One side effect of a coalition government full of reforming zeal is lots of opportunities for the good people of Britain to troop down to their local polling station and make the appropriate mark on a ballot paper.
Here are the elections and referendums that look to me to be coming our way in the next few years – I may have missed some.
- local elections as now (unitary, met, county, district, town, parish)
- European election in 2014
- referendum on AV for Westminster elections
- elections for an alternative to the Infrastructure Planning Commission? Probably not, but the agreement says the new body will be “democratically accountable” and criticises the current one as “unelected”.
- referendum on having a directly elected mayor if you live in one of the 12 largest English cities (assuming that doesn’t include London and does include large towns, we get Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Greater Manchester, Leicester, Coventry, Hull, Bradford, plus two of Stoke-on-Trent, Wolverhampton,Nottingham, Plymouth or Southampton, depending on how the size is calculated.).
- elections for the mayor in those cities where we get one.
- elections to London assembly and for Mayor of London.
- elections for new second chamber by some form of proportional representation.
- election of an individual to oversee the police (one per force?)
- elections to NHS PCT boards.
- 200 all-postal primaries in currently safe seats, with public money allocated to fund them. This will be one third of all seats after the boundaries have been changed.
- a potentially large number of local referendums, which residents will be able to instigate “on any local issue”.
- elections to Welsh assembly and Scottish parliament
- potentially more parliamentary by-elections that usual, where an MP found guilty of serious wrongdoing is recalled.
- General Election on 7th May 2015 with 600 radically changed constituencies, either under First Past the Post or Alternative Vote.
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19 Comments
EU referendum if a power altering treaty comes along.
Referendum in Wales on further powers in the next year(or even a few months) hopefully.
Referendum on length of fixed term parliaments and mechnisms for the removal of weak governments unable to command sufficent support to function effectively – subject to members of the Coalition discovering the meaning of democracy.
Weak governments can already be removed by a no-confidence motion
toryboysnevergrowup: How very apt your name is.
Ryan M – my reading of the agreement is that vesting further powers to the EU has already been ruled out for the next five years.
Rich – I didn’t know about that, will await with interest.
toryboysnevergrowup – the length of a parliament is currently 5 years – why would you have a referendum to ask if it’s OK for it to stay the same? There are no proposals in the coalition agreement to change the way no-confidence votes work.
If the EU exists in the coming 5 years. certainly not ins its Hagelist form thats for sure.
Iain
No under the current system the length of Parliments is not 5 years – they can be shorter if the ruling party wants to go earlier (which most people accept is a bad thing) or it a party in a weak position doesn’t have a clear mandate and loses a vote of confidence ( probably a good think in most people’s view). The latter position is being varied by the 55% rule – we could have a situation where minority governments regularly lose votes of confidence and alternate – but no one can actually clear up the sitaution by calling an election. Look at the maths.
The 55% rule has never been put to the electorate in any form whatsover but it could have a profound effect on our electoral system. Which party was supporting 5 year fixed terms at the last election?
@toryboysnevergrowup currently the term is 5 years unless the PM decides to go to the country sooner. The proposal is to move that power from the PM to MPs.
The situation you suggest wouldn’t occur, any more than Macdonald or Callaghan refused to go to the country when they lost their majorities and there was no realistic prospect of another government being formed. You’re trying to claim that there’s some situation in which a PM would have gone to the country having lost a vote of no confidence, but 55% of MPs wouldn’t. How would that work?
Can I just check – did the people get to vote on the 66% rule for the Scottish parliament, or was it just bundled together as part of the deal?
Oh please not more directly elected mayors. Does Doncaster not show what a total disaster these can be.
I will be firmly campaigning against in any referendum in Leeds
A consultation in Manchester has already shown people opposed to elected Mayors.
Dave – there was little appetite for a dirctly elected mayor for Stockport either, but I don’t know if people would feel differently about a mayor for Greater Manchester. I’d think that the local authorities would argue strongly that the new City Region arrangements will allow working across Greater Manchester without the need for one mayor.
Iain
Your reference re Callaghan proves my point – he was forced to go to the country 6 months early because he lost a vote of confidence by one vote – under the 55% rule you would have given him another 6 months since I very much doubt that anyone else would have been in a better position to form a government. Calaghan would have made a few more compromises/concessions to Ulster politicians/nationalists to win a second confidence vote, confident in the knowledge that there was no 55% majority to force an election.
Iain
The 66% rule was in both the proposals of the Constitutional Convention and the Scotland Bill which were around before the referendum. Labour made it quite clear in the 1997 general election that its was its intention to see a Scottish Parliament based on the proposals of the Constitutional Convention subject to a referndum. As you can see Donald Dewar was a democrat. can you seriously say that the 55% of FIvE year fixed terms for Westminster have the same democratic mandate.
Fixed term parliaments need to have some form of majority built in to stop the PM just using his/her majority to dissolve parliament whenever it’s politically beneficial to do so – no secret there and, as you say, Scotland went for 66%. Both the Lib Dems and Labour had fixed term parliaments in the manifesto, so yes, I’d say its as democratic as the Scottish situation.
Given that the change merely moves the power to dissolve parliament from the PM to MPs, the democratic mandate for the change is perfectly valid.
No it reduces the power of MPs to dissolve Parliament. The arguments for fixed term UK parliaments were all couched in terms of taking away the dissolution power from the PM and 4 yr fixed terms not the proposed arrangements – the proosals for the Scottish Parliament were clearly set out beforehand unlike the current arrangements and so had a much stronger and clearer mandate. Plenty of European countries have fixed term mechanisms which take away the power to call elections from the executive but not the legislature – why were these never considered??
I understand the LibDems were also pushing for AV without a referndum – could you explain how they could have had a demnocratic mandate for that by any stretch of the imagination.
“It prevents a surprise attack on the Conservatives by everybody else: it is as simple as that” – Andrew Stunnell
“You are right actually about previous Parliaments and you might be right about future Parliaments but this arrangement was made for this Parliament, to guarantee the stability that was required for this Parliament” – Lord Rennard
With friends like this who need enemies.
Currently MPs have no power to dissolve parliament. After this change, they will have the power to dissolve parliament. This is obviously some new use of the word “reduces” that I’m not familiar with.
They have the power as they have demonstrated in the past – the only thing they don’t do is go to the Palace to recommend the dissolution, but any the party of any PM who ignored the views of the majority of MPs in such a situation would have been toast.
You really are arguing about legal formalities rather than realities now, to the point of being disingenous. If you are really so concerned about giving powers to MPs could you explain why the theshold should be 55% and not 50%+1