Last Post Wins

[sameel]

Opportunism at it's finest by May.. Elections in England on the 8th of June..

[Unknown98]

#Pokemon GO out and vote

[skifans]

Do you think it's a coninsidence they have waited until the middle of exam season? With younger people beyig more pro EU i suspect the opposition will find it harder to recruite people for the campaign.

[sameel]

Do you think it's a coninsidence they have waited until the middle of exam season? With younger people beyig more pro EU i suspect the opposition will find it harder to recruite people for the campaign.

It's absolutely BS is what it is!

Unk

[Unknown98]

What's happening?

[skifans]

Our prime minister was called and early general election to take place on the 8th of June after spending most of her short term says that there wouldn't be one.

[Unknown98]

They can call an election whenever they want? Aren't the elections set for predetermined dates?

[skifans]

Short version: Yes there are pre-determined dates, but if 2/3rds of MPs agree the dates can be changed. The vote will be tomorrow and the belief is this will happen, both the UKs major parties support the move.
Probably too long version: 

Code:

Originally there were no term limits in the UK parliament, parliament could be dissolved by the monarch at any time and after any length, this had its issues but fit with the old view that the point of parliament was to help advise the monarch, not to pass laws. (Side note: All UK laws still have to receive the monarchs approval as well as parliaments). In 1715 laws were passed which meant that parliament would be dissolved (but notably, not elections held, if no one could be bothered to hold one then in theory the UK would just have no parliament). In 1911 this was reduced to 5 years. With the exception of during the 2 world wars when special legislation  was passed to extend the limit, this time period was never reached and Parliament was always dissolved and re-established by the monarch, increasingly into the modern age as the monarchs power became more and more ceremonial it become the job of the PM to tell the monarch when they would want the election, even though technically they had no power to call and election and technically the decision is support to be taken by the monarch, as the 5 year mark approached it was expected that the PM would tell the monarch when to call an election, and it was expected and considered that they would do this when the polls were good and they would often try to ready there party without publicly saying so, for around the last 6 months at the end almost any move by the government would be followed up with a discussion for weather or not they would hold the election now or wait a few weeks, obviously all of the parities were aware of these and knew how it worked. However, then we come to 2010 the Liberal Demarcates party did unusaly well and won a lot more seats then expected, being a centre left party they mostly took seats off of Labour (left wing party who had been in power for a long time) and split the vote, the Conservatives (right wing) didn't have enough seats to form a government on their own. The most obvious alliance of the Labour and Liberal Demarcates also wasn't going to happen, they didn't have enough seats between them to reach 51%. While there were various proposals what eventually happened was that the centre left Liberal Demarcates joined with the right wind Conservatives to form a government. This is the first time for the Liberal Democrats that they ever got into government, and they had a lot less seats then the Conservatives, they were concerned that if a government was formed that the Conservatives would wait for the polls to move and then ask the monarch to call an election so they wouldn't have to compromise and they could govern alone. As such, the Liberal Democrats only agreed to join with the Conservatives if the election rules were changed so as to remove the monarch from the process, a bill was drawn up and passed which lead to the rules being changed so that elections would happen every 5 years. In the 2015 elections many Liberal Democrate voters were unhappy with the compromises that the party had had to make to get into power, but being only the 3rd largest by seats they didn't have much choice but to go back on many key election promises and had one of their worst elections on record, going from 57 to 9 seats and seeing a 15% drop in votes. The Conservatives won the election. In 2016 it also emerged that the then Prime Minister David Cameron had investments which came to light in the Panama Papers, and many people signed a petition to the government for a snap election, the government response included the sentence "Fixed-Term Parliaments Act [2010] means no Government can call an early general election any more anyway." Now its 2017 and the Conservative party are using a clause in the 2010 Fixed-Term Parliaments Act which allows elections to be held immediately if 2/3rds of parliament agree. The generally feeling is that it will defiantly pass tomorrow.

This is already a realy long post with too much politics for a non-politics forum so I won't go into the politics behind the move and possible outcomes unless people want it.

[Unknown98]

Huh. Didn't know that.


In unrelated news, I just remembered the password to my imgur account. Holy cow did that bring back some memories...

[skifans]

Always nice being nostalgic, I like going through my old Google Photos stuff.

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In order news MPs have approved the new election date with it passing 522 in favour and 13 against.