Your obvious contempt for the electorate hardly sits well with accusing somone else of cynicism.

An election is the only thing that can save Parliament.

Take your pick, an election now or a revolution and a summer of riots.

We don’t want to be “re-engaged” with politics, we want the corrupt thieving lying bastards off our backs and out of our wallets

…which you’ll achieve by voting the Tories in, who were just as corrupt as Labour. Genius.

A snap election would put the Tories in power because even though they are just as corrupt as Labour the public hate the government right now. They’re going to win the next election anyway so we might as well get it over with: the sooner the Tories get in the sooner we can start reforming Labour into something vaguely left-wing and liberal.

Just focus on the election after next.

Old Holborn: Frankly, I’d prefer the latter.

Seconded!

Gordon Brown’s “election would cause chaos” line was very poor. Obviously the Tories would like a poll sooner rather than later because they expect to win. The case for waiting until April for an election might be, it would give the new speaker, who everyone is predicting is going to be very powerful, a chance to start the process of parliamentary reform. Not least because new Super Speaker will be particularly powerful while Gordon Brown is the increasingly weak Prime Minister. There’s a danger that if Cameron does win a landslide his appetite for reform may be curbed somewhat. We may miss this golden opportunity for reform. After all power tends to corrupt.

I hardly think we should get into the business of opposing an election which obviously is in the public interest and which the public clearly want, just because we think it might be won by people we don’t like. That’s the sort of contempt for voters which produced the generalised anger and contempt for the political classes that we have now.

I was appalled by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s comments to this effect on Question Time last night, where she more or less told the audience that they were too emotional to have an election now and they might vote BNP! If that isn’t middle-class contempt then I don’t know what is.

Call a general election now, get it over with and then we’ll survey the wreckage afterwards. It might not be good for our sectional party interests but it’s the right thing to do for the good of the public political sphere.

Although I agree that a snap election would be a bad – the electoral equivalent of posting an angry letter without sleeping on it – and mostly I agree with your piece, you seem to be doing a bit of a Brownism:

“the cynicism behind the proposal from the Conservatives is clear: they’re asking for one both because they know they won’t get one, while also knowing that if they do, they’ll be the ones to take full advantage.”

Is that cynical? I thought it was just politics. Much as I hate the Tory Party, i’m afraid you can’t criticise them for taking the political upper hand whilst they sit on the opposition benches – it’s their job to do that.

We all know we don’t always make the best decisions as individuals when we’re angry – it’s not cynical to point that out.

There’s too much wishful thinking going on about a snap election. Celebrity independents might work in a handful of seats – Luton South say – but the rest of the seats would be fought along the old lines. You can’t scrap the party system in 6 weeks so let’s see if it works for us. Parties are made up of more than just their MPs – there’ll be a lot of angry volunteers out there severely disapoointed with their representative. If we give them enough time to find a new candidate a lot of the main villains will be dumped by the time the election comes round. No one but Labour is going to win in Salford so that’s our best hope of getting rid of Hazel Blears.

Secondly an election now would be unduly influenced by information that has been filtered and manipulated by one newspaper with its own political agenda. For instance I believe McKay wasn’t actually “outed” by The Telegraph because he was too close to Cameron. We need a more balanced picture before following them to the Bastille.

“You can’t scrap the party system in 6 weeks….”

Worked pretty well in Nazi Germany,Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania etc., etc.,

What you mean is you are scared of what might follow. Coward.

In other words, MikeMCSG, it might all be alright if Brown hangs on until the last possible moment because people will have “calmed down” and business as usual can resume. I think not, and indeed that is not as it should be, either.

Again, it’s the same elitism – “we the enlightened politically literate classes, can see through this but the daft proles can’t because they’re angry and they’ll only end up electing someone we don’t like”. I don’t buy into that, and I say that the “daft proles” deserve to have their voices heard.

Alibi Brown was insulting the public yesterday by stating on QT that an election could not be held until the BNP were less popular.

How kind of her

Alan – I’m no fan of Brown nor do I think the sky would fall down if a couple of BNP twerps get elected to Strasbourg next month. Under FPTP the people’s will is usually thwarted anyway; the more changes popular pressure can exert upon the system BEFORE an election the better the result we’re going to get.

As it stands now a GE tomorrow would throw a tremendous amount of babies out with the bathwater. Let’s take an example – Ming Campbell got a lot of stick last week over his £1.5K claim for an interior designer after he was elected Lib Dem leader. A poor decision yes but in context he’s forgone a hundred times that amount in giving up the bar to become an opposition MP for the past 20+ years. Does this one error suddenly make Esther Rantzen or the sanctimonious Martin Bell better VFM ? I doubt it,

Does this one error suddenly make Esther Rantzen or the sanctimonious Martin Bell better VFM ? I doubt it

Personally I’d agree (though I wouldn’t vote for Campbell either). However I think it’s for the electorate to decide, not the politerati, and if the majority disagree with with me then so be it.

Alan – of course that’s right but “the majority” doesn’t usually get its way in our system hence we have Brown and his 66 seat majority based on his party (under a different leader) getting 36% of the vote in 2005. Margaret Thatcher never won close to a popular majority for her hard-right policies.

In the current case you might get an otherwise impressive MP in a marginal going down over a trivial item on their claim while the likes of Blears (Labour easily won a council by-election in her constituency last night) sneak back in in their rotten boroughs.