Should the PM determine when to go to the country?

With the answer to the question that has been across all our TV, Radio and newspapers answered, this begs the question of fixed term parliaments.

The UK is one of the few countries in the first world that does not have legally bounded terms. There is a maximum term of 5 years but no minimum term for a government.

What this leads to, has been shown in the past days in the UK. It seems nothing more important has been going on other that the constant debate on TV, radio and newsprint, of if and when a general election might be called.

If we had fixed term parliaments of 5 years, and then the only time a general election could be called other than 5 years would be if the Government had lose its majority in the house of Commons.

This fixed term seems to work in the US.

I may be biased since I'm American, but I do think fixed terms are better.

Allowing politicians to choose when to hold elections seems wrong to me -- obviously they'll usually choose to do so when their poll numbers are high and try to avoid elections when their poll numbers are low.

What for and how would it really make the slightest difference?

If the idea is meant to be that fixed terms stop the incumbent 'skewing' or timing favourable events to assist their bid for reelection how on earth would they make the slightest difference?

Surely all that would happen would be a move to a 5yr 'plan' (with a finite and fixed certainty about it) rather than the UK's usual and slightly more fluid 4 - 5 yr one.

IMO what it boils down to is that there's no need for tory supporters to get their knickers in a twist about this weekend's events, it's happened before (with tory Govs too, anyone remember Major being pressed to go early and get a mandate?!) and no doubt it'll happen again.

It's worth bearing in mind that no matter what the pundits mights say there's no such thing as an assured outcome (whoever it is).

Actually, the only thing fixed terms has done is to create portions of time where the government can not, and will not do anything so as to prepare for the election cycle.

In addition, everyone can anticipate the cycle. including the media, and whore it out like everything else they do.

I actually kind of like the dynamic nature of the UK system.

I'm not sure, to be honest. I like the present system quite a lot - it works well for Britain. It might not work for other countries, but we're not discussing them

A point raised on Question Time last week was that if we had fixed terms - say every four years - and we had a situation where there was a hung Parliament and the parties couldn't come to any agreements over a coalition then we're basically stuck with a weak, ineffective government for the next four years. The most recent example of this would be in 1974, where there were two general elections; In January of that year, the Conservatives got 297 seats and Labour got 301. Neither party had a majority, and forming a coalition with smaller parties proved impossible. Hence, to break the deadlock, the Prime Minister of the day (Edward Heath - Conservative) called an election in October of that year which the Labour Party won with a clear majority. The deadlock was broken.

Had it not been for the Prime Minister's ability to call an election, the government would have essentially lost control of the country. We know how turbulent the 1970s were in relation to strikes/union disputes, economic downturns, 'stagflation' and IRA attacks... it would have been a whole lot worse with four years of Parliamentary ineffectiveness thrown into the mix. It would give extremist parties, particularly on the right, a major boost (Hitler was popular in Germany partly because the Weimar system was so ineffective - it was so democratic that nothing was done and people became disillusioned).

It's quite a discrepancy, I suppose, but if the House of Lords was replaced by an elected, non-partisan 'Senate' which performed a similar duty to the Lords (albeit with more powers) then it would even things out. The 'Senate' would work on a fixed term system, to make it as non-political as possible.

[edit on 8/10/07 by Ste2652]