May. 15th, 2010

jack: (Default)
A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.
Many people are worried by the last sentence here, but I'm not really sure what the problem is.

I don't know the history of votes of confidence and of dissolving parliament, but a surprising amount of it seems like common sense. If MPs are local representatives with no fixed party affiliation, then a new election won't produce any particularly different result. So if parliament chooses a subcommittee to run the country, ie. a government, they are naturally people who can command the support of half of parliament (or all their decisions are useless because no-one will vote in favour of them, or of necessary prerequisites of them such as voting to impose taxes).

If the government doesn't have the support of the majority of parliament, then hopefully there's someone who does, and parliament can support their forming a government instead.

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