's the only reason you’d see all the ‘Vote Saxon’ posters.

And then there's the minister of defence question. Government ministers are just that--government ministers. That he was minister of defence implies he was already a member of the majority party in parliament and was appointed to this position.

It just becomes a chicken-egg problem I cannot escape!

He'd had to have won a leadership election--not a general election. But, again, that's something only members vote in! So what party is Martha a member of??

The funniest concept to me is that the Master was a Labour Prime Minister. And that's my headcanon bc Labour was in power at the time.