Britain Proposes a General Election.

Today (18/4/17) the British Prime Minister Theresa May has proposed holding a General Election on June 8th 2017 (8/6/17).

I say proposed. In 2010 the UK introduced what became the Fixed-term Parliament Act (2011).

This fixes the UK Parliamentary term at five years meaning that the next General Election is not supposed to take place before May 2020. Only Parliament itself can give permission for a General Election to be held before then via a two thirds (super) majority vote.

There seem to be two factors behind Prime Minister May's decision to hold an early election;

The first of these is the 2015 Election Expenses Scandal. In the UK there is a cap on how much each individual candidate can spend in their campaign to get elected. Exceeding this cap automatically has the candidate barred from the election.

The allegation is that at the 2015 General Election the Conservative Party systematically exceeded that spending cap for a number of their candidates. Those candidates and other Conservative Party members went on to commit further criminal offences by filing fraudulent expenses declarations.

By March 15th 2017 (15/3/17) twelve UK police forces had passed files recommending the prosecution of Conservative Party workers and members to the public prosecutor. The exact number of Conservatives liable for prosecution has not been made public but each of those 12 police forces cover several Conservative Party constituencies.

If all those recommended for prosecution go on to be successfully prosecuted then it is highly likely that the Conservatives would lose their current majority of 17 seats. This would bring down the government triggering a General Election.

A General Election that the Conservatives would have to fight with it being an indisputable matter of public record that theirs is the party of criminals and fraudsters.

The second factor driving Prime Minister May's decision is that the current opposition are absolutely awful. The Labour Party in particular has cast itself as the party of Muslim paedophile gangs, anti-Semites and violent extremists.

Recent polling suggests that at a General Election the Conservatives would see their majority increase from 17 seats to 170 seats. The General Election is proposed for Ramadan. With the votes of the Labour Party's core constituency being suppressed the Conservatives majority could well end up exceeding 200 seats.

In an effort to demonstrate just how awful they are both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats (LibDems) have been calling for a Parliamentary vote on Britain's post-Brexit deal with the European Union (EU). They then propose voting to veto any agreement with the EU.

This will have absolutely no impact on Britain leaving the EU. It would though ensure the absolutely worst possible relationship with the EU post-Brexit.

A Conservative majority of 100+ seats pretty much kills that plan stone dead.

19:35 on 18/4/17 (UK date).