I can’t get over how insane it is that the sitting party gets to look at their polling numbers and decide if it’s a good time to have an election or not. I get why they are so insistent on keeping the monarchy because the rest of the system is kept together by tape and random bits of string
It’s not just the UK, it’s actually quite common wordwide.
Isn’t that because it was spread by the British in the first place?
Somewhat true, but there’s lots of parliamentary systems that were never under British rule. Nobody has followed the US’s weird system. Not even ones where the US had a direct hand in setting up the democratic government, like Iraq.
The weird system of… predictable elections? Because that’s what we’re talking about. You can have predictable elections with a parliamentary system.
And any government is only as good as the people in it, as we can see from Brexit. They threw away their future because of a non-binding vote, which was very close and done only once.
Weird in having a whole bunch of compromises between big and small states, and separating the power of the executive and legislature. Countries looked at both of those and picked the one that’s more chaotic, but less clumsy.
There’s no reason why the current government should be able to pick the date of the election. What’s the reason behind that besides “The Prime Minister wants it that way”?
It’s a consequence of parliamentary sovereignty.
Parliament can always dissolve itself and call an election, and it’s an important mechanism for getting rid of the government.
The problem is that the prime minister also has a majority in parliament, and that means he can make parliament dissolve itself when he likes.
This was actually a problem for Johnson. Initially, he didn’t have enough of a majority and it wasn’t clear he could call an election without Corbyn’s support.
I dunno, with the American system you have like 2 year long campaigning cycle for president. There’s almost no break and it’s exhausting. In Canada when an election is called the campaign is only about 6 weeks give or take a week.
Also, if the government becomes dysfunctional, it can be dissolved and a new government elected. The US system doesn’t allow for that flexibility.
So is dictatorships.
I’m just like a dictatorship we also know the outcome of this election before it’s even announced.
The guardian were saying that they decided “this was the best they’re going to get”
The Sun had something like Rishi picks his moment and “it caught starmer on the hop!”
Polling looks good for Labour. Kinda crazy the prime minister basically torpedoed his own party because it was so bad.
on the anniversary of the day they got their asses handed to them by some bluecoats???
'Murica… well, Mercia, at least.
Interesting date.
UK elections are always on Thursdays for some unfathomable reason.
It’s so the votes can be counted overnight and the announcement made on the Friday. Then the incoming government sorts things out over the weekend and we can have a new functioning government on Monday.
If they did the election on say a Monday then the announcement would be made on Tuesday, then the country would just be in limbo for 2 days while everyone tried to work out what was going to happen. This way, the limbo happens over the weekend where not much business needs to be done anyway.
Are you for real? This is hilariously absurd.
Forming a government takes much more than just a weekend if you are serious about it and in a democracy there should be a peaceful shift of power from the prior government so having that one run the day to day business until the new one is in place, should be no issue.
British democracy is even weaker than i thought it was.
I didn’t design the system. It’s just how it works.
Obviously they don’t actually form the government over the weekend they know who they’re going to have in various positions because they’re already in the shadow cabinet positions. It exists because historically the MP who are now cabinet members, and therefore required to live near the capitol, may very well actually be in completely different parts of the country and it would take them a few days to get back to London.
Especially the government suddenly called an election like they’ve just done.
I know you didn’t design it, or come up with that “reasoning”. To me it sounds like it is just some excuse to have votes on a working day to disadvantage working class people from voting.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Rishi Sunak has vowed to “fight for every vote” as he called an early UK general election for Thursday 4 July.In a surprise announcement, the PM said he would go to the polls this summer as he bids to win a fifth term in office for the Conservatives.It overturned expectations of an autumn election, which might have given his party a better chance of closing the gap with Labour.Sir Keir Starmer said it was “time for change” away from “Tory chaos”.
There was confusion in at least some parts of the Conservative Party about why Mr Sunak decided to call the general election sooner than was widely expected, the BBC’s political correspondent Henry Zeffman reported.
In a TV statement shortly afterwards, Sir Keir argued Tory “chaos” had damaged the economy, and a vote for his party represented a chance to bring political stability.Adding it was “time for change”, he criticised the Conservatives’ management of public services, the NHS and record on tackling crime.
SNP leader John Swinney, who took over as Scotland’s first minister earlier this month, said the election was a chance to “remove the Tory government and put Scotland first”.Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said it would be a chance to “kick Rishi Sunak’s appalling Conservative government out of office”, whilst Greens co-leader Carla Denyer said her party was aiming to elect “at least four” new MPs.And Reform UK leader Richard Tice said the Tories had “broken Britain” but Labour would “bankrupt Britain,” and only his party would offer “common sense policies that can now save Britain”.
Mr Sunak’s statement is the start of weeks of general election campaigning for the 650 seats in Parliament.It will be fought on the first set of new constituency boundaries since 2010, redrawn to reflect population changes since then, and will be the first where voters have to show ID.The Royal Family has postponed engagements “which may appear to divert attention or distract from the election campaign”, Buckingham Palace said, adding that the King and Queen sent their “sincere apologies” to those affected.
At the last election in 2019, Boris Johnson won an 80-seat majority after calling a snap poll as he fought to get his Brexit withdrawal deal through Parliament.It was followed by an extraordinarily volatile period in British politics, as the country was hit by the Covid pandemic and Mr Johnson was forced to resign, amid a cabinet revolt over a series of scandals.His successor Liz Truss lasted 49 days in the job before she quit, after a market backlash to her tax and spending plans announced at a hastily-arranged “mini Budget” in September 2022.This is the first general election since 2015 that has not required a vote in Parliament to approve the date, since legislation fixing the time between polls was reversed two years ago.
The original article contains 836 words, the summary contains 467 words. Saved 44%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
