Timothy Collinson wrote:

>	I sometimes struggle to think my way into high level Traveller PCs/NPCs and
>	their lives/jobs etc because I'm so unfamiliar with them.

And so do we all :-)

See eg https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-62596329 for a bit more on this specific story.

One advantage of the parliamentary system over the presidential one is that in the former those who attain high office have (almost) always previously occupied lower offices, and so have a view into the 'way things work', have 'come up the ranks', and so on.

In the UK a smart young MP will generally start out as a PPS (think aide-de-camp) to a (usually junior) minister, then either become a junior minister themselves or become PPS to a senior minister, and so on. They may take several trips between such a position, and holding no office at all (except for MP). This makes handovers a lot smoother. Of course it also makes radical change a lot harder, which could be a plus or a minus.

I posit that the same sort of mechanism exists - radical political changes being pretty rare in Vilani-land :-)

BTW, the best introductions to UK politics are the TV series 'Yes, Minister' and 'Yes, Prime, Minister'.

Jonathan