The coalition's actions may not match the manifestos, but an election hasn't been called over a policy change since 1923
So, fed up with the assault on healthcare, housing and welfare which was not in any manifesto, the leftwing Labour MP John McDonnell wants an election, as he explained in a letter to the Guardian. At an emotional level I am sympathetic. None of the parties were in any way frank about the cuts they were planning, although it must be admitted that Labour was guilty on this count as well. The extent of NHS privatisation and indeed David Cameron's new corporate right to outsourcing were nowhere anticipated in the reassuring little blue book on the basis of which the Conservatives were not quite elected last year.
Intellectually, however, I am well aware that McDonnell is whistling in the wind. I remember making the same argument as a hot-headed teenager, in 1990. I insisted to bored classmates that the new prime minister, John Major, had no alternative but to call a snap election. The Tories had ditched Thatcher and sunk her poll tax flagship, making this an entirely different government from the one that voters were promised. But of course there was no 1990 general election ? for there was no constitutional need for one. MPs are elected for their term, and so long as a government exists which can command their support, Britain's indirect democracy (or, to critics, semi-democracy) allows them to serve out their time. If they have lied to the people they will face the consequences, but not until the next polling day.
The last time an election was called purely because of a policy change that broke an election pledge was 1923, when Stanley Baldwin honourably sought a fresh mandate because he wanted to introduce tariffs after his party had promised it would do no such thing. He lost, and no doubt it is as a result that no subsequent prime minister has risked voluntary oblivion over a change of mind. Even a change of prime minister does not always require an instant poll, as we discovered after Gordon Brown's dithering in 2007.
Could anything force the coalition into a 1923-style dissolution? Well, if Her Majesty loses her rag over all the unexpected nasties emerging and unilaterally called an election, we would certainly have an interesting crisis on our hands. But that wise old bird has not survived 60 years on the throne by doing anything so rash. It isn't going to happen. It will not be the Queen, and still less shame, that will force parliamentarians to face the people early. The one thing that could is the collapse of the coalition, for example through the mass defection of a whole load of Lib Dem MPs protesting that too many promises had been broken. Even then, the fixed term parliament bill will soon put brakes on a dash to the polls even in the event that a government falls.
That bill was cooked in the coalition talks, to reassure both the parties that neither could blackmail the other with the threat of dissolution. But it was also something that had long been demanded by many people, including Guardian readers, as a means to check prime ministerial power. And it may well be a change for the best. Once you set the soldering iron on the hidden wiring of the constitution, however, there is reliably some unintended consequence. Fixing parliamentary terms may strengthen the hand of MPs against the prime minister, but it also strengthens their hand against the voter, by reducing the already slim chance of a political row precipitating an early election.
Changing the rules, then, will not automatically reconnect politicians with the people, even if there are some rule changes that might. McDonnell won't much like my conclusion, and neither do I, but politicians rarely prosper by disputing that the rules are the rules. And like it or not, the rules of British politics do not treat breach of promise as an offence that warrants instant dismissal.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/25/snap-election-manifesto-policy-change
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