Categories
Seasonal factors and the timing of general elections – politicalbetting.com
Seasonal factors and the timing of general elections – politicalbetting.com
Since 1979, British governments have tended to hold elections in the Spring. According to Nigel Lawson’s memoirs, this was because Mrs Thatcher, having won in the Spring of 1979, thought that May and June were her lucky months, but subsequent Prime Ministers continued the practice. Of the last 11 elections, only one (the most recent) was not held in April, May or June. Subject to the five-year limit, the Prime Minister controlled the timing of the elections until the passage of the 2011 Fixed Term Parliaments Act, and are likely to do so again if the current government carries out its pledge to repeal that law.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I think May general elections are more pleasent for everyone though, rather than dark by 4 winter ones. But it does look as if though there's no real advantage to it for the Gov't.
I WAS FIRST!!!!!
FIRST.
I have never been FIRST before.
I rock.
Oh yes.
You lot won't hear the end of this.
I. Was. First.
In non-General Election years tax rises etc can kick in at April. See the NI insurance rise already announced which will be an ugly hit in people's pay packets when it kicks in.
In General Election years tax cuts etc can kick in at April.
So Governments are piling the bad onto non-General Election years, and the good onto General Election years, and either way that kicks in at the Spring.
https://www.nhsinform.scot/tests-and-treatments/surgical-procedures/liver-transplant
For example, you may not be able to have a transplant if you are unable to stop misusing alcohol
(I'll get my coat....)
"Oh you've got Covid and need ventillation? We'll get back to you with an appointment. Are you free in three months?"
Its how the NHS already rations other ailments.
[Not entirely a serious suggestion]
But it is fascinating- so thanks @Fishing.
And if the government can't conjure up tax cuts, that's not going to help them.
Choosing the candidates with the best potential outcomes.
(About 9th. Like Manchester United.)
The Budget explains both to me. In non-GE years when the Government are piling on the bad news/taxes etc then we feel angry at the Government. Then in GE years they come back and bribe us with our own money and we are happy again. Overall.
Medically vaccinated Covid-positive patients excrete less Covid to infect other people with don't they? So medically vaccinated patients are less of a risk overall?
So treat the vaccinated in the real hospitals, and the unvaccinated in Nightingale tents, because of a risk analysis.
Problem solved.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639
The issue we have with the next election is that the Tories will gain 10 seats if they wait for the new constituencies (October 2023) but run a risk of events running out of control if they wait until May 2024.
Hence why November / December 2023 seems the likely time of the next general election.
If the Tories go for autumn 2023, people will think that it is out of the ordinary. And the media will not disappoint them by explaining why the election is happening then.
I therefore think May 2024 is the most likely time for the next election.
In England four million people have had a booster or third jab. More than 400,000 booster jabs and 30,500 third primary doses have been delivered in Scotland; 40,000 boosters and 5,500 third doses have been given in Northern Ireland. Data is not yet available for Wales.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639
1. The government, knowing when the election will be (either because they choose the date, or because the date is fixed) are able to make short-term policy decisions to buy short-term popularity.
2. The voters only pay proper attention to politics in the pre-election period, so polls outside of that period are biased by fleeting frustrations, and a more considered view normally favours the government.
To deal with the first effect I would suggest that the timing of elections should be random. We would have four possible election dates each year on the first Thursdays of March, June, September and December.
Eight weeks before each possible election date we would have a televised ceremony in which the Monarch would draw a coloured stone from a bag of twelve stones - eleven white and one red. If the red stone is drawn then the election date is set for eight weeks time. If a white stone is drawn there is no election and the stone is set aside so there is one fewer white stone for the next draw. The ceremony does not take place until nearly two years have elapsed, so the minimum gap between elections is two years and the maximum is five.
To deal with the second effect I would ban political opinion polling except in the eight-week pre-election period.
Also with so much of the Gov't vote being produced by non workers is that still overly relevant ?
Treatment restrictions by the NHS for unvaccinated COVID patients would also be very widely accepted by the public and it would be the morally right thing to do as it clears out the hospitals and allows them to get on with making a dent in the backlog.
Similarly: we are talking about vaccination now, not anything else, and it is hard to see what is wrong about having a debate about that other stuff anyway.
Labour really needs to be pushing for Plan B NOW.
I get why LOTO is avoiding this: apparently research showed that swing voters hated Lab criticising the government over Covid. And they must calculate that if things get bad enough then voters will turn against the gov anyway. 1/
https://twitter.com/ChristabelCoops/status/1451459209393065999
We're probably going to have a current budget surplus by 24/25.
Oh and don't use the gold plated approach done down South, just get on with it.
Boris’s speech on it was actually a half-decent (though characteristically rambling) précis of the main problems and likely solutions to Britain’s regional inequality problem (on some measures, worst in the developed world).
I actually praised it on here.
However, the government has pledged to do several things at once
- Return the budget to steady state
- Tackle the Covid backlog
- Protect funding for Health, Education & Defence
- Keep tax rises to a minimum
- Drive toward carbon zero
- Fund social care
- Keep bribing the retired and house-owners.
- “Level up”
Meanwhile we have global supply shocks, exacerbated by Brexit, and we have decided we won’t use immigration to mitigate against an ageing population.
So something (most of the things) was gonna give.
A sad case - one question is though if the ambulance had been summoned by the 111 operator would have it have reached the family in a timely fashion.
I could certainly have reached my local hospital more quickly than the previous time an ambulance reached my house via a 111 call.
https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1451492703208869898?s=20
Pre-FTPA it was losing governments that tended to leave it the full five years. See 1997 and 2010.
Autumn 2023 is late enough to be within 'normal', early enough that they're not leaving it to the last minute, plus they get the boundaries through. That seems like the sweet spot to me.
Tax rises now.
Tax cuts before election.
Fiscally, this means we won’t meaningfully subsidise carbon zero or “level up”.
We’ll also see the continued hollowing out of the state outside the protected budgets:
- health (an insatiable maw)
- education
- defence
I'm obviously not advocating that! And there's also the point at which both are in a grave (FPT) situation and unvaccinated one really is no hope but the vaccinated one has a better chance of pulling through with help. So you treat the vaccinated.
Edit: Neatly proving your point about data, of course
Levelling up on an employment level does go hand in hand with carbon reduction.
May 2023 is old boundaries. Autumn 2023 is new boundaries. Once you've reached the normal range it probably makes sense to wait a few months until the proper boundaries are in place.
Rottenborough's post at the end of the last thread points to some very perceptive tweets by a Labour councillor - would be good to see what others think:
-----------
Thread from a Lab councillor on what the party should be saying on Plan A/B:
Labour really needs to be pushing for Plan B NOW.
I get why LOTO is avoiding this: apparently research showed that swing voters hated Lab criticising the government over Covid. And they must calculate that if things get bad enough then voters will turn against the gov anyway. 1/
https://twitter.com/ChristabelCoops/status/1451459209393065999
And if this government- blessed with a chunky majority, a PM who can persuade people of anything and the moment when the public is willing to look for changes- can't move the nation on from that, then we're collectively stuffed.
Unless (to adapt the line used, I think, about British Airways) we're happy to become a health service and pension system which happens to have a nation attached.
Although, of course, 'shadows' can be set up.
Seasonality in stock markets is assumed to be down to investors getting too pessimistic in autumn and too optimistic in spring. I guess politically if someone is optimistic it doesn't always favour the government. Some voters will be more willing to risk a change when they are optimistic, particularly with the dynamic we have where many potential swing voters are afraid of Labour, especially old Labour.
https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/news/2021/04/30/sell-in-may-still-works/
You never know... the fate of Johnson's government may well end being the former.
I thought it was just 2 names for the same thing?
To be honest though, I suspect my reaction was because I had binge watched the first two parts of the New Labour documentary and of course there was the Master.
As to the Lab councillor's view: she may have a point. Why not try having more of a 'go' at the government over case rates and covid. Starmer should certainly be tearing a strip over the mess that the Booster jab seems to be in.
Ex-MP Frank Field announces he is terminally ill as he backs assisted dying law
Unless we tax more (wealth, not income) or we decide that we can afford more debt.
As it happens, I believe we should lower income taxes, increase wealth taxes, *and* allow ourselves a higher debt level to pay for levelling up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI7SfedV0AU&t=3533s
I'll take the booster jab obvs - but not fussed whether it is on the dot of six months or seven months or eight. Perhaps a lot of people feel like that and just haven't got round to it? After all it doesn't have similar urgency to the original two doses (especially the first).
The media love an election. It gives them great attention, great coverage, a guaranteed string of stories to report on. The issue in the last few years is public burnout, from 2014 to 2019 the only year without a General Election or Referendum was 2018, hence the "not another one" outburst in 2017 it was the fourth year in a row.
Come autumn 2023 the last election will be a reasonable time away, people won't have voted in anything major in years. It will be exciting for the media and they'd love it.
Plus I'm not sure the boundaries will be odd to people. The old set of boundaries are decades out of date, having new ones long overdue isn't unreasonable (especially since there's no reduction in numbers this time) and waiting until up to date ones in place isn't odd.
a) Got too close and the pressure wave from the muzzle was lethal
b) Or something lodged in the barrel (See the film The Crow etc)
"Think the unthinkable" Blair said. So Frank did, and he was fired as a result.
https://twitter.com/Survation/status/1451489992509886474?t=HcljOHoo6nq3e_8LfzyK7A&s=19
Yes, the media love an election. But they love a close election even more. So don't expect the media to play nice.
There's nothing wrong with the boundary changes; indeed, I am in favour of them. But if you hold an election in the autumn, people will wonder why it's happening then. The Tories can say "well, we wanted to wait until the new boundaries were in place", which is fine, but the next question is "why not just wait until May 2024?" And the answer? "We're worried things will go to shit before then."
If you go a year early, no one thinks "oh, they think things are going to go wrong in the next year." Going a year early was what Thatcher and Blair did. People are fine with it. But if you hold an election outside of the usual period, people will wonder what the government is worried about.
https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/The-outlook-for-debt-interest-spending.pdf
...Most outstanding public debt in the UK is the liability of central government. So in this paper we focus on interest spending on central government gross debt (bearing in mind that some factors that might affect it would have partly offsetting effects on interest payments the government receives). An important complication is that the Bank of England – also part of the public sector – has bought a substantial quantity of central government debt, financed by the creation of reserves on which it currently pays just a 0.25 per cent rate of interest – an interest rate (Bank Rate) set by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). In effect, this has allowed the government to refinance some of its past fixed interest borrowing at a lower floating rate, reducing interest payments for now but leaving it more exposed to the risk of higher debt servicing costs if the MPC chooses to raise Bank Rate in the future....
Although it would cost me.
But, just as only Nixon could go to China, only the Tories can reform wealth taxation.
I am pretty comfortable they won’t.
WIW I think we should tax wealth but also tax higher earners' income more. But a wealth tax is only going to be practical and raise significant amounts if it is levied on primary residences, with a relatively low threshold. Good luck getting that past the voters.
https://www.french-property.com/guides/france/finance-taxation/taxation/wealth-tax#
We already have a wealth tax, IHT, which would work just fine with some easy and obvious tightening of loopholes. Why not use that?
Interesting article from Giles Fraser in the Guardian though a few years ago giving the opposite view and Justin Welby making sensible points on why he opposes assisted dying too
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/may/03/burden-loved-ones-dying-euthanasia
https://twitter.com/churchstate/status/1451488467029041155?s=20
We don't eliminate taxes that are not raising as much as VAT or income tax, why is that a hurdle for new taxes?
Much of it in pensions, which we want to encourage not discourage.
If public opinion were not a constraint, I would simply:
1. Change council tax to a land levy tax, at say 1% or 2% of land value per annum.
2. Change IHT to an income tax on received legacies. No threshold, but not payable by surviving spouses.
I would just scrap stamp duty on property transactions.
Paul Mason
@paulmasonnews
The
@Dominic2306
brain dump about Starmer/Nandy contains some interesting stuff, herewith translated into Labourese ... 1/ Labour has no strategy because it has no surveillance function and a flawed decision making process. He's right. That's been said to every LOTO since Ed M...
industry be taxed for the sins of some developers?
So there really shouldn’t be any concerns about whether there is money there to tax.
Oh and superb analysis for the header Mr Fishing and thanks for sharing.
You mean, allow the succeeding generation to inherit a nation with more debt on its books. You may think that's worthwhile (in context), but those who decide the UK should borrow more will not be the ones to pay it back.
What's our interest on debt up to now? Few years ago it was around £50bn-ish, I think.
As I said, if the Tories are thinking about going in autumn 2023, then they have to make the call in early 2023. Ideally, they'd have the PM give a big speech in April where he'd announce the date of the election and set out his vision for the next four (definitely can't say five!) years.
U.K. PLC is like a company that is failing to borrow to invest in profitable infrastructure for the future.