No, no, no.
"What are you talking about?", works juuust fine.
The unreasonable part is that everything POTUS does is official. If you plot with the attorney general to commit a crime then you're not doing an official act. I have no idea who started this "political figures can only be punished at the ballot box" but it really needs to stop.
If things were that simple then everybody in the mafia would be an attorney so they'd always have attorney client privilege.
That's obviously bonkers, it's an official act, but it's extremely illegal, we won't even have to wait for the public to throw them out at general election for them to be arrested.
Just because you make the laws doesn't mean you're not governed by them yourself, at least outside of absolute power like our Kings & Queens of yesteryear or modern day dictators.
It was a very surprising decision to me, as an outsider, that an elected leader in a developed country should be above the law while in office.
Take e.g. Poland where actually both the president as well as all members of the parliament (corresponds to your congressmen in congress) have immunity by default (members of the parliament have the "for official acts" qualifier, but from what I could find the president does not even have that qualifier). The immunity can however be taken away by a vote of parliament.
Hits the news every now and then when somebodies immunity is taken away after they've been caught drunk driving.
Same for e.g. Germany and France, based on a quick google.
In the US, not having a parliament in the same way, I suppose what's missing (unless it isn't?) is for the congress/senate to be able to take it away in that way. I'm not at all familiar enough with their set up to know if that would be a completely wild precedent ('president is supposed to be supreme to them' etc.) though.
Although I don't know too too much about the UK, but IIRC anything said in parliament can't be used against you in a court so it's hard to imagine that passing a law in parliament could be used against you. So I suspect you couldn't sue Keir Starmer (PM) or Charles (King) if such a law was passed.
Similarly, if the US Congress decided to pass a law taking away vasts amount of your wealth (slaves [1]) without compensation you can't sue individual congress critters over that as passing laws is actually an official act. For those of you that are unaware, arguably slaves made up 1/3 of the wealth in the south [2] (Scroll to tables 4 or 5) and so imagine that the USG decided to pass a wealth tax of 1/3 of your wealth. (I mean they should've never really be into slavery in the first place but uh it's pretty clear why they're still so mad about the north ending it after a war just barely longer than a presidential term).
> It was a very surprising decision to me, as an outsider, that an elected leader in a developed country should be above the law while in office.
Only when doing your job. You want to step outside and punch homeless people in the streets thats a crime. You're given a law by congress to do that, then it's an official act.
Running a political campaign is not an official act afaik, in fact numerous laws (i.e. Hachet Act [3]) pretty much prohibit it for officials.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
Er, today. The UK monarch is completely immune from prosecution.
> parliament declaring a genocide of all Londoners,
This is only illegal insofar as it conflicts with ECHR. An explicit repeal of ECHR and withdrawal from the European convention on human rights would be required, and there are people agitating for that. Once that's out of the way it's entirely possible for Parliament to start legalizing open season on whoever they like.
The precedent is, of course, Northern Ireland, and the endless litigation since Bloody Sunday and similar incidents ("soldier F").
I'd note, though, that beheadings have precedent.
There's still a large technicality that I think is being missed here.
If the law is illegal who do you sue? In the US you can challenge a law as unconstitutional when it's enforced by suing the enforcer. You can't sue the individual people who passed the law; just basically the cops when they apply it (or the government at large as a collective individual).
Eh, if you like.. the main problem with this kind of discussion is it's just so unthinkable that it's hard to really reason about.
But yes, strictly in principle, it is of course His Majesty's prison service, King's Counsel, etc.
I suppose what I meant really was that they are not today (practically speaking) in law-making or executive office.