Opinion: The Worst Part of "Brown's Bottle" is That He Even Had The Choice

Written by Tim Prater, Shepway Local Party Chair and Agent on Sun 7th Oct 2007

Where were YOU when you learned Brown had bottled it? For me, it was a text on Saturday afternoon Vice Chair Neil Matthews which caused me to jump for the remote: "Have you seen the news? GE". Thanks for that Neil - my pulse will one day return to normal. I guess.

And, on getting the remote working, it unfolded that that was exactly what had happened: Brown decided that he didn't like the look of the latest opinion polls at all, and he pulled back from a snap election, and announced there would be no election this year, and "probably" not one next year either. Spring 2009 now looks like the most likely date.

It's great spin from the "new, spin-free" Labour Party that they'd listened to Returning Officers that a November poll would disenfranchise up to a million voters (which it would have done) or that they didn't really want a cold, dark, November election campaign. But although it's great spin, it is also total rubbish.

Anyone with a passing understanding of the political system knows that the electoral register in November is more out of date than at any other time of the year. Dark nights in November are hardly a shock. For the Prime Minister - and his cabinet - to suggest that they didn't know this earlier these things earlier would be damning indictment of their intelligence if it were true. Which, frankly, it ain't.

The decision came down in the end to whether the Prime Minister thought he would be in a better or worse position after a poll or not. And he decided he wouldn't be - he's more of a nail biter than a gambler.

And that's the most ridiculous thing about the whole thing: that the power to decide when to hold a General Election is not set by legislation - not even set by Parliament - its in the gift of the Prime Minster of the time. It's a huge advantage to the governing party, and one that would be sneered at in any other countries constitution. Mother of Parliaments? You Are Having A Laugh.

Fixed Term elections (every four years, as we do for our Councils, in Scotland and Wales) would remove the fix which is that one person - the Prime Minister - gets to decide when to have a poll. Robert Bliss can't choose when the next Shepway elections will be - they will be on 5 May 2011. And neither should the Prime Minister decide when a General Election should be. It's corrupt, and corrupting.

As Ming Campbell said on the BBC yesterday, the system allows the Prime Minister to choose the date of the general election, firing the starting gun for a race in which he's running. He said:

"The only way in which to get certainty in these matters is to have fixed term parliaments, as they do in Scotland.

"The prime minister of the day will always be inclined to put the interests of his party ahead of the interests of the country. That is not acceptable."

Absolutely.