Mystery date: when is the right time to call a general election?

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Will it be May? Maybe October? Perhaps November? Surely not January 2025? Yes, everyone is talking about when the next general election is going to be held – and speculating when Rishi Sunak will decide to go to the country. So is it right for the prime minister to have the power to choose the date of a general election? What are the key considerations to make when looking at the polls – or the weather forecast? And what does history tell us about when is the right time to call an election – and when is the wrong time to stick rather than twist? This special episode of Inside Briefing brings together three veterans of elections that were – or maybe weren’t – to look back on their experiences and discuss what might happen next. Former Labour MP Jacqui Smith was home secretary when Gordon Brown chose not to call a general election in the autumn of 2007. Katie Perrior was working as the Number 10’s director of communications when Theresa May decided to call a snap election in 2017. Political adviser and pollster James Johnson worked in No10 as a strategic adviser to Theresa May between 2016 and 2019. Presented by Tim Durrant. Produced by Milo Hynes and Podmasters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this special episode of Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for
0:22.4	Government. My name is Tim Durant, today's podcast host. Will it be May, maybe October or
0:28.2	November? Surely not January 2025. Yeah, that's right, today's podcast is exploring something
0:34.0	which, let's face it, every political obsessive is talking about, and that's
0:37.8	the right time for the general election. Because that choice belongs to the prime minister,
0:42.2	which means it should, in theory, be a huge electoral advantage, but not always. For all the
0:47.7	studying of polls, the weighing up of the weather, and the hours of focus group insights,
0:51.7	prime ministers have not always called it right. Some called
0:54.4	elections they probably shouldn't have, others delayed when it might have been wiser to go to
0:58.2	the country. So what's the trick to getting it right? What considerations come into play? What
1:02.9	discussions take place in number 10? And while we're at it, what should Rishi Sunak do?
1:07.9	To discuss all that and more, I'm joined by a brilliant line-up for this bonus episode
1:11.3	of Inside Briefing. Jackie Smith was Labour MP for Redditch from 1997 to 2010 and was the UK's
1:17.6	first female home secretary. She's now a broadcaster and political commentator and co-hosts the For
1:22.0	the many podcasts. Hi Jackie. Hi there. I'm also joined by Katie Perrier, co-founder and chair of
1:27.4	in-house communications,
1:28.6	Times columnist, and from 2016-2017, number 10 director of communications under Theresa May.
1:34.4	Hi, Katie. Hi, dear. And we're also joined by another veteran of the May era, her former
1:39.1	research and strategy advisor, James Johnson, who founded and runs JL Partners Polling. Hi, James.
1:46.2	Hello. So this is an Institute for Government podcast, so we of course have to start with some constitutional history.
1:50.2	Calling elections has always been in the Prime Minister's power, except when it wasn't. So in an effort
1:54.7	to secure some sort of stability, the Coalition Government of 2010 brought in the Fixed Term
	...

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