Saturday 19 February 2011

Changing the Electoral Time Table.

A young girl arranges her Wedding Day for  a certain day and then her older Sister tells her ,
"I've decided to get married on that day so if you don't want a clash or double wedding you will have to change your day".
I suspect the younger sister would be a bit miffed

So when Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says he will offer AMs the chance to bring forward or delay the poll up to a year.  I thought there would be a stronger reaction especially from Plaid and the SNP

But it seems that both Plaid and the SNP would like to move the Assembly and Scottish Parliament  Elections that would be due in 2015 and it is the Coalition partners Labour party in Wales who have said to Westminster that they should move the date of the next General Election if the coalition go ahead with their plans for fixed term elections of 5 years.

I am unsure that Alex Salmond is suggesting that Scottish Parliaments would have a fixed 5 year term but I think 5 years is to long and prefer 4

I wonder if Carwyn Jones would have been so assertive if Labour was in government and proposing his but I suspect he might well have  been.

However  if the dates were moved the fact that the assembly elections are every 4 years and Westminster 5 means there will be a clash every 20 years.

So a simple solution would be to have equal Assembly and Parliamentary terms of  4 years  indeed if we added Council Elections then we could have a Time Table as

2014 General Election
2015  Election to Welsh Parliament (Hopefully by then")  " NI Assembly and Scottish Parliament
2016 Local Government Elections
2017 Elections to Second Chamber?(wouldn't that be a good Idea?)
2018 General Election and so on

You could argue that if we were to make it every 5 years then we could include European Elections but as I said I think 5 years is too long and since these elections are based on the votes of Parties proportionally they could be held on the same day as one of the others  (It may well raise voting numbers). It will mean having elections in June but so what. are elections in May sacrosanct? But  I don't think our internal democracy should be governed by Europe anyway we already have one "older sister "  telling us to change our dates.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What do Neil Kinnock, Kim Howells, Rachel Banner and a pink inflatable pig have in common apart from opposing the devolution of government to Wales?

One is a windbag, one is a ‘pinko’, one has a tendency for little ‘porkies’ and one is a pink inflatable pig.