Wednesday, March 30, 2005

UK Election

When is the UK election going to finally get called? It was supposed to be "after Easter" which I thought meant Tuesday.

I hope that my postal vote has time to get here and back. I don't hold up much hope of anything other than a 90-100 seat majority for Blair, but I would like to have my say..

2 comments:

Rich said...

You mean the election before Easter, Greg? That wouldn't have let them issue the budget and dissolve Parliament.

I doubt it, but it's possible that Blair is planning an Autumn election in order to give the Tories that much longer to screw up.

Rich said...

With 5 year parliaments the elected party in the UK has a lot of scope to pick their moment.

As here, they have fairly narrow "slots" in the spring and autumn when it is usual to have an election, given that people are likely to be on holiday in summer and UK winters are considered too unpleasant for voting! There is also the consideration of the budget date and the need for parliament to be sitting in order to be dissolved (I think).

Since Tony Blair was last elected in June 2001, he could go anytime up to June 2006. Blair presumably expects to win at the moment, and if he hung on until Autumn this year, there is a chance things would turn pear-shaped by then. Deferring further would leave him in the squeeze of having to hold an election by early June 06.

Does that make sense?