{"id":28,"date":"2015-02-09T12:14:39","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T12:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edgehill.ac.uk\/election\/?p=28"},"modified":"2015-05-12T11:42:46","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T10:42:46","slug":"oh-no-not-another-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edgehill.ac.uk\/comment\/2015\/02\/09\/oh-no-not-another-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh no.. not another one!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the run up to this election there\u2019s a torrent of comment about unpredictability and possible deals.\u00a0 I have even heard people talk about another election shortly after this one.\u00a0 Certainly after the 2010 election many believed that a second election would follow quickly if a suitable deal couldn\u2019t be done.<\/p>\n<p>The most recent example of this is of course back in 1974.\u00a0 It\u2019s this topic that formed the theme of this weekend\u2019s BBC Radio<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b051j636\" target=\"_blank\"> Archive on 4<\/a> (7 Feb).<\/p>\n<p>But we are in different territory now as<a href=\"http:\/\/www.legislation.gov.uk\/ukpga\/2011\/14\/contents\/enacted\" target=\"_blank\"> the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (2011) <\/a>not only tells us exactly when the next election should be, it makes it much, much harder to have one in between.<\/p>\n<p>People from the US and other countries with fixed term elections must have thought us very strange pre 2010.\u00a0 A democracy in which effectively the Prime Minister could load the dice, time the economic tide, call a contest when he or she was already in the lead.\u00a0 As a political activist I remember the Gordon Brown election that never was.\u00a0 Half way through a leaflet delivery, with speculation at fever pitch that the PM was about to go to the Palace, I was phoned to say that Brown had announced there wouldn\u2019t be an early poll. Very much a \u201ccalm down\u201d moment.\u00a0 Steve Richards, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2010\/oct\/03\/whatever-it-takes-steve-richards-book-review\" target=\"_blank\">Whatever It Takes<\/a>, paints a dramatic picture of the tensions around the decision on whether to call an election or not.\u00a0 The rest is history, but the point is that he (Brown) \u00a0had the power.<\/p>\n<p>So are we better off with Fixed Term Parliaments?\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly more democratic if the PM can\u2019t wield that power.\u00a0 And in planning terms, for politicians, business, the media and just about everyone else, knowing exactly when an election will happen must be a good thing. It is also delightful not to have to wade through the acres of ill- informed election date speculation in the press!<\/p>\n<p>But nothing in politics is wholly good!<\/p>\n<p>The US, with its fixed terms has election campaigns that start much earlier than ours.\u00a0 The temptation to \u201cbe first\u201d to \u201cgo off early\u201d to \u201cget momentum going\u201d means these get longer rather than shorter.\u00a0 In the UK we are experiencing some of this already. The first Monday after the winter break (5 Jan) saw just about every party doing election launches of one sort or another.\u00a0 Is this good?\u00a0 Well it means people have longer to think about issues but I wonder if many aren\u2019t bored already.<\/p>\n<p>And as for that possible snap election after May 7<sup>th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Difficult but not impossible.\u00a0 Commentator <a href=\"http:\/\/www.markpack.org.uk\/127820\/no-need-wait-polling-day-well-know-april-whether-will-two-general-elections-2015\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Pack<\/a> says look at the manifestos.\u00a0 So we shall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the run up to this election there\u2019s a torrent of comment about unpredictability and possible deals.\u00a0 I have even heard people talk about another election shortly after this one.\u00a0 Certainly after the 2010 election many believed that a second election would follow quickly if a suitable deal couldn\u2019t be done. The most recent example [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1269,"featured_media":30,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32286],"tags":[32279,32278,32340],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-election-2015","tag-coalition","tag-general-election","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Oh no.. not another one! - Comment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edgehill.ac.uk\/comment\/2015\/02\/09\/oh-no-not-another-one\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oh no.. not another one! - Comment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the run up to this election there\u2019s a torrent of comment about unpredictability and possible deals.\u00a0 I have even heard people talk about another election shortly after this one.\u00a0 Certainly after the 2010 election many believed that a second election would follow quickly if a suitable deal couldn\u2019t be done. 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