"Its tough for 'government' to move swiftly, unless you have consensus." Yep. This is the reason for my (constructive) critique of the US constitution, which seems to have a problem with the process of enabling progress. The ability of the country to resolve its political issues leads to occasional violent upheavals, in my view. For instance, the civil war issue of slavery ought to have been resolved through the cogs of political discussion and government action, but it wasn't. Why? The politicians passed the buck.
In the inverted model - parliamentary democracy - the jamming of the gears doesn't necessarily happen so frequently and thus the option of civil war perhaps isn't present. If issues are resolved, the resentments do not fester. Slavery gets resolved as an issue in parliament.
We have had two recent issues appear that parliament could not resolve on its own: Scottish independence and Brexit. Then there's the option of an appeal to the people contained in a referendum.
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