Tag Archives: early election

The effects of early elections on satisfaction with democracy

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As the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill makes its way through parliament, Edward Morgan-Jones and Matthew Loveless report on the results of their recently published comparative study, which explores the impact of the rules surrounding the dissolution of parliament and early election calling on citizen satisfaction with democracy.  

The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill seeks to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and returns to the UK Prime Minister the right to call early elections at any time, without the approval of parliament. This is a return to the to the UK’s traditional constitutional practice for dissolving parliament. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act changed this practice by limiting early election calling to occasions when either two-thirds of MPs vote for a parliamentary dissolution or the government fails a confidence vote and no alternative government can be found.

Returning to the prime minister the ability to call early elections whenever they wish increases the likelihood that early elections will be called for partisan and strategic reasons, that these elections will be called in conditions that favour the incumbent, and also makes it more likely that the prime ministers’ party will win such elections.

Our comparative analysis of constitutional rules governing early election calling in 26 European countries sheds light on the extent that we might be able to expect returning prime ministerial discretion to call elections to be associated with higher or lower degrees of democratic satisfaction.

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A question of confidence? The Constitution Committee’s view on the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

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Nine years after the passage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, both government and opposition have expressed a desire to repeal it, following two general elections: one brought about about using the provisions of the Act and another by circumventing them. The Constitution Committee has produced a report setting out what any replacement legislation needs to address. Its Chair, Baroness Taylor, discusses the Committee’s conclusions below.

On its introduction in 2011, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (FTPA) was heralded by the then Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, as a ‘constitutional innovation’ that would no longer allow the timing of general elections to be a ‘plaything of Governments’. Nine years on, it is safe to say that the FTPA has not had the effect that he and others envisaged. The FTPA has been stress-tested and found wanting by political parties and commentators alike. 

The FTPA sets the length of parliaments at five years and requires the approval of the House of Commons for an early general election. It removed the longstanding prerogative power of the monarch to dissolve parliament at the request of the Prime Minister and instead vested this authority in Members of Parliament. In 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May proved that a government that wanted an election could secure one using the provisions of the FTPA. In 2019, at the helm of a minority government that was thrice denied an early general election under the FTPA, Prime Minister Boris Johnson sidestepped its requirements with the Early Parliamentary General Election Act.

These events prompted proposals from both the Conservative and Labour parties to repeal the FTPA. The current government has reiterated that commitment since taking office. However, repealing the FTPA is not straightforward, given its constitutional and legal implications. It is in this context that the House of Lords Constitution Committee published its report on the FTPA on 4 September, exploring its effects and the questions that need to be addressed for any future reform.

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Can Boris Johnson simply repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act?

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The Conservative manifesto pledged to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, but was silent about what, if anything, would replace it. Robert Hazell argues that it is not enough to simply repeal the Act; new legislation will have to be drafted, parliamentary scrutiny will have to take place, and the options for reform should be properly considered.

Can the Fixed-term Parliaments Act simply be repealed? The short answer is: no. As always, it is more complicated than that. But the commitment in the Conservative manifesto was unambiguous: ‘We will get rid of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act [sic] – it has led to paralysis at a time the country needed decisive action’ (page 48). And decisive action is what the government hopes to display through early repeal of the FTPA. It does not seem to be one of the issues to be referred to the new Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission, since they were mentioned separately in the Queen’s Speech. So — unless the government has second thoughts — we can expect early legislation to be introduced to repeal the FTPA.

The government may feel that it can press ahead with little opposition, since the Labour manifesto contained an equally unambiguous commitment to repeal: ‘A Labour government will repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which has stifled democracy and propped up weak governments’ (page 81). But there is no need for urgent legislation: this is not a pressing issue, and with a government majority of 87, we are not going to see motions for early dissolution or ‘no confidence’ any time soon. And there are good reasons for taking it more slowly: not least, that there is provision for a statutory review of the FTPA in section 7 of the Act, due to be initiated in 2020. In anticipation of that review, the Lords Constitution Committee is already conducting an inquiry into the operation of the Act, due to conclude in around March.

The evidence submitted last year to the Constitution Committee (in 14 written submissions, and four sessions of oral evidence) has brought out many of the difficulties involved. These are both political and technical. The main political difficulty is that repeal of the Act would return us to the situation where the incumbent Prime Minister can choose the date of the next election. No one disputes the potential advantage that confers: in Roy Jenkins’s famous phrase, uttered during a Lords debate on 11 March 1992, it is equivalent to deciding ‘to give the pistol in a race to one of the competitors and encourage him to fire it whenever he thinks that the others are least ready’. It also enables the government to time the election when they are doing well in the opinion polls, and to stoke up their support through good news announcements and giveaway budgets. Petra Schleiter’s research shows that this confers a significant electoral advantage: in the UK since 1945, the average vote share bonus realised on calling an early election was around 6%, and it doubled the likelihood that the incumbent PM survived in office.

Electoral fairness is the main argument for fixed terms, but not the only one. Other reasons include better planning in Whitehall because of greater certainty, less risk of losing legislation to a snap election, more clarity for the Electoral Commission and electoral administrators, and for the political parties. It is true that electoral certainty has not been much in evidence in recent years, with two early elections in 2017 and 2019. But it would be wrong to judge the FTPA solely on the basis of the extraordinary Brexit parliaments of 2015 and 2017. It is too early to rush to judgement, and it is too insular: most of the Westminster world, and almost all European parliaments have fixed terms, so there is plenty of wider experience to draw upon. A more balanced approach would ask – as the Lords Constitution Committee has done – whether the FTPA needs fine tuning, and if so what amendments are required, rather than rushing straight to repeal. Continue reading →

Might Boris Johnson try to call an election sooner than people think?

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professor_hazell_2000x2500_1.jpgmeg_russell_2000x2500.jpgWhile there has been much talk about a possible vote of no confidence when parliament returns in the autumn, speculation about the possibility of the Prime Minister himself seeking to trigger an immediate election in September has been much more limited. In this post, Robert Hazell and Meg Russell suggest that an October election could hold some attractions for Johnson, but it would also hold significant risks. Crucially, under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act Labour could readily block him from pursuing it.

Since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister on 24 July there has been a daily blizzard of announcements from No 10 trumpeting more spending on the police, the NHS, schools, and other public services. This has led some commentators to conclude that he is gearing up for an autumn election. The context has largely been speculation, on the one hand, about a possible parliamentary vote of no confidence triggering such an election either shortly before or after Brexit day on 31 October, or on the other hand, over whether Johnson could successfully proceed with a ‘no deal’ Brexit, pulling the rug from under the Brexit Party, and hold an election in November.

Much energy has gone into debating how parliament might prevent ‘no deal’, considering possible legislation, votes of no confidence, governments of national unity, the caretaker convention, and the the Prime Minister’s ability to advise the Queen when polling day will be. On this blog, we have contributed our share (see here). But amidst the speculation about a vote of no confidence under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, there has been far less focus on the possible use of the other route to an early election provided in the Act, which is to invite the Commons to agree to an early dissolution. One exception was a piece in last week’s Spectator, suggesting that when parliament returns on 3 September Boris Johnson could immediately trigger such a vote, potentially leading to a general election on 10 October. Theresa May, after all, surprised everyone by triggering an early election in 2017. Could Boris Johnson do the same?

This post considers the reasons why the Prime Minister might be tempted to pursue such a route, and the very significant obstacles that he would face.

Why Boris Johnson might favour a snap election

The potential scenario is this: Boris Johnson returns on 3 September announcing that he wants to call an early election, to seek a mandate to bolster his tough negotiating position that the EU must drop the Irish backstop – or that failing that, the UK would pursue a ‘no deal’ Brexit. He might claim that this was necessary to appeal over the heads of intransigent MPs to the public at large. Continue reading →

Will Theresa May call an early General Election? And would it resolve things if she did?

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Theresa May has ruled out an early general election, but that has not stopped predictable calls for her to trigger one on the grounds that her elevation to the premiership without a general election is undemocratic. Robert Hazell suggests that in saying that an early general election is not necessary she is entirely correct: the idea that Prime Ministers need a personal mandate is a misunderstanding of our parliamentary system. Were she to want to hold an election it would not be impossible for her to do so, but the Fixed-term Parliaments Act makes this more complicated than it has historically been and, in the context of Brexit, it is unclear what an early election would resolve in any case.

Does a new Prime Minister need a democratic mandate?

As soon as it was announced that Theresa May would be elected unopposed in the second stage of the Tory leadership race, and so would become Prime Minister, the predictable cries went up that this was undemocratic. No one had voted for her, it was said, other than the 35,000 electors in Maidenhead who voted for her at the 2015 general election, and the 199 MPs who voted for her in the final ballot amongst Tory MPs. The 150,000 members of the Conservative party had been deprived of any choice in the matter, let alone the 46 million electors in the country at large.

Theresa May has herself ruled out the need for an early election. Constitutionally she is entirely correct: the idea that prime ministers need a personal mandate is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of our parliamentary system. Only in presidential systems is the head of the government directly elected. In parliamentary systems we elect a parliament, not a government. Parliamentary elections are a two stage process: after we have elected a parliament, the new parliament then determines who forms the government. And it is not uncommon for the head of government to change part way through a parliament, and not to call a general election.That has happened five times since the Second World War: when Harold Macmillan succeeded Eden in 1957, when he in turn was replaced by Alec Douglas-Home in 1963, when James Callaghan succeeded Harold Wilson in 1975, when John Major followed Margaret Thatcher in 1990, and when Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair in 2007. So far as I can recall, only in the last case was it suggested that the new Prime Minister needed to call a second election.

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