Yesterday Iain drew attention to Lynne Featherstone’s comments regarding fixed term parliaments, stating that her argument for such fixed terms was one of the best he had heard:
"It’s 80 minutes into an Arsenal-Tottenham football derby. Tottenham lead 1-0.
Arsenal are piling on the pressure. The Tottenham manager shouts at the ref,
“OK, that’s it – can we have the final score now please?” The ref agrees, all
the players troop off the pitch 10 minutes early and Tottenham get the three
points. Sounds absurd doesn’t it (and I don’t just mean the idea of Tottenham
beating Arsenal!)? But that’s what passes for normal in the world of Palace of
Westminster politics when it comes to general election dates. The Prime Minister
– and the Prime Minister alone – gets to choose the date. Now – in theory
Parliaments last for five years and the monarch has to agree to any earlier
election, but in practice – the PM always gets his or her way."
Here’s the thing though, Lynne Featherstone’s analogy simply doesn’t work. There is absolutely no similarity between her football match example and the Prime Minister’s ability to call an election whenever he wants. It might sound nice, but as with most over simplifications faces to capture the reality of the situation.
The reality is that whenever the PM calls an election the voters have the power to return the PM to power, or indeed to vote for one of the other parties. If they vote for the PM’s party they do so knowing that as a result of their vote they may be stuck with the PM’s party for another five years. The voters decide; there is nothing undemocratic about it.
The logic behind the campaign for fixed term parliaments is essentially as follows:
- The PM gets to call an election whenever he knows he’s going to
That’s not fair
But here’s my question to advocates of fixed term parliaments: what is unfair, indeed undemocratic, about millions of voters going to the polls and expressing their desire to see the party in government returned for a further five years?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:20 am
I have nothing against fixed terms, but should it be four years?
January 21st, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
There are few bipartisan political campaigns that irritate me more than the fixed term parliament brigade, anywhere in the world. If they had their way, I’m sure the grand theatre of political life would be reduced to a bunch of robots grinding along by rote!
So what if a prime minister gets to choose the date of an election? To the victor go the spoils, part of which should be some freedom of movement in this area. It keeps politicos on their toes, and doesn’t always work to advantage.
Think Harold Wilson in 1970, or Ted Heath in February 1974. Or better still, Jim Callaghan and Gordon Brown, two PMs who had the opportunity available to them but bottled it in the interests of “staying on” and paid the price.
Australian conservative legend Sir Robert Menzies was a master at it, calling elections way before the due date no less than three times and throwing Australia’s entire electoral timetable out of sync just for political gain. He always won - but that was his privilege, and one that should definitely be kept.