Election Time Again!
Apr. 18th, 2017 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerThe government has grown fed up with having a wafer-thin majority, which is meaning that they are dependent on the...less compliant members of the party to pass things. And so we get to have an election.
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act the government can't just call an election.
So, May needs to either:
1) No Confidence herself. And then wait 14 days. Easy to do, even if it looks a bit silly.
2) Get Labour to go along with the snap election. Which they'd be stupid to do, but will probably do so anyway, considering recent behaviour.
2) Repeal the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. Would probably take a while, particularly if the Lords decide to bounce it around.
I wonder which one she'll go for. By what's been said so far, it looks like (2), but it's hard to tell.
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act the government can't just call an election.
So, May needs to either:
1) No Confidence herself. And then wait 14 days. Easy to do, even if it looks a bit silly.
2) Get Labour to go along with the snap election. Which they'd be stupid to do, but will probably do so anyway, considering recent behaviour.
2) Repeal the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. Would probably take a while, particularly if the Lords decide to bounce it around.
I wonder which one she'll go for. By what's been said so far, it looks like (2), but it's hard to tell.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-18 10:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-18 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-18 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-18 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-18 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-18 04:59 pm (UTC)"or if a motion for an early general election is agreed either by at least two-thirds of the House or without division"
(I'm not sure what "without division" means in this case. Any idea?)
no subject
Date: 2017-04-18 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 12:57 am (UTC)I don't pay enough attention to know how often stuff's passed without contest, but I've been there when it has been: this is especially likely in amendments to Bills that're uncontroversial.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 10:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-18 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-18 09:42 pm (UTC)Huh? Historically, opposition parties have never supported early dissolution unless they think it can improve their position. Neither do government parties, for that matter. Nobody calls them cowards. They're only cowards if they put off an election that's due. If they do support an early election because it's to their own advantage, then what they get called is opportunists.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 08:50 am (UTC)Now it does. May needs a two thirds majority in parliament, which it is already clear, less than 24 hours after her announcement, she will get. You think that press wouldn't call them cowards? Have you never looked at the Mail? And that word would also be used inside the Labour and, in particular by the Blairites who want to get rid of Corbyn. A lot of them want this election in the hope of getting rid of him. And do you think they wouldn't be quoted? Furthermore, people don't trust people who are not willing to trust them by going to the polls. That is why every single party in parliament has 'welcomed' the idea of an election.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 09:36 am (UTC)So, as I said, opposition parties have never supported early dissolution unless they think it can improve their position. Neither have governments.
It doesn't matter what the Mail says. The Mail would abuse the Labour Party no matter what it does. So that's a neutral.
Apart from such hereditary enemies, though, it's never been the done thing to call a party cowards for opposing an early election. "Going to the polls early" is not the same thing as "going to the polls." You think the public is eager for this? The more general reaction is this which Andrew cited.
Where are these Labourites who are welcoming an election because it would rid them of Corbyn? The ones I've seen quoted are all heartsick at the idea of an election, because of all the seats Labour will lose, not even necessarily their own.
You're probably right that it would be the end of Corbyn. For 25 years now, the major party leader who's lost a GE has always resigned immediately afterwards. (That emphatically was not previously the case.) On the other hand, if Corbyn can see this election as a plus for Labour when it obviously isn't, maybe he'd see a silver lining in a loss, too. There are still people who don't think Labour was responsible for its own crashing loss in 1983.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 10:50 am (UTC)My own prediction - and I say this with sorrow - is that May will get her election easily. (That isn't really a prediction - the figures are right there.) Also, that she will win the larger majority she wants (and silence the 'she hasn't a mandate' critics.) The polls are often wrong, but not usually 20% wrong. Which is the current Tory lead.
Labour's only chance is the line Corbyn is taking - waving the EU to one side and talking about social policy. It's his best chance of getting back the labour voters who defected to UKIP while hanging onto the Remainers.
It's likely that the Lib Dems will do better than their current polling, but that might be at the expense of Labour rather than the Tories. And UKIP may now be a spent force.
We shall see. However, I have plainly been listening to different politicians and pundits than you have...
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 02:30 pm (UTC)However, the fact that, under FTP, they no longer just have the option of expressing their opinion, but actually have to vote on it, may make a difference.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 01:01 am (UTC)I am very doubtful that Corbyn can whip enough Labour MPs to turn up and vote it through, we shall see tomorrow, all they have to do is be busy and it's a vote against, but if the SNP all turn up and vote it's pretty much guaranteed.
And yeah, repealing the FTPA would take ages, at least 6 months and possibly 2 years, so not really an option.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 10:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 10:07 am (UTC)Probably the worst case for her is that she loses a couple of rural seats to the Convervatives and a couple of suburban seats to the Lib Dems leaving her with 50+ seats.
There are 12 seats in Scotland where the SNP polled less than 42% of the vote (including the 3 seats they didn't win). Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk is a pretty marginal SNP, Conservative seat with the Lib Dems third (SNP 36.6% Con 36% LD 18.7%), Dumbartonshire East is an SNP - LD marginal (SNP 40% to Ld 36.3%) with similar stories in Edinburgh West and Fife North East. So of the 12 most marginal SNP seats about half have the opposition split between two parties.
Best case is that she wins all the seats and might poll above 50%.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 02:38 pm (UTC)However, I wonder if this will happen. Not because of any perception of movement in Scottish opinion, but simply because the SNP has very little room to move up. There are more tight majorities for them to lose than gain, simply because there's only 3 of the latter. And even if their vote does not drop at all significantly, any net loss of seats will look very bad for them, even if it isn't actually.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 03:42 pm (UTC)and for sure, the Labour Party , the Lib Dems and the Tories are all pretty close to the zero lower bound in terms of seats.
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk is a wafer thin majority for the SNP MP. The next two Tory target setas Dumfries and Galloway and Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine need swings of about 6%.
The last opinion poll I saw had
SNP 47%, Con 28%, Lab 14% and Lib Dem 4%
Scottish results in the UK general election of 2015
SNP 50%, Con 15%, Lab 24%, Lib Dem 8%
assume some tactical voting in support of the UK union and you can see the Tories winning Berwickshire et all, but conversely assuming some tactical voting in favour of Remain and the Tories lose votes.
I think fundamentally Sturgeon and co recognise that if Corbyn is going to vote for the dissolution then the election is going to happen so they might as well look enthusiastic about it.
If they improve their position on GE15 then we're in to the sort of territory where the more enthusasitic nationalists will start talking about unilateral declarations of independence.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 04:30 pm (UTC)May is framing the GE as a Brexit referendum. That way, when the Tories win as they inevitably will, May can pretend that it's a second endorsement of Brexit. This is good for the government, because they wouldn't do anywhere near as well in an actual second Brexit referendum.
But it's bad for the SNP, because a large minority of 2015 SNP voters favored Brexit. If they see the GE as a Brexit referendum, they'll defect to the Tories and the SNP will lose seats. Thus Sturgeon is calling the GE "a huge political miscalculation" on the government's part, because she wants to frame it as a referendum on the entire Tory agenda, and insofar as it's about Brexit as specifically a hard Brexit and not simply Leave or Stay.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-20 10:03 am (UTC)I am uncertain whether for most independence minded Leave voters which constitutional question is most important. Would they prefer Scotland to be independent of the UK or for Scotland to not be in the EU if they could have only one? I think most of them would prefer Scottish independence or have enough misplaced hope that they can have everything they want that they would continue to vote for a policy Scottish independence within the EU believing they can persuade the nation to not be part of the EU afterwards. But I am uncertain of this. I guess we'll get some indication of that over the next two months.
There's also the long-standing and quite deep hatred of the Tory party in large section of the Scottish electorate. In some ways the rise of the SNP is due to them successfully positioning themselves as the Not-Tory social democratics in Scotland in place of the Labour Party. I think there is a stripe of the electorate who are Unionists but struggle to vote for the Tories and find themselves struggling also to vote for a hapless Labour Party. Is effectively Unionism or effective Non-Toryness most important to these people. Again, I don't know.
So, whilst, yes, there are quite a few Brexit supporting SNP voters there are also quite a few significant slivers of the population who might not be able to vote for the Tories or Scottish Labour and there are probably a few Unionists for whom remaining part of the EU is more important than remaining part of the UK.
The salience and valance of the issues is unclear to me.
(Not sure what the word is for the group of people who have influence within and over an organisation without formal authority.)