May The Fourth Be With You!

It is, I think, looking increasingly likely that Theresa May will change her mind and hold a snap General Election. She won't have welcomed Nicola Sturgeon's jibe that unlike her, she (May) does not have a mandate. Not that Sturgeon's mandate is particularly solid: she leads a minority government, propped-up by the Greens. Then there's the mounting row over election expenses which she needs to draw a line under, Ministers under-performing and she has a paper-thin majority.

Given the state of the Labour Party and its no-hope leader, an early election should give Mrs May a comfortable majority of at least 50 to 60. It should also have the side-benefit of reducing Sturgeon's actual importance as I think the SNP will lose seats to Labour - Scottish Labour is a significantly different animal to the Momentum-infested apology for a party based in Islington. It would perhaps be wishful thinking to imagine the Tories taking seats from the SNP but never say never!

Looming large on Parliament's horizon is the Great Repeal Bill. This will have the twin aims of repealing the 1972 European Communities Act and incorporating the corpus of acquired EU law into British law. The passage of the Withdrawal Act gave the government a foretaste of the resistance it can expect; but it will be worse than that, much worse. You can be certain that Tory MPs such as Anna Soubry, Ken Clarke, George Osborne and Nicky Morgan will side with the Lib Dems and those Labour MPs brave enough to defy their voters to do all they can to defeat the Bill, particularly the bit dealing with the repealing of the 1971 Act. Were that to happen, the country would be facing a constitutional crisis of a magnitude last experienced when Henry VIII fell-out with Rome. May needs a sizeable majority to get the legislation through both Houses of Parliament.

May the fourth be with you!

I agree with young Dom, at the end of the day we all know she will win a General Election and increase the Tories in Westminster, Brexit needs her full attention.

I can see @Markham point though regarding the great repeal bill, she might have an easier time with a few more friendly faces in Parliament.

Its a bit of a poser for her really, I do have a gut feeling she will go to the people, would it be better to get it done and dusted now or waiting, another difficult one to answer?

If May goes to the country right at the outset of the Brexit negotiations and gets her expected majority, it will give added impetus to the negotiations and our European "partners" will realise that she has the country behind her.

Not gonna happen.

Would need a law change to ditch fixed term parliaments - introduced precisely to stop government of the day setting the date when most advantageous to them.

May would fear the opprobrium of the media and section of the electorate for "messing" with the democratic process.

By the way Scottish Labour is the same basket case as Labour in England. No sign of SNP losing ground to them.

Apparently not: a simple vote in the House of Commons would do it. Whether it would be too risky is another matter, of course.

Thanks for clarifying...I guess the vote would be to set aside the fixed term rules - effectively the same thing. May is ultra cautious and I doubt she'd risk going early - even with the polls heavily in the Tories' favour.

That's not necessary: if more than two thirds of the House of Commons vote to call an election, then an election is held and the Fixed Term Parliaments Act remains in force and unchanged.

Thanks again Markham - that's exactly the point I made. A vote is held which circumvents the standard practice. Will be interesting to see which way she plumps.

G