From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: When must general elections be held?
Date: 13 Apr 92 16:42:33 GMT
Organization: Software Engineering Institute

In article <1992Apr13.160725.18826@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> pjs@euclid.jpl.nasa.gov writes:

>Would someone explain the parliamentary rules governing when
>general elections are held?

A general election is held when the Queen dissolves Parliament.  There
is a minimum time between the dissolution and the election of three
weeks, but four weeks seems typical - the British system discourages
long election campaigns since they seriously disrupt the day-to-day
chore of actually governing the country, which is, after all, what
governments are supposed to do.

By convention, the Queen dissolves Parliament when asked to do so by
her Prime Minister.  In principle, she could refuse, and call instead
upon any other Member to form a government; this hasn't happened for
quite a long time.

So, in principle, the current governing party can hold a general
election when it pleases.

The other question is, when must the government call an election
whether it please or no?  The answer is, an election must be held
not later than five years after the previous one.  In practice,
few governments run for the full five years, since the closer you
get to the time you must call an election, the more the sharks
circle in the water, the more fevered the press become, and so on.

In addition, there are two circumstances under which the government
must resign, which (as I mentioned above) almost always precipitates
a general election.  The first is if they are defeated on a "Motion
of No Confidence", as was the Callghan government.  The second is if
they are defeated in the annual budget debate, since it has been the
principle ever since the Restoration that a government that cannot
obtain "supply" - ie funds voted by Parliament - can no longer govern.
It was for an outrageous violation of this principle that the Whitlam
government in Australia was dismissed by Governor General (rightly, in
my opinion - of what use are constitutional safeguards if you don't
use them?)

As a third, and hypothetical, case, I suppose a government that simply
failed to present a budget to Parliament would be promptly thrown out.
As far as I know, this has never happened in Britain  - the idea of an
administration being kept in supply by a string of "continuing
resolutions", like the USA regimes of this past decade, is pretty
fantastic.  (Of course, at one time it would have seemed pretty
fantastic in the US, too - Art I Sect 9 of their Constitution
prohibits such a thing.  But, again, written constitutions are
of no value when the will to defend them has been lost.)

As a final issue, the British system allows the government to call
an election whenever things are looking good, and so, by judicious
timing and manipulation of public opinion, why can't they stay in
power for ever, winning every election in a Spring boom?  As I see
it, this problem pretty much solves itself.  A government that
calls an early election without good reason simply lays itself
open to the charge that it is hiding some really bad news that
is due to break in six weeks or so, and both press and Opposition
will press such charges vociferously - as they are fully entitled
to do, after all.  So the ability to call an election at will can
be a Greek gift.  And, as we learned last week, calling an election
because of the opinion polls would be seriously stupid.