We vote for our MP; if one party has an outright majority in the number of elected MPs (we have 650 seats currently, so 326 or more), that party's leader becomes prime minister. It's not usually as chaotic as it has been this year due to scandals and screwups by Johnson and Truss.
In the event that no one party gets to that majority, larger parties might try and form some coalition with other parties in order to get them there. Whoever was sitting prime minister at the time the election was called gets the first opportunity to try and form a government, regardless of whether their party actually got the most MPs (see 2010, where David Cameron's Conservatives got the most seats but not enough for a majority, but as Gordon Brown had been sitting PM, he was the one who had first right to try and form a government. Third party leader Nick Clegg felt that the party with more seats should be the ones to get that opportunity, and ended up making a deal with them.)
Party leaders are elected by the MPs and party members; this particular contest was a bit of an outlier because having come so close after the previous election which Truss won, the party didn't want to drag the process out again for as long and raised the threshold of MPs needed to back them in order to limit the number of candidates who could stand. If Boozo the Clown really had got as many supporters as he claimed and made it onto the ballot, it would have then gone to members for a vote, but as it ended up with Rishi Sunak being the only person who made it through the nominations stage, he automatically won.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2022-10-28 12:00 am (UTC)In the event that no one party gets to that majority, larger parties might try and form some coalition with other parties in order to get them there. Whoever was sitting prime minister at the time the election was called gets the first opportunity to try and form a government, regardless of whether their party actually got the most MPs (see 2010, where David Cameron's Conservatives got the most seats but not enough for a majority, but as Gordon Brown had been sitting PM, he was the one who had first right to try and form a government. Third party leader Nick Clegg felt that the party with more seats should be the ones to get that opportunity, and ended up making a deal with them.)
Party leaders are elected by the MPs and party members; this particular contest was a bit of an outlier because having come so close after the previous election which Truss won, the party didn't want to drag the process out again for as long and raised the threshold of MPs needed to back them in order to limit the number of candidates who could stand. If Boozo the Clown really had got as many supporters as he claimed and made it onto the ballot, it would have then gone to members for a vote, but as it ended up with Rishi Sunak being the only person who made it through the nominations stage, he automatically won.