Progressive parties object to Theresa May coronation
Opposition parties are calling on putative prime minister Theresa May to call a snap general election, following Andrea Leadsom’s surprise announcement that she was dropping out of the Tory leadership contest.
‘It now looks likely we are about to have the coronation of a new Conservative Prime Minister,’ Labour’s election co-ordinator Jon Trickett said.
“It is crucial, given the instability caused by the Brexit vote, that the country has a democratically elected Prime Minister. I am now putting the whole of the party on a General Election footing.
It is time for the Labour Party to unite and ensure the millions of people in the country left behind by the Tories’ failed economic policies, have the opportunity to elect a Labour government”.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said it would be ‘simply inconceivable that Theresa May should be crowned Prime Minister without even having won an election in her own party, let alone the country.’
‘May has not set out an agenda, and has no right to govern,’ he continued. ‘She has not won an election and the public must have their say. From her time as Home Secretary we know she is divisive, illiberal and calculating.’
Farron has pledged to lead the Lib Dems into the next general election on a platform of keeping Britain in the EU.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas reiterated her call for a general election, arguing that ‘it is unacceptable that the next person to hold the top job in British politics is appointed by 60 per cent of Tory MPs. They have no mandate to renegotiate Britain’s place in the world.’
She continued that ‘such an election would be a major challenge for progressives’ and called on her counterparts in other parties to ‘look closely at ways of forming a political alliance to give us the best chance of beating the Tories.’
The Mirror reports that the odds of a snap general election have been slashed from 5/2 to 6/4.
While May ruled out the possibility of calling an immediate general election last week, that was on the assumption of a ‘proper contest’ for the Tory leadership. She also argued that a general election campaign would be ‘another destabilising factor’.
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17 Responses to “Labour, Lib Dems and Greens call for snap general election”
Jen
The reason we need to have a general election is not because May has been chosen by 199 out of 45,000,000 or so eligible to vote in general elections (after all, we do not elect a PM), and not because or in spite of right-wing of left-wing hypocrisy, but because these are extraordinary circumstances. People have been asked for their opinion in a very unstructured and unguarded way. People have spoken, but nobody seems to understand what they said and why they said what they said. In order to make any sense of this mess people have to be given an opportunity to elect their new representatives in the new world that has been created overnight. These representatives then must speak for the people who elected them. The MPs in place today have been elected in a different era. The world has changed drastically and there needs to be re-confirmation or re-alignment in the composition of our government. As it stands today, the government has no mandate to do anything.
Alex
An extra election … lets just spend a load more cash that we don’t have … there will be another one along in 2020 anyway, whatever we do
Bronwen
What Jen said. The “unelected PM” bit is a red herring. No party ran on a manifesto of how the UK should negotiate to leave Europe. (Ukip ran on a manifesto that it should happen, but I suspect sparse on any details.) The public needs a clear choice of future routes and then an election. My problem is I am not confident that any of the parties will provide the former and the latter is pointless until they do.
fake
Representative democracy means just that, you choose *people* (individual MP’s) to represent you in government and to deal with the situations as they arise, including choosing the party leader.
Anything can happen at any time, recessions, war, major international incidents, you don’t call an election every time *something major* happens, what a silly argument. If you don’t like representative democracy then that is the issue you need to tackle, calling for another election under the same system will net you the same results, nothing but a waste of time born of both frustration at a result you don’t like and ignorance of the current systems workings.
That people vote poorly is their own problem (i.e. how many people vote for a party yet don’t even know the name of the MP until they get to the voting booth, or have no knowledge of the MP beyond their name, a few token speeches but no idea about the persons skills or judgement).
David
It ain’t going to happen. Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 there can only be an early election if (1) there is a two-thirds majority for it in the House of Commons, or (2) there is a vote of No Confidence in the Government in the House of Commons (and no subsequent Vote of Confidence in the following fortnight)