No, surprisingly, not a George W Bush post, nor even one about an existing election. in the UK elections must happen at least every 5 years, but the ruling party can call one anywhere within its term to start the 5-year clock ticking again. There was much speculation that Gordon Brown* would call an election for November, based on his current honeymoon period as leader. In the event he’s decided that he ‘wants time to show us his vision’ so that he can get a mandate for the future, not just for his competence.

No, I’m not entirely clear on it either, but I guess it’s a plausible reason to want to put off an election, even if the real reasoning is mainly that the Tories are mounting a much stronger challenge than most expected. The problem comes with previous statements made around the time that Brown took over. Many people (myself included, though nobody noticed) called for an election because we were changing leaders. In theory that shouldn’t matter – the Prime Minister is nominally ‘first among equals’ – but in practice he sets the agenda for the entire government, so the fact that he was elected by only 25,000 Scottish people to govern 60 million Brits is irksome to say the least.

That on its own should only matter to people of decency and honour, so we’re not troubling any politicians yet. But the reason we got for not calling an election straight away was that the party had a manifesto that it was elected on, and while there might be tweaks to implementation, basically we’ve already agreed to what we’re going to get. That too is another reasonable explanation why we wouldn’t have an election. The problem is that it directly contradicts the previous reason; either one could be correct, but using both negates them both. The rules of Parliament specifically prevent politicians from using the word ‘liar’ in the House. We, happily, have no such block on our actions.

* texture like sun