Wake Me Up on May 7
![david_cameron_0[1]](https://annaraccoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/david_cameron_01.jpg)
QUESTION: When is a government not an effective vehicle for getting things done? ANSWER: When it is locked in a fixed five-year term.
The absence of flexibility in the American Presidential system means either death or resignation are the only impediments to the incumbent occupant of the White House serving out the four years in office to which he was elected – and resignation has only ever interrupted that office once. On one hand, conscious that his tenure has a specific limit, he will hit the ground running and do his utmost to ensure all the promises made during his election are transformed into the legislation he was committed to passing before standing again. On the other hand, when a President has won a second term, the final year-to-eighteen months of his presidency tend to drag by like the last week before the school summer holidays. A US President in his seventh or eighth year in charge knows precisely how long he has to serve; he is aware the American constitution will not permit him to run for a third time, so he puts his feet up and takes it easy. With an eye on his memoirs, his only real concern is securing his legacy by not committing some great gaff for which he will be forever associated; so he avoids anything remotely risky or controversial and is effectively neutered of all semblance of power beyond the ceremonial, becoming a figurehead closer to a monarch than a political leader.
However, in countries such as Zimbabwe, where the concept of a fixed term for a President is anathema, there is a different kind of political stagnation; an elected dictator has no need to worry about an eight-year limit; he knows he has the job for life if he so chooses and knows he cannot be ousted, for even the need for occasional elections is merely a token gesture to appease the rest of the world. Both the American and the Zimbabwean system are supremely effective in denying the electorate the opportunity to throw out a lame duck. And since Vladimir Putin has risen like some Cold War shadow looming over Eastern Europe, one could also add Russia to that list of undemocratic democracies.
In good old Blighty, the Mother of All Parliaments has never been afflicted by such problems, at least since the modern political parties began to take shape in the second half of the nineteenth century. Over the past hundred years or so, there have been several notable landslide election victories that were used by the victors not to cruise on automatic pilot free from the fear of being evicted from Downing Street, but to actually get things done – the Liberals in 1906, Labour in 1945, and the Conservatives in 1983, to use just three examples. Moreover, regardless of their large majorities, each of those three governments was acutely aware that they would be held to account should they be seen slacking in their mission. And were the Prime Minister prompted to reassert his or her authority in the face of mounting media and public criticism, the option to seek a fresh mandate from the electorate was always available.
The February 1974 General Election was a gamble by Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath taken when he’d only served three-and-a-half years in office, his typically bullish response to the power crisis and miners’ strike that he blamed for the instigation of the Three-Day Week. Heath wasn’t obliged to go to the country, but he was confident enough in his party’s parliamentary majority and the strength of his own solution for the nation’s ills to believe he could win. In the end, the Tories did win more votes than Labour, but not enough seats for a majority; and Heath’s gamble failed. The fact that he was prepared to risk his grip on power when he had no need to, however, underlined the strength of the British democratic system in comparison to some. Yes, Heath knew that he could have served a maximum five years as PM with the comfortable majority the Tories had from their 1970 Election victory; but the five-year limit tended only to be capitalised on when a governing party had a pretty good inkling it would lose on the hustings next time round, such as John Major’s Tories in 1997 or Gordon Brown’s Labour in 2010, determined to cling onto power till the last possible minute.
This system introduced uncertainty into the mix that kept the British political establishment on their toes, precluding predictability and eschewing easy forecasting that prevented a General Election coming around every four years with the dependable reliability of a World Cup or Olympic Games. After Attlee’s 1945 landslide, the Election years in the UK were 1950, 1951, 1955, 1959, 1964, 1966, 1970, 1974 (twice), 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010. During the same time span in the US, Presidential Elections were held every four years without fail; even the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963 and the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974 didn’t allow their successors Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford to move the goalposts in order to give them a full term in office; they still had to fight in 1964 and 1976 respectively. Johnson won and Ford lost.
With a Hung Parliament the outcome of the last UK Election in 2010, one that led to a Tory/Lib Dem coalition, the shaky nature of the truce between the temporarily united parties resulted in an attempt to prevent the British people voicing their disapproval. This came in the shape of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011, enshrining it in law that this Parliament would run for precisely five years. No chance of a Snap Election, which meant no chance of the electorate expressing their dissatisfaction with austerity by voting the coalition out of office. The opposition still have the option of introducing a Motion of No Confidence vote should they try to bring the government down, but if your ratings in the polls were as low as Ed Miliband’s are, would you take that risk? Nick Clegg hailed the passing of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act as a victory for democracy in that it denied the Prime Minister the sole choice to pick and choose the next Election; but bearing in mind the perilous electoral position of his party, Clegg has more reason than most to be relieved that the bill became law.
Under normal circumstances, we would probably have had a General Election by now; but we all have to grin and bear it until next May. Yes, David Cameron might be sweating a little that a few more of his disgruntled backbenchers could defect to UKIP before then – and there’s a strong possibility that this may well happen – but he, like everyone else in the Commons, is now so focused on events five months away that the next five months of soporific suspended animation may as well constitute an extended parliamentary recess. The inhabitants of those august surroundings are now no different from those who begin planning for Christmas in the middle of summer, or dedicated devotees of tabloid astrologers so busy looking to the future that the present is left unlived.
Half-a-year of speculation and pontificating is already underway. Will we see another Con-Dem coalition or will we see a Lab-Dem one in 2015? Will the likes of Alex Salmond or Nigel Farage play kingmaker? Will either of them even be elected to Parliament? Will whoever wins the most seats, however tiny their majority, choose to go it alone and govern without the support of other parties? If the latter occurs, it should mean we at least won’t have to endure another five years and, anyway, a party with a small majority can often rule more effectively because it knows time is not on its side, responding to a crisis with a degree of decisive action that a greater majority might dither over. And every vote counts where a minority is concerned, which means a fuller house than we’re currently accustomed to. Set your alarm-clock for 7 May.
Petunia Winegum
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December 15, 2014 at 9:53 am -
I cannot really know for sure about Russian politics, but lumping Putin in with unpopular but immoveable political objects, seems spectacularly inappropriate. My understanding is that the vast bulk of the Russians love his smoothly rippling chest and would like nothing more than to be his mount. It’s just the EU and the US that resent him because he stopped vodka-soaked lushes granting the West license to print money off the back of the serfs in good old gas-rich rump-USSR.
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December 15, 2014 at 12:06 pm -
It’s not so much what the Russian people think of Vlad, but the way in which he has carefully manipulated the constitution to keep himself in power – eight years as President, then a stint as ‘Prime Minister’, then back as President again.
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December 15, 2014 at 12:38 pm -
If they keep voting for him I fail to see the legalese as being relevant. Lawyers will write whatever they are told to write. Constitutions were not handed by God to Moses and are not divine writ. In a country like Russia they were perfectly entitled to rewrite the rules because they had no idea what they were doing, as witnessed by Boris the dancing bear. There’s no evidence that I’m aware of that he bends the elections but how would I know much about the biggest nation on earth by geography.
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December 15, 2014 at 1:17 pm -
If the Russian people keep voting for Putin until he’s on his deathbed, how is that any different from the Zimbabwean people returning Mugabe to power over and over again? Surely that’s the kind of scenario that breeds stagnation in an alleged democracy, something we’re all having to endure at the moment as we twiddle our thumbs waiting for next May to come around.
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December 15, 2014 at 1:20 pm -
Because they vote for him. Simple.
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December 15, 2014 at 2:38 pm -
That’s only because his henchmen life uncomfortable for people in Russia ifthey don’t vote for him. He’s a good old-fashioned dictator, pure and simple.
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December 16, 2014 at 10:34 am -
Mugabe’s elections are rigged, while Putin’s appear not to be. Whether he would rig an election if he seemed likely to lose, I don’t know. We will no doubt see in due course.
The new Zimbabwe constitution does introduce term limits. These start running from the (rigged) 2013 election.
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December 15, 2014 at 10:20 am -
Thanks Petunia for your fair stating of the differing ideas of democracy, fixed terms of office, a la Putin and Mugabe and the USA fixed term President on his second term bumbling his way to an election he knows he cannot be take part in. Important matters get left on the back burner for some other mutt to fall flat on their face over. These terms were put in place to stop bossy boots like Putin hogging long periods of power over a large powerful country ( does not work). Egypt got into a real muddle recently, chucking out a long term bossy boots only to steer full circle back into the loving grasp of the army! Smaller African countries are somewhat different. They may not wield the power of oil gold or precious minerals like The Congo, yes I know that is not its name, but sought after substances just means big trouble anyway. We are faced in UK with a winter of name calling, email revealing, to prove racism. Name blackening. Historic accusations galore to smear present day politics and a particular party and social group. I am glad it was not last winter with its catastrophic weather from October to April that we have to endure the likes of the last Question Time. A queaky voiced person using bad grammar, kept repeating the mantra of naughty bankers/wealthy people are the cause of all our wows. How Ordinary Man is constantly done down by the knobs…spare me the agony and bad weather.
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December 15, 2014 at 10:57 am -
I don’t really get this “second term paralysis” concept for the Prez. If s/he was to have paralysis at all it would be in the first term because they want to be re-elected for another four years of clover. All this is just blather to cover up the fact that most presidents are time-serving politico’s there to repay favours for their exalted positions and any men of principle were weeded out long before in the polling/media process.
The weirdest thing about America is that they try continually to create “Royal families” – Roosevelt, Kennedy and Bush and now Clinton. There is clearly a deep urge in their process for royal blood. Other than Zac Goldsmith there seems little sign of familial hegemony in our own system.
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December 15, 2014 at 12:04 pm -
Actually, I would have thought – not that this is strictly the done thing – that most Presidents would try and achieve everything they set out to do in their first term because there’s no guarantee they’ll get a second – and a third is out of the question. Granted, a one-term President is fairly rare; only Bush Sr and Carter spring to mind in recent years, but there’s no doubt in my mind that certainly the second half of a second term sees most of them cruising on automatic pilot.
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December 15, 2014 at 12:34 pm -
It’s a binary. I was coming at it from the angle that any politician reaching such high office must really WANT the office. As such, in his first term he will want to ensure he holds the office for a second term, perhaps over and above his principles (along the lines that Labour took the view that without power they could achieve nothing and so blaired themselves). Assuming the Prez has ANY ideas/principles of his own then his second term might as well be the blow-out. He aint coming back so if he doesn’t show signs of having had any big ideas by then, then I suspect he never had any in the first place. Obama seems to have made his big blowout thing being the executive authorisation of executing an old reclusive religious maniac in Pakistan. Of such stuff are the political heroes of the 21st Century made, it seems.
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December 15, 2014 at 3:34 pm -
Applause for inventing the new verb, ‘to blair’ – to compromise any principles and take whatever actions are deemed necessary, in order solely to succeed in the pursuit of continuing power.
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December 15, 2014 at 10:23 am -
It really is wide open for next year isn’t it? I agree with you that fixed term parliaments are a bad idea. I prefer my election campaigns to be short and sweet not drawn out for a year or so. Thus parliament is now a lame duke for the next 6 months.
I would still go further and make voting compulsory though with a ‘no suitable candidate’ box on the ballot paper.
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December 15, 2014 at 4:04 pm -
Not sure about compulsory voting. At least now we get some sort of opinion from those voters who care enough to bother – make it compulsory and the truly apathetic and terminally stupid become involved. Add to that the current pressure for almost pre-pubescent voting and you then introduce those with absolutely no life-experience and yet more participants with no ‘investment’ at all in that service for which they are voting – and a even greater ready-market to be plundered by the postal-vote fraudsters than they have now.
I would rather see a system of ‘additional votes’. Everyone over 16 gets a single vote for starters – from 18 you get an extra vote – from 21 you get another extra vote, making 3 in total. After that a further ‘bonus vote’ is added for every £10,000 (or part thereof) that you paid net in direct taxes (Income Tax and NI, minus benefits), in the previous Tax Year. Most positive taxpayers would thus get at least 4 votes, which they could use all for one candidate or split them however they wish.
This approach would also start to diminish the current over-weighting in pensioner votes which has a distorting effect on policy, producing epensive and inappropriate bribes like Winter Fuel Allowance, Bus Passes, TV Licenses etc.
Thus, everyone’s ballot-box opinion would have a proportionate connection to both their accumulating life-experience, their futures and their recent personal ‘investment’ in the system – all quite simple to administer with a bit of decent technology.-
December 16, 2014 at 11:38 pm -
Haha. Once you start doling out extra votes, there will be no end to it. An extra vote for immigrants so we don’t seem ‘racist’? Why not? How about no votes at all for pensioners? What did they ever do for us? You, sir, are a twat.
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December 15, 2014 at 10:49 am -
I do think the imposition of “Fixed term” was a response to worries about the breakdown of public order after the politically-promoted rioting of the lefties after they lost the election. I also suspect the Condem’d politicians were also alarmed at strange behaviour of the police who seemed to have accrue a politically left agenda of their own during the new Labour years A leftism akin to the “leftism” of the stasi perhaps and shared by the new Labour legal Establishment also inherited by the newly foppish Tories. The adoption of a fixed term meant the left had to put up or shut up. Revolution or wait your bloody term.
As I recall the notion that Brown’s government was paralysed by the prospect of defeat is false. That government plunged into a frenzy of legislation in it’s dying days in a desperate attempt to ensure the lawyers would pre-empt any demokratik politicking by the incoming Tory toffs to change the onward march of the State.
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December 15, 2014 at 10:59 am -
That was my recollection too. Why they bothered seems less clear as there is nothing but rhetoric to choose between them.
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December 15, 2014 at 11:10 am -
I’m putting it down to Politics being the art of the possible. I’d sooner be ruled by queasy Etonians with a distaste for gore than the licensed thugs from the local Comprehensive hungry for blood, as co-opted by the high-minded Islington socialists.
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December 15, 2014 at 1:22 pm -
No party sympathies, but I think I’d prefer the phoney war of this coalition’s end to the frantic poison pill activities of the previous bunch.
If something desperate occurs, I’m sure the machinery is in place to deal with it
There are rarely situations/opportunities like ’06, ’45, & ’83, highlighted by Petunia. My guess is that with government, less is more most of the time, but with a massive civil service, new politicians keen to make their mark with other peoples money & freedoms, the result is obvious. Add in Brussels and we have legislators nirvana.
All in all, I think if we avoid a parliament that has the power to keep legislating to the bitter end for purely political or ideological ends, we’ll all be better served.-
December 15, 2014 at 1:28 pm -
It did rather lend itself to the scorched earth policy of the nationalising socialists didn’t it.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/24/article-2347524-1A7C5F28000005DC-357_634x400.jpg-
December 15, 2014 at 7:49 pm -
I think of the toxicity of the 50p tax rate, which can be played for decades while making no obvious contribution to the nations finances.
No wonder there’s no appetite to reform personal taxation while it can be gamed solely for political advantage.
As usual, just a view.-
December 16, 2014 at 10:42 am -
It’s time taxation was abolished. We have to think of a better way to control inflation.
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December 15, 2014 at 3:06 pm -
One of the problems of this Parliament is that five years wasn’t enough to address the state of the public finances after the 2008 crash. At the time, I thought it would take a decade to stabilise the position, and about a generation to really recover – longer if have another ‘tax borrow and spend’ government in that time. I’ve not altered my opinion since. The present government have, all in all, done a pretty fair job of starting the process of stabilisation; whether we get a government of sufficient stability and the political temperament to complete the task remains to be seen. There are, of course, several other factors, perhaps most notably our relationship with the EU and how that might develop over the next few years….
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December 15, 2014 at 7:58 pm -
Good lord Engineer, this is the first time I have violently disagreed with you.
There is no way the camoron government can be described as having done a “fairly good job” on “tax and spend government” your debt is now 80% of GDP even after the treasury included the earnings of hookers and drug-dealing in national GDP. http://www.debtbombshell.com/forecasting-national-debt.htm
The coalition and fixed-term government have been unmitigated disasters allowing a work-shy PM the opportunity to depress returns to pension plan investments to fund his irresponsible government.
As to the larger point Petunia makes, I don’t believe there is any better system of determining government duration, frankly they all seem to be bad.
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December 15, 2014 at 8:49 pm -
I think the explosion in the size of the national debt is a disaster, especially as it is now the first call on the nation’s tax revenues, even before defence (and debt interest now exceeds the defence budget). However, there was a very fine balancing act to be performed between repairing the real economy (not there yet), extracting a lot of tax revenue to offset the deficit (thus making the first objective more difficult), reducing public spending (no real progress on that despite howling about ‘austerity’ in some quarters), keeping interest rates and inflation down, not increasing the welfare bill by slinging public servants out of a job without seeing some private sector job creation to offset it, and coping with an increasingly difficult world economic situation (the EU is in depression though the powers that be and the europhile media won’t admit it). Cutting too fast could have brought on depression, as it did in 1930s America.
Whatever you think of Cameron and Osborne (with Lib Dem ‘help’), they have done a far better job of balancing the demands and pressures than their Labour equivalents would have done. Had Brown and Balls taken the levers of power and used fiscal stimulus to support the economy, public spending would be well in excess of 50% of GDP by now, with debt probably in excess of 100% of GDP. It’s very hard to see how there could have been any way back from that position – that approach is what caused the problem in the first place; you don’t extinguish a fire with more fire.
Britain doesn’t feel like it’s in crisis at the moment. There’s no visible signs of any ‘austerity’. Life is going on happily enough for most people. Sure, they might grumble about fuel prices, but business is being done, shops are busy, people are bustling about. Sure, there are some at the bottom of the heap struggling, but no more than there has ever been. There are fewer people on welfare, more in work. Immigrants want to come here because there’s work to be found; that wouldn’t happen if the country was in crisis. Britian might not be ‘booming’, but it’s getting on quite nicely, thank you. I’m not sure that would have been the case had Brown and Balls been in charge.
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December 15, 2014 at 9:35 pm -
Absolutely agree that things would have been worse with Balls and Brown or potentially Balls/Milliband, but that is faint praise indeed. Increases in your public debt are horrific and talks of austerity are farcical. I think we differ on the extent that government budgets could be reduced and how public servants should be redeployed to “real” work-not without much grumbling from unions though.
Glad to hear that Britain “doesn’t feel like it’s in crisis”, I suppose it’s amazing what can be achieved when rolling over government debt at effective zero% rates. What that implies for your retirement is another matter.
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December 15, 2014 at 9:54 pm -
I said above that when the scale of the 2008 crisis became apparent (which didn’t happen immediately), I thought it would take a decade to stabilise things, and a generation to recover. By the time the deficit is eliminated, near enough a decade will have elapsed; by the time the debt is a manageable fraction of GDP will take a generation. (I suspect that the full implications of debt and deficit are still rather beyond the understanding of quite a large proportion of the population, hence all the political noise about other things.) In the meantime, however, Britain is generally ‘getting on with it’ as it usually does.
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December 15, 2014 at 4:44 pm -
Good post with points well made. Good comments too.
I’m also of the opinion that voting should be compulsory, with a “none of the above” option.
I’d abolish postal voting. Anyone wishing to vote must turn up at a Polling Station in person with ID.
Exceptions to be made only for those in hospital, nursing home, bedridden on production of a doctor’s note.
Anyone refusing to vote or missing three votes permanently removed from the register.
The right to vote was hard won and it is being squandered.If you can’t get to your polling station because of work- you turn up at- say- a police station or council office in person with ID and ask for a ballot paper, fill it in and post it to the returning officer.
I could go further. Anyone working for the government or receiving benefits banned from voting?
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December 15, 2014 at 5:11 pm -
A system not too unlike that of ancient Athens or Sparta, dedicated to the proposal that weighing heads is better than merely counting them!
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December 15, 2014 at 7:01 pm -
Why would you ban a disabled person from voting?
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December 16, 2014 at 7:20 am -
Said ‘not unlike’, I wouldn’t require you to fling your slightly wonky eyed son of a cliff either!
Do you keep all these strawmen in a barn somewhere, or do you craft each one as needed? -
December 16, 2014 at 3:57 pm -
I haven’t. Perhaps I could have phrased it better. Those with a medical or similar condition- eg frail elderly housebound able to vote by post providing they are ID’d and get a doctor’s signature or equivalent to say they would be unable to vote in person
The current system is so corrupt something must be done
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December 16, 2014 at 11:48 pm -
Like Mudplugger, you don’t think of what will surely happen if (as in your case) you ban some people from voting. As sure as eggs is eggs, they’ll get round to banning you and give your vote to someone more ‘deserving’, a member of a minority, perhaps. People ‘receiving benefits’ might be just the ones to prevent the wholescale (further) erosion of everyone’s liberties. Let them have the vote, please, Mr Toughguy.
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December 15, 2014 at 4:58 pm -
A one time politics junkie I have almost lost all interest now, I don’t like coalitions, just means no manifesto means anything, but accepted the need for it in 2010 given the financial state of the country and the need for stability. I had hoped the LDs would prove their capability in government and maybe even replace Labour as a centre left party not dominated by the Unions, sadly that has not been the case. With a few exceptions all they have shown is that they are not up to the job. I don’t like fixed term parliaments either, this one has run it’s course but we have to put up with it for another five months and a long boring campaign, it takes all the fun out of it. The thought of the horrible mess we might end up with is a nightmare if all the small parties win some seats and get to choose the PM and use that to further their own interests irrespective of the country as a whole. The only political programme I watch now is Andrew Neil , Newnight and Queastion Time are pale shadows of what they one were, not even any decent satire. I don’t much like Cameron but prefer him to the alternatives, as I have said before, sometimes I am glad to be getting old!
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December 15, 2014 at 9:19 pm -
Why bother with elections at all?
Choice? The non-conservative Conservatives, the labour-hating Labour party, the non-liberal, non-democratic Liberal Democrats, hardly a, soon to be illegal no doubt, fag paper between them.-
December 16, 2014 at 8:14 am -
But what’s the alternative to elections ? Apart from me, there’s precious few benevolent dictators around these days.
Both the SNP and UKIP have proved that it is possible to awaken the comatose electorate to options outside the traditional threesome, shaking the old parties to their foundations – that process may change the political landscape for generations if it is maintained.
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December 16, 2014 at 10:27 am -
We saw You Know Who on tele last night, full of bonhomie and assorted beers and spirits. The two hoteliers from Gogglebox with their amazing mansion and grounds plus extreme sociability, were grilling you know who with some quite tricky questions. He said he had no sights on being PM. Regretted not seeing his children as much as he liked when they were young etc. An expletives included Fanny Craddock kept haunting me, as I watched the hostess with the mostest in action, phoning her tolerant ‘Johnnie’ AKA Dom, demanding to know why he was in the pub! Well we know Hail Fellow Well Met is a pub man, very clubby and seemingly uber affable. Was it a slotted in pre election broadcast of a rather unusual kind, or a bit of a mistake? If so it was the most entertaining pre election effort. Still does not make me want to vote UKIP. I await events before putting in my cross. I am aware editing, and compressing a long visit into a half hour slot can give any slant it likes on a presentation. Remember the golf club debacle anyone?
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December 17, 2014 at 12:25 pm -
“…When is a government not an effective vehicle for getting things done?..”
The cynical amongst us would answer “Always”, but in my experience governments always manage to get things done.
Just not the right things…
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December 19, 2014 at 12:07 pm -
In the US presidents are limited to two terms, therefore often toward the end of a second term little gets done for a variety of reasons. In part this may be due to the politics of future candidates of the party in power may be more “left ” or “right” than the current President. They might not want to take on the existing policies of a President even if they come from the same party. There are plenty of Democrat politicians who would be at home in the Republican Party and vice versa.
However, the biggest problem for a sitting President is that mid term Congress and Senate elections often result in the opposition party having a majority in one or both houses, therefore it is almost impossible for a President to get legislation through without doing deals with his political opponents. I mean, Obama isn’t going to see eye to eye too often with Tea Party Republican types is he? Yet just a few might hold the balance on whether a vote gets through. They are often a lame duck because they don’t have the power to get a vote through or a compromise has to be made and political favour bought. It’s not as straightforward as thinking the President can do what he likes once elected, as the system has checks and balances, usually brought on by those mid term elections that always seem to go against the sitting President regardless of which party they represent.
In the UK when we didn’t have a fixed term the party in power could often manipulate the date for an election by going early, usually after a give away budget to buy votes. Didn’t matter which party was in power they all played this game, picking the moment that best suited their chance to win. Thatcher was an expert at picking the moment, i.e. the Falklands Factor. Fixed terms mean they have to deal with the reality of the moment when the election arrives. Take away the fixed term and we will go back to the sitting Government choosing the moment when they think they can win and making sure their policies fit that moment rather than what might be best in the long run. The reality was that when the sitting Government could pick the date, election talk would start usually around year 3 and go on until the date was picked. Personally I have no interest in going back to having two years of when will the election be talk and the uncertainty it created, which was what happened before the fixed term was introduced.
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