Mdthbs

I'm trying to understand why Labour and other parties do not want an election. The bill blocking the no-deal exit on the 31st of October will almost certainly pass today. That means that the no-deal option is off, at least for now.

What's the motivation for the opposition to delay the inevitable election instead of simply accepting that option right now?

There's a constellation of reasons:

• Johnson lost his majority (which makes him toothless and unable to get anything done), is getting humiliated day after day, and is putting his inadequacy on display more often than not. The longer this drags on, the more damage to his credibility as a viable PM.




• The optics of a PM calling for a vote of no confidence, with his party voting against his government and the opposition voting for it, would be bleak for Johnson. The optics of Johnson resigning and inviting the Queen to get the opposition to form a new government are no better.




• The last thing the opposition wants is to be at the helm on Brexit Day should such a day arrive -- particularly if it's a No Deal Brexit. The opposition is widely pro-Remain outside of a few fringe sections of the Labour party. If Brexit there is, especially if it's a very soft one engineered under pressure by the current opposition, the more radical Brexiters will be out in the wild screaming Brino ("Brexit in name only"). You want the blame and the discredit firmly tacked onto the Tories and the Brexit Party. Alternatively you'd want a People's Vote to confirm the Brexit outcome.




• There's a significant risk for Labour that Johnson will paint an election before Oct 31 as: it's Brexit or Corbyn. The latter is loathed (or at least used to be loathed) by large swaths of the country -- including by some centrists within his own party. This may very well skew the results enough that they'd end up losing (as polls appear to suggest) on the basis that some voters would rather a no deal Brexit than Corbyn at the helm.




• By contrast, if opposition stalls until the next extension gets granted, this gets "vote for me and you'll get Brexit by the end of the month" out of the way. Its odds of electoral success are then stronger. Johnson will have been neutered by breaking his key promise to leave on Oct 31 do or die. Unless Farage gives him a break and allies with him, there will be two parties fighting for Brexiter votes, and both will lose because of the UK's FPTP system. If the opposition plays it right, or at least if its activists do, they'll be able to form a coalition government with a majority for Remain.

If you'd like most of the above points argued in more detail, The Guardian's Politics Weekly had a good podcast episode on this yesterday.

In addition to the tactical considerations outlined by Denis de Bernardy, there is also a fear that the bid to hold an election could be a ploy to force through a no-deal Brexit on October 31, which is the last thing the opposition wants to happen. (Conceivably Jeremy Corbyn might secretly be okay with that outcome if only it means he can become PM afterwards, but many backbenchers on both sides are genuinely alarmed by the prospect).

If the Commons votes to have a general election, it will still be up to Johnson to decide when that election would be, and the opposition would have no legal way to hold him to any promises about the date he makes before the vote. (Because of the very specific procedure set out by the Fixed-Term Paliaments Act, it is impossible to vote for "general election, but only if it is on such-and-such date").

For example, Johnson might schedule the election for November 1. The current parliament would immediately be dissolved and a new one won't meet until it has been elected. In the mean time there would be no elected body to keep tabs on his actions. It's understood that the Benn-Burt bill would have become law, and it requires the PM to seek an article 50 extension (since he would be unable to ask parliament for permission to either close a deal or crash out) -- but perhaps, somehow, he might have a trick up his sleeve to let him wiggle out of that -- for example set up a situation where it is somehow impossible to comply with either of the bill's options and he himself is the only one to decide what to do then, given that parliament itself is dissolved.

Needless to say, there are stark disagreements about how real this risk is. The legal territory of a sitting PM more or less openly ignoring parliamentary orders while parliament itself is dissolved is pretty much completely uncharted, so it's anyone's guess whether he would actually succeed if he tried that plan.

The theory also seems to presuppose that Johnson is more interested in getting a no-deal Brexit than in winning a subsequent election (and at least officially he says he's trying to negotiate an agreement which the above plan would make it impossible to implement legally). Or perhaps he might believe that if he manages to get a no-deal Brexit he would be hailed as a liberator in a November 1 election. Or it is possible that even if Johnson himself hopes to win an election, his chief strategist and grey eminence Dominic Cummings might actually care more about getting to crash out without a deal than he cares about staying in power afterwards.

The uncertainties surrounding this theory will in themselves motivate many MPs to oppose a general election being called right now.

Why do opposition parties not want an election?

Short answer : Because they think they'd lose.

Long answer : Recent polling suggest Cons would win a GE held tomorrow reasonably easily on their own & if they came to an agreement with the BP that it would pretty much be a landslide.

So the opposition parties don't want an election now because they think they'd lose & potentially lose badly ending up with fewer seats than they have now.

Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention figures 2-3 September 2019

Britain Elects Poll Tracker Last updated: 01 Sep 2019

Polling for the next United Kingdom general election a Wikipedia list of polls

Conservative lead starts hitting double figures SEPTEMBER 3, 2019

UKPollingReport 20 August 2019

UKPollingReport 31 August 2019

COMRES a bunch of links to published polls from MSM

If those polls are accurate or not is another issue of course but the opposition parties are aware of them & don't want an election at this time when it appears clear they won't win & certainly not with a majority sufficient to avoid all the problems the Cons have had with such a slim majority.

I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons they & others might give, but the long & short is it all boils down to the fact that they don't think they'd win right now, anything else is just spin & 'optics' to put it in the best light possible for them. If they thought they could win nothing would stop them agreeing to one & by the same token if he thought they could win Boris (probably) wouldn't have asked for a GE.