Asking a factual question, not for political opinions. It’s happened several times over the past few decades that a UK Prime Minister has resigned, and been replaced by a new Prime Minister from his/her party. When was the last time, if ever, that the new Prime Minister quickly called for a general election?
Boris Johnson took over the leadership on 23/07/2019 and called for a general election on 06/11/2019.
That was over three months later.
So, I suppose I have a two-pronged question: When was the last time a new UK Prime Minister called for a general election after a shorter period than Johnson?, and When was the last time a UK Prime Minister called for a general election quite quickly after taking office - say in less than a month or so?
I was all set to say something about how the Fixed-term Parliament Act would impede Sunak from calling an immediate election anyhow. Then I Googled it and found out that that act was repealed earlier this year, so Sunak could call an election if he wanted to. Guess I need to follow UK politics more closely.
The Fixed-term Parliament Act wouldn’t have stopped a general election. It would just mean that Parliament would have to pass a motion for the election to go forward. Considering that everyone but the Conservative Party wants a general election, the motion would easily pass. This circumstance happened in 2019.
Well, considering that the Conservative Party holds a clear majority in the House of Commons (that’s why their leader is Prime Minister, after all), I don’t think it’s so evident that such a motion would pass easily. Sure, you might have a number of dissenter Tory MPs who’d vote in favour of early elections, but I guess most of them have a strong self-interest in not standing up for re-election at this time and would not support a motion to call such an election that’s not supported by the party whip.
I’m saying that the Fixed-term Parliament Act would not have prevented Sunak from calling a snap election, although he would have to get Parliament’s approval to do so. The act itself provided an exception for early elections if they were agreed to by a 2/3’s majority of Parliament. And the act could also be bypassed by other legislation as was done by the Johnson government before the 2019 election.
As for anyone besides the Prime Minister calling for an early general election, whether under the current rules, or hypothetically under the FTPA, I don’t think that would be possible. Most bills are submitted by the government. There are some exceptions, such as private members bills, but I don’t think a motion for an early election from outside the government would be allowed under those exceptions. Also, I don’t think it would be constitutional. The method for a party outside of government to call for an early election is to submit a confidence motion expressing censure (aka no-confidence) in the government. If the motion passes, the Prime Minister must either resign or call a general election. I can sort-of imagine a scenario with a coalition government where an outside party might try to circumvent the confidence motion process by submitting a motion for an early election. But I can’t imagine that such a motion would pass constitutional scrutiny, whether from the House of Lords, or from the Supreme Court.
This is actually one of the reasons why the Fixed-term Parliament Act was an exceedingly badly written piece of legislation. In particular, the two-thirds requirement made no sense since Parliament can always override the act by adopting a new one that allows for a general election - and such an overriding act can be passed with a simple majority. That’s exactly what Johnson did in 2019.