Yes, of course it will. You could have made that point explicitly, as you have now done above. The way you put it in the original post doesn't make that point. You chose to contrast allegedly Conservative-voting Express-buying pensioners with exhausted working people unable to make it to the polling station to vote any other way. Another recent response to your post points out how easily people can place their vote if they can't do it on the day.
Another reason for going no later than the 2nd May is the Tories avoid another round of potential local election thrashings, which would damage them further. Most of the 2024 local election areas were contested in 2021, when Johnson's "vaccine bounce" helped make Tory gains from an already high point. Now this combined with high national polling for Labour means high Tory losses are almost inevitable.
Indeed has the possibility of getting the local vote up that might not happen if there was a GE taking place but there really isn't anything they can do now to win so still reckon going long gives them maximum chance to reduce losses.
What do you mean by "time they shouldn't have"?
That must be why so many of them voted to leave the EU then.
At the risk of repeating the obvious - when people voted in 2019, they did so in the knowledge that the next election was supposed to be this May. The Tories then granted themselves additional time through repealing the FTPA. It wasn't "short lived" in the sense that it had a defined end date. It was permanent legislation.
you'll still have the option of voting for the Police and Crime Commissioner, as does the whole of England and Wales (except where the mayor, who might be up for election, is also the PCC)
If they cast their vote on that basis they had not done their research. A commitment to repeal the FTPA (actually "get rid of" were the words used) was included in the 2019 Conservative manifesto. But leaving that aside, I find it hard to accept that a voter would cast his vote quite happily when knowing that the party he voted for would only be in power for four years and five months, but would think twice about voting for them if they knew they would remain in power for seven months more.
It was no more permanent than any other legislation, any of which can be repealed by Parliament. I only used the term "short lived" because it lived for a comparatively short time.
As far as I can recall, pre-2010 the PM could call a GE any time he or she saw fit. In 1974 there were two GEs in eight months.
Yes, it was a tactical piece of legislation designed to hold the coalition together, which it did, but it was dressed up as a serious constitutional change, whereas it was a mess, and both the 2017 and 2019 elections got into a mess (especially the latter) because of it.
Oh, wow, some stooge for whichever party is in power locally, with no real actual powers and even less interest in bringing any 'democracy' to our self-serving police forces. There may be the honourable exception who does try their best, but it is a non-job which builds up an expensive bureaucracy to service it. I normally always vote in every election, but I won't in principle for PCCs.
Most pensioners in 2016 were, at best, young children when WW2 was being fought so would have no or only very little memory of the conflict. To have firm meaningful memories of the conflict you'd like need to have been born in the 1920s putting them around the mid-80s or older when the referendum took place.
Not the point I was making. I am saying that every local authority in England and Wales, and probably some in Scotland and Northern Ireland, are preparing to run an election in May.
Some countries get on just fine with fixed terms. The FTPA did not impede the ability of parliament to move to an election in either of those cases. There was no "mess".
I'd disagree. Why is it up to the prime minister? They'll decide the date based on what works for them or their party, not for the country. Hence the rumours of silly games with "surprise" elections following a giveaway budget and other nonsense. Fixed terms - with a mechanism for an early election when necessary - allows everyone to know where they stand and what to plan for.
Though what we don’t know is whether that cohort voted to leave because of their age or whether that’s an artefact due to a much higher proportion of that age group not having higher educational qualifications (the latter was, if I recall correctly, the strongest predictive factor).
The spat between Badenoch and the former Post Office Chair continues to heat up:
Row deepens between Kemi Badenoch and ex-Post Office chair
The business secretary and ex-Post Office chair have clashed over comments about compensation.www.bbc.co.uk
Of course it isn't. My remark was tongue-in-cheek (there ought to be an emoji for it!).
Fair enough! Text is such an imperfect method of communication sometimes!
At Oddschecker the odds of an election between April and June 2024 are 4-1, or 2-7 between October and December, so you can make some money if its going to be in May.
Sounds reasonable; anecdotally and totally unrepresentative is my friend Bob who was born in the early 1950s and voted "leave" but now regrets it.
