09 May 2018

Biting the Ballot? This Parliament will probably last until 2022 but an earlier election is an option

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The media consensus of the local council elections last week is that they were ‘mixed’. In one sense this is true but in another is a rather bland assessment. The Conservatives have the most cause for satisfaction and not merely because they did by far the best at setting expectations. Labour has not made that much progress since last year and in some respects moved backwards. The charge of anti-Semitism clearly did more damage to Jeremy Corbyn than the alleged mishandling of the Windrush saga inflicted on Theresa May. The Liberal Democrats did just well enough to claim that they are continuing a long and slow process of recovery from the damage done to them by serving with the Conservatives in a coalition administration. UKIP avoided absolute and total obliteration, which in the circumstances they will regard as reassuring. The SNP did not have to face their electorate this year.

So where does this leave the wider picture? In the short-term, it will be Brexit, Brexit, Brexit, with the Prime Minister occasionally making a speech to insist that it is not all about Brexit when it plainly is. Ministers now have quite a long stretch until the July recess with Parliament almost always sitting and that will make life more challenging as the Cabinet seeks to find a consensus position on what it wants from the ‘end state’ relationship with the EU-27 and then tries to sell that pact to their party. Labour will happily return to its state of civil war ahead of what will be a pretty brutal conference in September. The Liberal Democrats will desperately seek attention. UKIP will have yet more leaders.

The broader legacy of these local elections, however, could be more significant. While the balance of probability is that this Parliament will last until 2022, an earlier election is becoming more plausible.

The 2022 scenario

Under the provisions of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011, the next election should not occur until June 2022, unless the House of Commons were either to vote down the Government and fail to select a replacement for it or were to decide by a two-thirds majority to hold a premature election. Although this is a minority government, the Conservative-DUP alliance is robust and stable and, in truth, neither of them has anywhere else to go in terms of the parliamentary numbers.

Unless the Conservative Party absolutely commits suicide over Brexit, which is possible but unlikely (it might sacrifice its leader in the quest for inner peace on the subject but is not simply going to hand over the seals of office to the Labour Party over the issue), then although there will doubtless be lots of bumps in the road, the most compelling prospect is that there will not be a ballot until Spring 2022.

That ‘long game’ does have important consequences. For a start, it is entirely possible that at least two and quite credibly all three of the leaders of the main UK-wide political parties will not be there come such a late polling day. The Prime Minister might want to lead her party into such an election contest but whether she would be allowed to do so after what occurred last time has to be thought as doubtful.

Mr Corbyn will be 69 later this month (on 26 May in the event that any of you want to hold a small party to mark the occasion) and hence would be 73 at a June 2022 election. There has to be some chance that once his supporters have established absolute control over the Labour Party that he will then stand down to allow a like-minded successor to replace him (Rebecca Long-Bailey, currently the Shadow Business Secretary, would be the preferred Momentum candidate).

Mr Corbyn is, though, the proverbial Spring Chicken compared with Sir Vince Cable who is 75 today and thus would be 79 at a 2022 election. He would surely be replaced by Jo Swinson, his deputy, well before that moment. So, if the three existing leaders actually all want to fight another general election campaign, then May/June 2022 would not really be in their collective personal political interest.

The 2019 option

Which leaves a leading alternative, namely an election held on 2 May next year (alongside the local council ballots already scheduled for that date). In this scenario, the UK would leave the EU as now planned on 29 March next year. Mrs May could assert that she had ‘delivered’ the political part of Brexit (the formal legal departure) but required a mandate to negotiate the end state outcome. Mr Corbyn would in effect agree with her but would offer an alternative vision for the country instead. The Prime Minister could bounce her colleagues and her party into allowing her to fight a further election because there would be no time realistically to insert an alternative into her place.

Any 2019 election would be very different in character to that which took place last year. It would be a lot shorter, not least because Easter is unusually late in 2019 (Easter Sunday is 21 April) and that would concentrate the process even further. It would probably be more narrowly based on Brexit, which Mrs May tried to do in 2017, but the campaign was too long to allow it to be, as she wanted, a de facto referendum on who should lead the UK out of the EU so it instead mutated into a strange sort of massive by-election in which the public were invited by Mr Corbyn to take aim at ministers.

This time round the possibility of a Labour victory would be taken much more seriously. The Liberal Democrats would also probably have a sharper act than they did under the hapless Tim Farron. Scotland would be a more unpredictable battle between the SNP, the Conservatives and Labour.

The big risk with the 2019 option is that it might end with virtually the same result in the House of Commons as 2017 did in which case what on earth would have been the point of it except to allow all of Mrs May, Mr Corbyn and Sir Vince the chance to take to the hustings against one another. Then again, with Brexit a settled fact, it could prove to be a much more focused and decisive contest.

Any other possibilities?

There is probably just one more that merits serious contemplation. It is the May 2020 wild card. In this case, Mrs May would carry on as Prime Minister through the date that Brexit is penciled in for, but six months or so after that (around the Conservative Party conference in October 2019) she could say that she has had enough and will exit 10 Downing Street before Christmas. A relatively short and sharp contest to replace her would be witnessed with policy towards Brexit being absolutely central as the final two individuals in the frame would probably represent the ‘softer’ and ‘harder’ Brexit camps. If that new Prime Minister then enjoyed something of a honeymoon period with the voters (which is not unusual), they might roll the dice and seek a mandate of their own in May 2020, particularly if Mr Corbyn is still at the helm of the Labour Party and there is too little time to install a new leader.

This would, in many ways, be repeating the Mrs May strategy of 2016-2017 and hence be one hell of a wager. There would be total carnage if the Conservative Party emerged with fewer MPs at such an election. There is, though, a respectable argument that it was not the notion of the 2017 election that was fatally flawed but simply its execution. On balance, it is still the least likely of the dates that have been canvassed in this BVCA Insight. In the light of what was seen between April and June 2017 it would surely be viewed as way too risky. We do, nonetheless, live in very strange political times.

To conclude, the 2022 scenario remains the favourite at about a 60-65% chance of happening. The May 2019 election probably comes next on 20%-25%. May 2020 is 10%. Any other date is just 5%. That the date is now considered to be worthy of speculation is itself an interesting development.

Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA


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