TopBadger wrote: ↑Sun Jun 26, 2022 4:50 pm
Early election seems to be closer to his style... win and silence his detractors or take everyone down with him.
He would need to call it before being booted out though, can't call one after losing the party already.
Although the PMs have said on various occasions, "I have called an election...", who in practical reality made the decision? The cabinet? Or the PM as an individual?
The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 S2(1) says: "The powers relating to the dissolution of Parliament and the calling of a new Parliament that were exercisable by virtue of Her Majesty’s prerogative immediately before the commencement of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 are exercisable again..."
As a
2017 House of Commons briefing paper on Crown Prerogative says, "Prerogative powers are possessed by the Crown (that is, the Government)..." They do not require the consent of the Commons or Lords. But who, in practice, exercises these powers of "the Government"? I read of several cases where a minister made a decision that was seemingly theirs to make, and apply, by prerogative, but the PM overruled them. So it does not seem automatically to devolve on an individual minister. In the curiosity that is our constitutional monarchy, the Queen dissolves parliament "on the advice of Her Ministers". In the illegal prorogation saga, was that poor advice Johnson's individual decision, or a decision of the cabinet to send him out there to misadvise her? These things are not quite clear to me.