Welcome to Coffee House Shops of Spectators' Daily Politics Podcast. Are we finally on the brink of a general election being called?

Joe Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democrat, said she's done a deal with the S&P, where they are tomorrow going to have a vote in Parliament, a vote that's quite likely to get the Conservative support.

I'm Fraser Nelson, and I'm joined by James Forsyth and Katie Bowles to discuss.

Katie, there's going to be a vote, a government vote today.

We're expecting them to lose that vote?

That's on the Fixed Parliament Act.

In other words, Labour, if Labour vote against it, the motion falls.

Yes, between now and the vote this evening, Boris Johnson is going to lose that unless Labor

suddenly changed their position drastically and say they're going to support Boris Johnson.

What Boris Johnson is doing is calling for an election December 12 under the Fix 10 Parliament Act.

That means he needs two thirds of MPs to back it.

And at the moment, he does not have the numbers.

He doesn't have the votes.

So you could draw from that that an election before Christmas looks unlikely.

But the reason that there's still a good chance of one,

even if Boris Johnson loses the vote this evening,

is that there is another plan being put forward

by opposition MPs, notably Joe Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and Ian Blackford

from the SMP, which is to push for a general election on the 9th of December three days earlier

than Boris Johnson's preferred date. Now, they plan to put forward a bill and this would require

a simple majority because it would override the fixed-term Parliament Act. Now, at the weekend when

this was first announced, you had various cabinet ministers on the Sunday shows suggesting this was

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