Monday, 8 July 2019

2019 General Election date prediction - Thursday 3rd October 2019

More qualified observers than me can help with this post in the comments. There are some possibilities that are rapidly becoming facts which will create a General Election this year in the UK.

a) Boris becomes PM
b) 30 plus Tory rebels refuse No Deal option and effectively hold the Government to ransom

So far so good, but what does Boris do? He can't force no deal without some Constitutional aberration of trying to shut Parliament which to me is a non-starter and I think for Boris too.

So what is left is only a GE to sort out Parliament with a Leave Majority. Boris will fancy he can do this via an electoral pact with Farage. Whether people buy this will determine if the ruse is successful, but the basic maths are Tory and Brexit Party as one block will be bigger than the divided Lib Dems and Labour vote in the first past the post system...but by how much is the key betting question - it could be a huge margin is Labour lose their Northern seats to Brexit Party candidates.

So the option of a GE GE is Very Likely in the next few months we can perhaps try and forecast a when. There are no other viable routes for Boris as Parliament is against him and he leads a very minority Government that is split anyway.

You could have a second referendum, but even if this goes for Leave it does not sort out the recalcitrant parliament. A vote to remain ends Boris's PM tenure very quickly and not on his own terms, at least at a GE he would go down fighting.

With a GE decided upon, Boris will have to try and square away the Tory party and donors for this effort. Luckily he has July and August for this. We also know that Oct 31st is Brexit day so we need a new parliament before then to plead for a new deal/extension.

So an election sometime between September 1st and October 31st. End of October will be cutting it too close. We need a month for a GE campaign so I feel this is unlikely to be called until everyone is back from summer holidays. This more or less rules out September unless we et a 3 week campaign which could mean 26th Sept as a possible date, more likely to me would be either 3rd October or 10th October.

To me the 10th is cutting is pretty fine to go back to the EU for Plan C, D or E.

So, on balance there is likely to be a General Election on Thursday 3rd of October, with it being called straight after the August Bank Holiday.

Agree or Disagree in the comments.


Nick Drew said...

Not so much a Disagree, just a mechanistic point: how does he call it?

Needs the appropriate Parlmt. majority. For GE17, May baited Corbyn and he went along with it. Could argue he'll do the same again, because he's been demanding a GE loudly for years ... but s'pose Lab still 4th in Polls? And Milne still wants Tory crash-out NoDeal Brexit for his Marxist Chaos / Revolution masterplan? (McDonnell seems to be cooling on this)

Boris then has to resign in order to see if another PM can command a majority. What Price Starmer + SNP + 30 Tory rebels?

CityUnslicker said...

Fair point, Corbyn will go for it though, so will the lib dems who think they can double their seats. Tories plus Lib Dems is enough.

Starmer is not even a party leader so that is a non-starter - you been out drinking with Lord Adonis again?!

Charlie said...

I thought a 2/3 majority was needed to hold a snap election under FTPA?

I imagine Boris will also face an immediate confidence vote and may not even make it to October.

Charlie said...

ND: "What Price Starmer + SNP + 30 Tory rebels?"

30 pieces of silver, of course. Just for the Tory rebels.

Anonymous said...

If the photo-ops of my local Toty south coast MP(s) is anything to go by, they are betting on a GE too. Quite pathetic that they have suddenly developed a love for anything marginal - with votes in it.

But on the other hand, their desperation provides an opportunity.

Brexit Party in a FPTP system? Can't see it but then again, LibDems in government in 2010 .....

andrew said...

Becomes pm
Meets eu leaders
Returns and says
if we agree to the WA they have promised not just cake but also eclairs and black forest gateaux bwahahaha... my force of personality bowled the hun for 6.

WA passes - just

Of course bj is more chamberlain than churchill but no one notices until 2023.

Raedwald said...

Views haven't changed by more than +/- 1.5% since the referendum. Fullfact estimates that gives us 410 Leave constituencies to 240 Remain. Both Labour and Conservative are no longer seen as obedient blocks by voters - who will look to elect solid Leave candidates or solid Remain candidates. Party is secondary.

Thus it hinges on what happens in constituncies such as Yvette Cooper's - labour Leave voters won't vote for her, but won't vote Tory either. So Brexit Party has a chance IF Boris agrees not to stand in Labour constituencies in which CON + TBP votes can win.

Doing so could give Farage, on reasonable estimates, 30 - 40 seats.

Boris' choice of Party chairman will be critical. He / She needs to sort out not only electoral pact arrangements with TBP but ensure enough finance for the election from party backers who accept a Leave result. That rules out most of the CBI.

However, if Boris screws this up, the Conservative Party is finished. I have no taste for being governed by TBP, but that is the real possibility.

Now it's getting really interesting .. after decades of dreary, unimaginative machine politics squatting on the centre, the country is about to get one of those shocks that has so often been the making of us. Never in the way one imagines, but nevertheless a jump across the possibility curve.

Nick Drew said...


Oho, I drink with all manner of strange people! (+;

Was assuming Corbs gets the old heave-ho in the meantime, natch

Pour me another ... *hic*

E-K said...

And 48:52 for remain would do very nicely.

Anonymous said...

The above is nonsense. In the first place, the figure of 30+ Tory MPs willing to vote down their own Government is just wishful thinking on the part of Remoaners.

In the second place, Boris doesn't need to give any of the prospective rebels the chance to vote. All he has to do is sit on his hands (while keeping up the facade of negotiating with Brussels) until 31st October, and there is nothing they can do about it.

In the third place, proroguing Parliament is not a "constitutional aberration". It already occurs three times a year when Parliament goes into recess. The term is just another word for "suspending". If need be, the Parliamentary session could be suspended for a month or so, through to 31st October, and the job will be done.

Raedwald said...

BTW I'd take with a large pinch of salt the Telegraph's claim this morning that Boris would win us a 40 seat majority in a GE.

With 4 parties having about 20% of the vote each, the computational systems used by Electoral calculus and the like break down - they are geared to working on a 2.5 party system.

The truth is, the pollsters are wholly at sea as to how seats would be distributed between 4 sameish sized parties in a GE.

James Higham said...

Interesting scenario - we'll watch this space.

CityUnslicker said...

Raedwald - also, last time we had a GE Corbyn quickly started offering free money to everyone and go about 10% extra votes on the back of it. It is his tried and tested method and he will do it again, probably successfully.

andrew said...

Answering the question of who wins the next GE with a question:

Now that lab is portrayable as a remain party, what will lab leavers do?

hovis said...

Interesting what-if however I think relying on the the fantasties of Gyimah is a little too far fetched.

Knowing Tories in his constituency, (not all die hard Leavers) who have een looking to oust him for a good while. I now just pop over Guido to see that it is round #2 to get him de-eselected.

Anonymous said...

October 31st.

Parliament dissolves for 5 weeks prior, thus halting any chance of revoking Article 50, and Hall'EU'ween comes and goes. The ball is in the EUs court then.

This all depends on Parliament letting a GE happen of course, but Remainers would guess that the EU would unilaterally extend us leaving, thus giving them a stick to beat Boris with as we don't leave on the 31st.

The Leave-With-Dealers may assume same as the Remainers.

The No-Dealers will assume the EU has enough of being faffed about, and wave goodbye.

As for the result, a hung parliament.

Brexit will be a major, but not only, motive for who to vote for, so it won't be along leave/remain lines exactly, but it'll certainly be a strong theme.

We'll get a minority Labour Government, propped up by anyone who isn't the Tories or BP, that'll last a couple of years and collapse in acrimony.

If the EU don't unilaterally extended, the Leave/Remain schism will be pointless, as we'll be out.

And I don't think they would extend - the prospect of another referendum, which may still say Leave, and then more talking... They'll take it round back with a loaded revolver and put it out of its misery.

Anonymous said...

Corbyn cracks at last, agrees to second referendum. He's rewarded by two more resignations, addmitedly from the Lords.

Pity. Despite my dislike of most of his other policies, he showed great testicular fortitude against both the Perpetual War Party (Labour Party Branch) and the Low Wage/High House Price Party (Labour Party Branch), to whom he's now surrendered.

Pity. And I did love England so.

Anomalous Cowshed said...

I don't understand the reasoning about why Johnson would call a GE in the first place.

Polling of the Tory membership has shown him with quite a decent lead over other potential candidates for quite some time now (see Guido passim, for what now feels like an awfully long time), and although with push coming to shove now, I simply don't see Hunt closing the gap significantly.

So, the Conservative Party ends up with a Leader that has been backed by a serious chunk of it's MPs, plus a hefty dose of the membership. It's the membership vote that matters here; any dissenting MPs will then know how far away from the members they are, and crucially, so will everyone else. Tory Remainers will either carry on as before, increasingly marginalising themselves within the Party and elsewhere, or they'll just have to shit or get off the pot.

Additionally, if Johnson does intend to deliver Brexit, then that is exactly what was in the previous manifesto. Nothing has changed; no new mandate is required. What exactly does a GE, with all the attendant risks, actually deliver to Johnson, which he does not already enjoy?

With regard to Parliament; it's not clear to me that another attempt to resolve the Remain/Leave split via a GE would actually work. Nothing has changed.

Within the EU itself; from 31st October, all the jobs are up for grabs anyway, and jockeying has been taking place for a good few months now. The final furlong is near. And the recent appointment of Lagarde is already causing ructions.

Within the member states; the "it was a bit hot, so I drank some water" line doesn't look like it's going to work for much longer for Merkel. Macron appears to be still digging. What are the Eastern Europeans up to? Viktor? The Greeks?

The timing for a GE looks flaky anyway; summer recess due soon, and I guess that the optics of one won't play well. It will look like a panic move so very, very close to the witching hour.

So: do nothing. If Parliament can not agree to anything, let them argue amongst themselves. If the Commission wishes to stick to their public line of no re-negotiation, then make them stick to it. Do nothing.

For Johnson; spend the recess re-invigorating Brand Boris. Ride around Salisbury Plain in a tank; fly down a zip wire; play five a side against the Lionesses - bite their ankles; get stuck on the London Cable Car for four hours; abseil onto the deck of QEII from Chinook. Anything. Grab the headlines and let Corbyn and the Remainers starve of publicity. Silly Season is here.

So; the longer Johnson can do nothing, the more the facts on the ground will change. The Mayor of Calais reckoned he had it all sorted back in March.

Raedwald said...

HoC library have just published key dates for the autumn election