when does the british prime minister call for an election
Snap election The conditions for when a snap election can be called have been significantly restricted by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 to occasions when the government loses a confidence motion or when a two-thirds supermajority of MPs vote in favour. Prior to this, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had the de facto power to call an election at will by requesting a dissolution from the monarch â€“ the limited circumstances where this would not be granted were set out in the Lascelles Principles. There was no fixed period for holding elections, although between 1997 and 2015 there was a convention that the government should hold elections on the same date as local elections on the first Thursday of May. Since World War II, only the 2015 general election was held on the latest possible date (7 May 2015), due to being the first general election at the end of a fixed-term Parliament.