The Calm Before The Storm

Wednesday 9th April

Despite the recent debate between Clegg and Farage, and the on-going scandal around the expenses of Maria Miller, politics has gone really quite quiet.  There is an election in the offing too, or rather many as it is again local election time.  I suspect that the Tories are braced for losses, and would rather not actually remind people that there is an a chance to vote at all.  And Labour aren’t really that excited about them either; no matter how well they do the Press will say it was a poor performance, and besides a year out it is still a bit too early.  We are in a new untried situation.  One of the things the Tories did was a constitutional change; instead of the end of a parliament being in the gift of the Prime Minister unless he goes full-term from now and in the future the General Election will be every five years.  I am not sure of the advantage, except that the usual Press speculation as to the date has gone away.  Another effect, of course is that as there is a far-distant starting pistol and no-one is suddenly going to pull out a pistol and fire it when no-one is looking Politics is much more measured and less feverish.

In years gone by the Opposition were always a bit jumpy, in case the PM surprised them with a snap-election, and so were far more active, constantly unveiling policies and trying to keep in the public eye.  Now, as the election is just over a year away things have gone quiet; there is no need to be so active, better to save it all for the six or three months prior to the known date.  One other thought, what would happen if a Government had a slender majority which gradually crumbled long before the five years were up and was facing a possible vote of no confidence?  Would the then PM have no option to call an election himself, would he have to wait for a vote of no confidence to be lost before it would trigger an election?  And would that be a good thing or not?   The iidea of the fixed term was supposed to mean strong Government, but it could just have the opposite effect, as they run out of ideas and are just hanging on.  Mind you many say that that was just what Gordon Brown did under the old system.