Conservative Leadership Contest

^ Agreed but the Liberals & Labour are themselves only agitating for an election for reasons of self interest. If an election were held I think the only party that would do far better than at the last election is UKIP as they cannibalised both Conservative Leavers who are feeling upset & Labour voters who have a party that currently has in incompetent leader.

^ Yes, with the party leaders and things as they are atm. A year down this road? Two? Who the fcuk knows surely. All bets are off for this term until we see what we emerge with.

And all this is just the warm up to the USA election. What an interesting year!

If using the argument that the PM has no direct public mandate for their position then in theory it could be argued no member of the cabinet has a public mandate for their cabinet position either. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary etc etc. All cabinet positions are decided by the PM and all to a greater or lesser extent have an influence on government policy. It just so happens that the PM is the top position within cabinet.
Maybe we should have public referendums to decide which MP of each governing party gets each cabinet post .
Total democracy .
Oh what fun .

Well this was classic Tory politics

Andrea Leadsom was the parties Jeremy Corbyn and would challenge the rank and file of the party. With minimum support of MPs but the chance to win over the leavers in the party the hierarchy took a look at the Labour Party and thought to themselves "No chance"

Now obviously the motherhood comments were an open goal but the right wing press jumped on this and went on a full pelt I can imagine that she was lent on by the top brass. After she quit the race, Tory after Tory including Cameron all said that they were glad that a leadership election was avoided, amazing to see such a blatant contempt for democracy on show

You gotta hand it to them though, they have the ruthless instinct. A party like that does not let a silly thing like democracy get in the way of their political objectives

Hmm....

Having a new Prime Minister without a General Election is not as uncommon as some people would believe. This dates from Gordon Brown's time

Here

^ Beat me to it.

It's not a new thing a sitting PM standing down and being replaced, even before Tony Blair.

Eden resigned for ill health in 1957, at the time of the Suez Canal fiasco - which in itself was arguably a pretty good reason for having to call a General Election? - but there was no election and he was succeeded by Harold Macmillan who didn't call an election until 1959 (which he won).

When Macmillan had to resign in 1962 - again from ill health but also in the wake of the Profumo scandal; the Conservatives had to cast around to the House of Lords and get Douglas-Home to renounce his peerage to become PM. They lost the subsequent 1964 election.

Harold Wilson stepped down mid-term in 1976 and was succeeded by Callaghan. There was no General Election then either (despite the fact that Labour had only just scraped a win after two elections in one year in 1974) and by 1976 Labour had already lost its small majority and was only staying in power due to a deal with the Liberal Party. But there was no election until 1979 - fairly ironic in the light of today because of course Labour lost a vote of no-confidence in the House of Commons 1979 triggered by discontent about the defeat of a referendum on Scottish and Welsh devolution - in Scotland 51% voted Yes against 48% No on a turnout of 64%, but because of an amendment to the Devolution Bill requiring a turnout of over 40% of the total Scottish electorate rather than a simple majority of those who did vote; the percentage of total Scottish electorate in favour was only just under 33% therefore devolution couldn't go ahead. (Wales was also included in the devolution legislation, and they had voted decisively No. )

And then of course there's Thatcher / Major in 1990. Nobody expected Major to win the subsequent election in 1992, but the country arguably hated/distrusted Kinnock more.

So there's precedent all the way down the line for decades, though admittedly the Conservatives seem to have made more of a habit of regicide - even when they're in Opposition.

Labour calling for a snap General Election, but presumably not all that snap, because then they couldn't pursue their own farcical leadership contest and they would have to keep Corbyn.

My in charge? fuck she will get the babe channels shut down..she is mary whitehouse reborn