I don’t suppose I’m alone in believing that Theresa May’s stated reasons for calling a snap election were both paper thin and transparently disingenuous. That is not necessarily intended as a condemnation. This is politics after all, and May has proved pretty effective at the dark arts.
Immediately after yesterday’s announcement of a 2017 general election (the joys, the joys), an old student mine (take a bow Jacob Baxter) immediately tipped a hat to 1923. And that got me thinking, what about snap general elections we have known?
And there we begin. All the elections outlined above were called at a moment of the then prime minister’s choosing, more or less. True, in 1931, it was really Baldwin rather than MacDonald who sought the ‘doctor’s mandate’, but MacDonald obeyed His Master’s Voice and went to the country. Attlee’s (mistaken) choice of October 1951 was constrained by George VI’s imminent departure…
View original post 2,188 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments