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Comment by castis | Hacker News Reader

Legitimate only means that the :rules: were followed and nothing more. It does not mean that the rules or the system they reside in are just.

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Not the only meaning of "legitimate". There's also "Authentic, real, genuine" and "Conforming to known principles, or established or accepted rules or standards; valid." (Wiktionary) There's a question of acceptability involved here, I feel.

I never claimed otherwise. I just answered to the comment stating that she was illigetimally in her position, as if the UK was a dictatorship, which isn't the case.

I think that there is a bit more nuance needed if you claim 100% legitimacy.

Winning an election on one manifesto, being chosen by 100k members, and then ripping the manifesto up and trying to implement a set of completely different policies would strike most, I think, as not 100% legitimate even if it's legal.

And just to add that she campaigned with members on ripping up the manifesto.

The word legitimacy can be interpreted in either a normative way or a “positive” (see positivism) way. The first meaning refers to political philosophy and deals with questions such as: What are the right sources of legitimacy? Is a specific political order or regime worthy of recognition? As such, legitimacy is a classic topic of political philosophy.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/legitimacy

While I agree with you that it would be incorrect to baldly dismiss Truss' premiership as illegitimate, I feel that uniqueuid's comment was using the term according to the above usage, suggesting, perhaps, that the law of the land is anachronistic, or less than optimal according to democratic principles.

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