As soon as Gordon Brown became Prime Minister TV and newspapers began to talk about a snap election in the autumn. I thought it would be a strange kind of snap election that was predicted three or four months in advance, but such things are typical of the press.
And that early election was indeed almost called. But just as the press was congratulating itself on its prescience, the PM decided not to go ahead after all. The newspapers were furious. ‘Gordon Brown bottles it!’ was a typical headline.
I couldn’t help but think that if the election had gone ahead the tabloids would have been shouting about the government ‘cutting and running’. And the serious papers would have complained about an opportunistic manipulation of the parliamentary system. they would have been right there.
There were two reasons, I believe, for the media outrage. The first is that the government had exploited them, by briefing about the possibility of a poll in order to test the water and draw attention away from the Conservative Party conference. And second, because they had been deprived of some excitement. The press hates the boring routine of government administration. It wants conflict, drama. It wants change.
The PM doesn’t come out the past fortnight very well either. In political terms he’s shown himself as a ditherer. Having tried to use the press for his own purposes, he’s discovered that it can turn on you and give you a very nasty bite.
I imagine he looked ahead over the next couple of years and saw a slowing economy, mounting government debt, no likelihood of improvement in Iraq, not to mention the bubbling discontent about the European constitution. If there was a chance of going to the country and getting another safe five years of power, better to grab it.
If that were the decision he could trot out some cant about ‘seeking a renewed mandate’.
But when a fleeting opinion poll seems unfavourable he can wait for a better opportunity and use the fallback cliché about ‘getting on with the job of serving the British people’.
One of the constitutional issues raised by this episode is whether or not Gordon Brown has the right to be Prime Minister. As has been pointed out, he was not leader of the Labour Party when the general election was fought; and he didn’t even face a contest when he became leader of the party. Does he not, in fact, need a mandate of his own?
No, he does not. He is not a President. We elect Parliaments, not governments, and certainly not prime ministers. The media might like to reduce our system to a simple matter of two or three personalities, and the parties themselves are complicit in it for reasons of their own (party discipline for one). But under our system the Queen sends invites to form a government the person who can command the confidence of the House of Commons.
The Commons are elected by law every five years, although Parliament may be dissolved at any time, under the Royal Prerogative (ie the PM’s prerogative). Choosing the date of the election has always been at advantage to the governing party, but it is against the spirit of the constitution to rush to the country every time there is an encouraging opinion poll.
That’s why I wouldn’t have been happy with a general election this autumn. It’s not as if the government has lost its majority; or suffered a defeat on a motion of confidence; or as if a national emergency had overtaken us (like the miners’ strike of 1974); or a constitutional crisis (such as the Lords’ rejection of Lloyd George’s budget in, I think, 1906).
So Gordon Brown has done the right thing, but probably for the wrong reason.
Now the press can move on to the next non-event.
And that early election was indeed almost called. But just as the press was congratulating itself on its prescience, the PM decided not to go ahead after all. The newspapers were furious. ‘Gordon Brown bottles it!’ was a typical headline.
I couldn’t help but think that if the election had gone ahead the tabloids would have been shouting about the government ‘cutting and running’. And the serious papers would have complained about an opportunistic manipulation of the parliamentary system. they would have been right there.
There were two reasons, I believe, for the media outrage. The first is that the government had exploited them, by briefing about the possibility of a poll in order to test the water and draw attention away from the Conservative Party conference. And second, because they had been deprived of some excitement. The press hates the boring routine of government administration. It wants conflict, drama. It wants change.
The PM doesn’t come out the past fortnight very well either. In political terms he’s shown himself as a ditherer. Having tried to use the press for his own purposes, he’s discovered that it can turn on you and give you a very nasty bite.
I imagine he looked ahead over the next couple of years and saw a slowing economy, mounting government debt, no likelihood of improvement in Iraq, not to mention the bubbling discontent about the European constitution. If there was a chance of going to the country and getting another safe five years of power, better to grab it.
If that were the decision he could trot out some cant about ‘seeking a renewed mandate’.
But when a fleeting opinion poll seems unfavourable he can wait for a better opportunity and use the fallback cliché about ‘getting on with the job of serving the British people’.
One of the constitutional issues raised by this episode is whether or not Gordon Brown has the right to be Prime Minister. As has been pointed out, he was not leader of the Labour Party when the general election was fought; and he didn’t even face a contest when he became leader of the party. Does he not, in fact, need a mandate of his own?
No, he does not. He is not a President. We elect Parliaments, not governments, and certainly not prime ministers. The media might like to reduce our system to a simple matter of two or three personalities, and the parties themselves are complicit in it for reasons of their own (party discipline for one). But under our system the Queen sends invites to form a government the person who can command the confidence of the House of Commons.
The Commons are elected by law every five years, although Parliament may be dissolved at any time, under the Royal Prerogative (ie the PM’s prerogative). Choosing the date of the election has always been at advantage to the governing party, but it is against the spirit of the constitution to rush to the country every time there is an encouraging opinion poll.
That’s why I wouldn’t have been happy with a general election this autumn. It’s not as if the government has lost its majority; or suffered a defeat on a motion of confidence; or as if a national emergency had overtaken us (like the miners’ strike of 1974); or a constitutional crisis (such as the Lords’ rejection of Lloyd George’s budget in, I think, 1906).
So Gordon Brown has done the right thing, but probably for the wrong reason.
Now the press can move on to the next non-event.
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