There’s no reason why the current government should be able to pick the date of the election. What’s the reason behind that besides “The Prime Minister wants it that way”?
I dunno, with the American system you have like 2 year long campaigning cycle for president. There’s almost no break and it’s exhausting. In Canada when an election is called the campaign is only about 6 weeks give or take a week.
Also, if the government becomes dysfunctional, it can be dissolved and a new government elected. The US system doesn’t allow for that flexibility.
If your campaign is only 6 weeks, you have to be campaigning all the time too. Do you think people just say “oh there’s an election in 6 weeks? Maybe I’ll run for office!”? They have to have everything ready to go immediately. All politicians are campaigning all the time.
It’s really different though. The politicians are expected to be working at the national capitol during normal sessions. While they are ‘campaigning’ in that they’ll be trying to score sound bites and such for the media, they’re not allowed to spend money on regular campaigning until the election season starts.
How many rallies for president haver been held already with the election still 166 days away? How much money spent? It’s utterly exhausting.
Parliament can always dissolve itself and call an election, and it’s an important mechanism for getting rid of the government.
The problem is that the prime minister also has a majority in parliament, and that means he can make parliament dissolve itself when he likes.
This was actually a problem for Johnson. Initially, he didn’t have enough of a majority and it wasn’t clear he could call an election without Corbyn’s support.
There’s no reason why the current government should be able to pick the date of the election. What’s the reason behind that besides “The Prime Minister wants it that way”?
I dunno, with the American system you have like 2 year long campaigning cycle for president. There’s almost no break and it’s exhausting. In Canada when an election is called the campaign is only about 6 weeks give or take a week.
Also, if the government becomes dysfunctional, it can be dissolved and a new government elected. The US system doesn’t allow for that flexibility.
If your campaign is only 6 weeks, you have to be campaigning all the time too. Do you think people just say “oh there’s an election in 6 weeks? Maybe I’ll run for office!”? They have to have everything ready to go immediately. All politicians are campaigning all the time.
It’s really different though. The politicians are expected to be working at the national capitol during normal sessions. While they are ‘campaigning’ in that they’ll be trying to score sound bites and such for the media, they’re not allowed to spend money on regular campaigning until the election season starts.
How many rallies for president haver been held already with the election still 166 days away? How much money spent? It’s utterly exhausting.
It’s a consequence of parliamentary sovereignty.
Parliament can always dissolve itself and call an election, and it’s an important mechanism for getting rid of the government.
The problem is that the prime minister also has a majority in parliament, and that means he can make parliament dissolve itself when he likes.
This was actually a problem for Johnson. Initially, he didn’t have enough of a majority and it wasn’t clear he could call an election without Corbyn’s support.