The Timing of General Elections

Abstract

The date of the next general election remains unknown to British voters and opposition parties alike, until it is announced by the Prime Minister approximately five weeks before polling is due to take place. It is the Prime Minister who possesses the constitutional power to select the date for a general election, and he or she formally exercises this power by requesting the Queen to carry out the legal ceremonies involved in dissolving Parliament and causing election writs to be issued to every parliamentary constituency to set the candidature nomination and ballot arrangements in motion. The only legal limitation upon the Prime Minister’s freedom of choice is a 1911 statutory provision that a Parliament will automatically terminate exactly five years after the date of its first meeting. The wording of this fundamental provision controlling the frequency of British general elections reads as follows:1 All Parliaments that shall at any time hereafter be called, assembled, or held, shall and may respectively have continuance for [five] years, and no longer, to be accounted from the day on which by the writ of summons … any future Parliament shall be appointed to meet, unless… any such Parliament hereafter to be summoned, shall be sooner dissolved by His Majesty, his heirs or successors.