Richard Baum

I must say, I’m not overjoyed with our announcement today in favour of fixed term parliaments for the UK. I think the policy is unnecessary, a rash reaction to a once-ever electoral fiasco from Mr Brown, and likely to do the party and the country more harm than good.

In a Presidential system, fixed terms are vital. They stop abuses of power and prevent dictators seizing power for decades. But here in the UK nothing more is needed than we have now. Elections are every five years, or sooner if the Prime Minister calls it. Of course the PM is likely to pick a time when he’s most likely to win, but let’s have faith in the people of the nation to back the party they want. If it’s the government of the day, then so be it.

Making elections a definite every four years could have a number of negative effects. Firstly, no matter how dissatisfied the nation is with its government, they’re stuck with it for four years. If it takes us into wars we don’t want or imposes hated taxes, there’s nothing the public or Parliament can do for four years. And why would any government do popular things in its first two years? Better to save them up for the last two, surely?

If an election produced no overall control, then we’d be stuck with a coalition for four long years. Four years of deals and compromise, with no way of settling things. If the government had a tiny majority at an election, they’d still be able to govern for four years even if the polls said it had disappeared completely and an election the next day would throw up a different result entirely. And what if we Lib Dems wanted power in a situation like this? We couldn’t share it with another opposition party because we’d be static for four years, the government limping from one crisis to another.

And what would happen if the leader of the government changed? So many people have clamoured for Mr Brown to go to the country to get a mandate to govern (not that he needs one from the country when they’ve already given one to his party, and his party have given one to him). With fixed terms he couldn’t even if he wanted to.

For all Mr Brown’s faults with the non-election debacle, maybe one positive was that it got people talking about politics and government. It was exciting. People didn’t know what was going to happen, and it was about as close to “fun” as politics can get. Let’s not do away with that either.

Rick