I continue to hear people speculating as to whether or not there will be an early election. However, much of this appears to be based on the assumption that the Prime Minister can simply decide to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call an election. What this overlooks is that two weeks ago, on 15 September, the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill became an Act.
Under the Act, a Parliament will last for a fixed term of five years, with the next general election to take place on 7 May 2015. The only circumstances under which an early election can take place are (a) if the House of Commons passes a vote of no confidence in the Government and a new Government cannot be formed within fourteen days; or (b) the House votes by a two-thirds majority of all MPs in favour of the motion ‘That there shall be an early general election’.
The provisions governing a vote of no confidence are more restrictive than under the previous convention, under which a Government could move a vote of confidence in itself and, if it lost, it could resign or request a dissolution, having clearly lost the confidence of the House. Under the Act, the House has to pass the motion ‘That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government’ (a motion usually tabled by the Leader of the Opposition) and, if carried, an election will only be held if within two weeks another Government has not been formed and endorsed in a vote of confidence.
We could get ourselves into all sorts of interesting situations (what happens if the Government resigns without being defeated on a vote of confidence and the Opposition has no wish for an early election?) but my principal point here is to raise awareness of the change that has taken place. Some parliamentarians think the Act will make little difference. Others see it as a major shift in our constitutional arrangements.
@Lord Norton:
Why did this bill pass? You all knew the dreadful situation under Blair and Brown with the public wanting rid of them long before they faced up to going to the country. When they knew they would not get backing to stay in office.
A vote of no confidence should be brought now.
Reasons: Neither the Conservatives or the Liberals won an election.
They did not tell the public their plans for once in power in respect of either a coalition, dismantling of the NHS, continued mass Immigration, drastic welfare reform, and the bankers santion to continue to game with the public purse.
Therefore, they have no mandate and certainly not for power until 2015. That is another reason to call for a no confidence vote.
What we need is a wholly different party that is an acceptable alternative to the three we presently have, who are, in fact, faking a difference in policies in order to dupe the electorate into believing there is a choice.
Who outside the “Westminster Village” and the media sits around talking about whether there will be an early election? I would have thought that the people who do so will also be the ones who are aware of the new arrangements. Those who are unaware of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act won’t be having the discussion in the first place!
One surely must long-term wonder how much “confidence” the Earth’s Lifesupports may now have, and are likely in one year, five years, 50 years, 500, 5000, 50000 years time, to still have, in “Her Majesty’s”, and in Any Other presently-prevailing Governments, and Forms & Intentions of Human (Self-)Governance ?
The one difference it will make is that there will no longer be any political capital made from jibes of
” You have not got the courage to hold an election because you know you would lose”
from the opposition after about three years.
There is now such an easy answer, that it will no longer be asked.
Rt Hon Gordon Brown dealt with it rather well
considering the obvious impending loss of office for his party and himself.
If I may add a slightly off topic remark, one of the most difficult tasks in life is surely organizing the destruction or substantial weakening of the office that one holds.
The Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer did that amazingly well with regard to the office of lord Chancellor in the house of Lords. I am sometimes sycophant and his spell of office devolving it was exceptional!
Gordon Brown’s fairly certain knowledge that he was organizing a coalition govt, and not his own, by staying so long(!), was another.
Both of them very talented losers.
@GH:
Lorf Falconer was on the radio Today programme this morning, and he sounded as close to senile as you can possibly get.
He denied the booing when the Blair creature was mentioned, saying the party was not really against the man at all and they didn’t boo at his name. It was an expression of frustration as he was gone. And that he believed the country was hiding the fact that they were proud of him in real terms.
This is the kind of sick mentality and duplicitous creeps we are paying to take up room in our House of Lords. Men like this need to be made an example of.
The French had it right in 1792. They know how to burn sheep those guys.
As similar legislation has been bypassed with little difficulty elsewhere with the government voting against itself in such a motion (nothing in the act requires that only the leader of the opposition can table such a motion) Germany being the obvious recent example.
@Croft:
It’s a scandal that they have the audacity to continue calling the UK and the EU Domocracies. Quite clearly there is little democracy in any of these places as they blithely ignore their electorates wishes right across the continent. And, who is at the back of it? Does anyone know?
The fall of the Euro was as a direct result of gaming banks, mostly from the USA and Wall Street, yet, not one banker is on trial in the European democacies, in order to bring to justice the thieves we are allowed to continue as if nothing has happened.
Take that one step further. Who was at the back of Greece being endorsed for full membership of the Euro in the first place? When the money men knew full well they didn’t have the fiscal clout to stay the journey. Wasn’t the creative economic pretense covered by ‘Lehman Brothers’ an American concern.
Therefore doesn’t that lead you to the notion that the US wants the financial downfall of Europe as its Euro was about to compete heavily with the Dollar just
at the time Iraq and Iran had decided they were jacking in their dollars to trade in Euros. They no longer trusted the American currency as it is in hock to Chima?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq-ZmatOlvs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NYBTkE1yQ&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL9407F2B0ECF96989
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8DGebbq6cE
Now our poorest people are having to pay for the duplicity of the rich, who, incidentally are making a fortune out of this calamity.
maude elwes,
Therefore doesn’t that lead you to the notion that the US wants the financial downfall of Europe as its Euro was about to compete heavily with the Dollar just
at the time Iraq and Iran had decided they were jacking in their dollars to trade in Euros. They no longer trusted the American currency as it is in hock to Chima?
There are surely some actors in the American scene who pursue interests along the line you suggest.However, overall America’s ability to pursue a plicy int is own economic interest in the way you describe is shrinking and has been for a long time. That is true whether one is discussing brilliant nad wise policy which is fair to all or whether the policy is mere shrewd, underhanded and entirley unilateral. Almost all evidence indicates American weakness in prusuing such an agenda has been increasing and capacity decreasing as you suggest it is harassing Europe. But vigilance is always a good idea…
Oh Please! The banks didn’t force most western democracies to run massive deficits (both cyclical and structural) or for citizens to live on credit. The countries that weren’t debt junkies; the brics and to a much lesser extent the fiscally tight western countries have continued to grow through this recession.
On your other points. Greece joined the Euro because the Euro was a political not economic project and the political class across Europe fudged entry. As to the Dollar it is in fact seeing huge influxes of capital precisely because investors are less frightened than they are of other currencies. If you look at the borrowing rates the US is at present effectively being paid by borrowers to take their money (see the lending rate against the rate of inflation)
@Croft:
Why do you feel that? Do you not accept, in this little explanation, that global creative financing began in the USA? And although banks in the UK and Europe should have had more savvy than to ‘trust’ these hot shot credit dancers, governments encouraged them to buy into it because they wante dthe debt to enforce the theft of peoples hard earned money? Including ours under Blair and Brown in particular. Under which it ballooned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-zp5Mb7FV0
Hence the ‘belief’ that this was the way to go.
Then when the shit hit the fan, governments wanted to negate their culpability but reaised they had to back the banks as they sanctioned the gaming in the first place.
This left them bankrupt and the bonds worthless. So, the oil states begain to get jittery as they believed the Euroean banks were not as exposed as the US.
However, what they didn’t realise was the European system was deeply flawed as the US had covered, for political reasons and requests to unify the financial system and make the Euro possible, that more creative financing had to be acceptable on paper.
This resulted in these same finance houses, akin to Lehman Brothers, to adapt the Greek debt in order to ‘falsify’ the appearance of fiscal adequacy, which it did not have, and the IMF must have known it.
Nevertheless, because of political expediancy in the push for a united Europe and in order to create the Euro, as well as strengthen the borders and unification of political integration. So, they took the IMF report on Greece at face value.
However, the US was getting into a panic, they were relying more and more on China to support the dollar and the discomfort at realising Iraq and Iran were on the brink of dumping that same dollar for the Euro caused them to look for a way to eliminate the Euro. And their investigations produced the Creek cover up via the Goldman Sachs paper work cover.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvKHPuhjuAc&feature=fvsr
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvKHPuhjuAc&feature=fvsr
Voila. You have it! Bring down the Euro and kill three birds with one stone.
Now why do you find this hard to take on board? Are you one of those with the Father Christmas blinkers regarding American politics and duplicity…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QnMBS8OC3U
A contagion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XRFII9AiQc
You’re right Croft. When all roads lead to Rome, and Rome is up to its neck in debt, its not other people who are responsible.
The UK government is just as far up the creek as the Greeks. Almost all the big debts bar one is hidden off the books. The intention being that they won’t pay off on it. So if people think that ICB changes are wrong, just wait until they find their state pension won’t be paid either.
@LB:
The best thing to do ‘is’ not to pay off on it.
Have the debt cancelled. As I wrote in 2008, follow the Emperor Hadrian. It seemed overwhelmingly difficult at that time as well, but, it turned the Empire around and the people were happy.
There must be a way to do it.
The big problem of course, would be the bankers would then believe they could continure to rise and fall perpetually.
Look at the debts.
Almost all the debts are to you, and others like you. The state pension, the state second pension, civil servants and their guarantees.
Actually a lot of the last one can go. They can get their payments back plus interest.
Even the bond borrowing, most of that is to pension annuitants, and as capital for banks. Remove that, banks are bust, and your savings and current accounts down the toilet.
Might be a start for day Zero.
@LB:
Here is a good horizen broadener for all Capitalists to absorb.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b0150p5l
Here is a good horizen broadener for all Capitalists to absorb.
========
So what’s the argument.
Banks failed when they lent money to lots of poor people who couldn’t pay it back. Why did they do that? Well in the US, the government passed a law forcing them to do this. In the UK, Brown told them to do it, and they were stupid enough to do as he said.
Then they go tits up. Capitalist solution is to let them go to the wall. Socialist solution is to nationalise them.
However, since they have carried on going down the toilet, the left wing BBC has a problem. Yep, lets blame capitalism for the failure of a socialist policy.
The Rosebery government, which was exhausted – amongst other things – by the Prime Minister not being on speaking terms with his Chancellor (sound familiar?), was put out of its misery in 1895 by a vote on a snap motion (the Cordite vote) to reduce the salary by £100 of Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman who had tried to pad away, with a combination of charm and unwise focus on detailed figures, an attack about a temporary shortage of ammunition in a debate for which he was ill-prepared. His lack of preparedness was partly on account of his having been busy on getting – with success – the 75-year-old Duke of Cambridge to retire as Commander in Chief of the Army, a task on which several others had failed before. The Government lost that vote by a majority of 7, having not smelled trouble until too late to recall MPs from their homes or clubs. CB left the Chamber indicating he would resign (and soon after did so), and the Cabinet the next day was split as to what to do next; but in the end Rosebery resigned the government, letting in Lord Salisbury for yet another stint and, endorsed by general elections, a decade of the Conservative and Unionists until they too imploded late in 1905.
In short: whilst a vote of no confidence, per se, may not bring down a government, a government may resign when one is in effect carried upon it. The new legislation appears to require a government to arrange for a 2/3 majority on a motion of no confidence in itself before an election can be triggered. I think this is weird and unsatisfactory, as that 2/3 majority was conceived as just being beyond the reach of the opposition parties however combined, and indeed Parliament was so told before this new legislation was enacted.
Although at the moment our coalition is essentially between two parties, the only two parties apart from an unruly and unholy marriage of Labour and Conservatives who can together command a majority in the Commons, I can envisage circumstances in the future where the Commons might comprise 5 or 6 sizeable blocs, giving a variety of combinations that might command a majority. In such circumstances, one bloc might want to jump ship and another step into its shoes (excuse the mixed metaphor), rather in the style of the French 3rd Republic where governments resigned but ministers often reappeared with the same portfolios in the next government. Clearly this would be a change of government but there might not only be no dissolution of Parliament, there could be no dissolution of Parliament without someone moving and getting carried a motion of no confidence in the government formed of the outgoing combination. Yet there might be MPs who were in sufficient number to want a change of government but not want, for a variety of reasons, to actually move no confidence in the outgoing coalition. It remains my view that legislating to prevent a dissolution was unwise and ultimately an insult to democracy.
While I am wandering down historic lanes, the end of Balfour’s government was even more extraordinary. He tried to balance his government with both sides on the Imperial Preference versus Free Trade issue, but, in 1903 in what can only be described as a comedy of errors, managed having to end up accepting the resignations of cabinet members from both sides, fatally weakening his cabinet. It lingered on with some free trade MPs crossing the floor to the Liberals but by the end of July when his seeking more of a free hand on the issue than his party would allow (this, too, may sound familiar) the cabinet and Balfour could not really bear to face Parliament again, and he resigned the government in the winter of 1905.
The King sent for Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman who was able to form one of the most brilliant governments – certainly in terms of its cabinet – of the last century from the debris, but sought endorsement – as Prime Minister – at the January 1906 polls resulting in one of the great landslides of all (pre-universal suffrage) time. People often mistakenly attribute to Asquith that great landslide but it was CB ‘wot won it’ to use the vernacular.
The term limit at the time was still seven years under the Septennial Act 1715 (it was the Parliament Act 1911 which reduced it to five). Had there been a 7 year fixed-term Parliament, the election could not have been held until September 1907, as the preceding General Election had been the Khaki election of September 1900. Had there been a 5 year fixed-term Parliament, it might have been held a little earlier, in September 1905. Whether the landslide would have been any less to what it was in January 1906, or whether that in September 1907 would have been any greater is hard to judge. But clearly the government under Balfour had lost a commanding majority of the House of Commons by then so a change of government and an election was necessary.
How, if they put themselves into the shoes of history, would those who supported the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 have seen events transpiring had there been no option for a general election until September 1907?
Lord Norton comments, rather neutrally I think, that some think the 2011 Act will make little difference but others see it as a major shift in our constitutional arrangements. I most certainly fall into the latter camp, and it is a shift for the worse.
“Therefore doesn’t that lead you to the notion that the US wants the financial downfall of Europe as its Euro was about to compete heavily with the Dollar just
at the time Iraq and Iran had decided they were jacking in their dollars to trade in Euros. They no longer trusted the American currency as it is in hock to Chima?”
It leads me to the notion of a dangerous and thoroughly incautious interest in international finance.
Provided our longest-term planning, millions of years ahead, is being done by an Earth-Civilisational Governance rapidly calling upon Bodies of Expertise, purpose-fit for both
(1) collectively budgeting all human energies, human-timeframes, humanly-essential things, use of places, and use of monies, so as to collectively be living within the Earth’s Means; and
(2) solving already-occurrent, and seriously-possible or known-imminent, further Problems and Threats;
then it would seem that, the clearly-contrastingly evanescent but prevailing world-wide brief-term governments e.g. UK’s 5-year fixed-term Commons-parliament, whether people-elected or revolutionarily-replaced, might continue to be ‘the way to go’.
Nevertheless, at both National and neighbourhood-individual-human-development levels, we still need to plan and budget for purpose-fit Workplace Training quite separately from Lifeplace educational enablements and democratising-empowerments.
Britain as a Workplace has to live within its proportion of the Earth’s Means,
and each person in the British Lifeplace has to live within Britain’s means i.e. upon one human-living per one-human-being.
It is desperately time to stop gambling away our Earth’s Lifesupports.
The sine qua non for any level of governance needs setting:
“Every Governance Term, Fixed or Otherwise, must be constitionally and enforceably supported by Fit-for-Purpose Flexibility of Expertises & Sustainworthy Citizenship Enablements”.
We (you-governors as well as us-people) all need to ‘come down to Earth’
for otherwise our children will never touch down on any other Earth nor even enjoy what is left of this one.
———–
Three Sources:
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Dorthy Green (Australian stateperson).
Anne Hamlyn (UK expert to Australioan universities’ TV course “Environment Studies”.
By “by the end of July” I mean to refer to the end of July 1905.
This Bill makes me sick. It’s wrong in every way. First off, members of government mostly come from the House of Commons. The mish-mash means that the executive is also from the legislature, which means that a government can only be potent if it has a majority. History has told us TIME AND TIME AGAIN that every now and again, there will be a government that has a very slight majority or a minority. The lay of seats can either be determined by the loss of seats through elections, by-elections, break down of coalitions et cetera. Fixed-terms are only a viable option in countries where the arms of government (exec., legis. and judiciary) are strictly separate. For example, the USA, which elects its presidents and its legislature in separate elections. We don’t elect our Prime Ministers directly – in a sense, we do as we usually vote for the candidate who represents the party whose leader you want to become PM, but there are myriad other instances in our elections such as tactical voting. Secondly, provided that this wretched Bill is here to stay, WHY IS IT SET FOR FIVE YEARS?!!?! It beggars belief that Messrs. Cameron and Clegg consider this ‘democratic’. Knowing for certain when an election will be each time does not make it democratic if the elections are set at the most infrequent instances constitutionally possible. I can’t understand the other reasons that Cameron-Clegg use to defend this Bill – claiming that a Prime Minister can call an election ‘whenever they like’. If you look at postwar elections, no PMs have called an election on the back of a large, yet fleeting success. There is nothing unhealthy with the regularity that elections are called. Having an parliament more frequent than four-five years doesn’t make for any tyranny or problems at all. Any government that calls an election simply as a means of adding a couple of years on to its tenure is not a problem at all – not that it ever is likely to happen. And if it did and in those two years that government did something horrendous – unlikely again – would it not be better for the Opposition to make a motion of no confidence? The last time this happened (in a sense) was in 1979 when the Labour Government were defeated and forced to call an election. If they hadn’t, they would have had a mere 6 months left in power. I absolutely abhor this wrong-headed excuse of an answer to a question nobody asked. The implementation of this Bill means that we are much more liable to be saddled with governments that crumble eons before their term is due to end. Opposition can vote to defeat the Government and force a general election? Not likely. Yes, C-C have also decided that two-thirds of Parliament have to vote out the Government which means that for this Government to fall before a general election, EVERY Oppsotion MP (about 290) plus not many under a half of the Government (150 or so) would be required to vote. Why is this happening? Have they cracked? I seem to remember Cameron spent pretty much most of the time that Gordon Brown was PM calling for him to call an election. Total hypocrite.