andrewducker | Election Time Again!

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The 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.

Crossposts: http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/3569705.html

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From:

danieldwilliam

Ah. There's certainly a non-trivial number of SNP voters who voted for Brexit and a small number of the SNP leadership (for want of a better word to describe Jim Sillars).

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.)