Since the repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act earlier this year, the constitutional complexities of needing a super-majority of MPs or a particularly worded confidence motion no longer apply if you want an election before a five-year term is up.
Constitutionally, the route towards an election is simple. The easiest would be Liz Truss formally seeking one from the King.
Alternatively, parliament would be dissolved if the government lost either a formal confidence motion, or a vote it has billed as a confidence issue, for example on key budgetary measures, or a King’s speech.
The situation is made notably more complicated by the fact that, although an election could provide any new Tory leader with a mandate, current polling suggests it would wipe out most of the Conservative parliamentary party.
There are many political routes towards an election. Here are a few:
Truss is ousted and a new prime minister calls an election
One of the main arguments made by Conservative MPs keen to keep Truss in No 10 is the idea that voters simply would not stomach a ruling party changing leaders twice in one electoral cycle. There is nothing constitutionally to prevent this, but at each remove – and every policy shift – Boris Johnsons’s 2019 mandate wears thinner.
If Truss is shunted out, her replacement could face such intense political pressure that they feel obliged to call an election. Or, a month or two in, they might enjoy even a small bounce in the polls and decide to chance it.
Truss is ousted and there is stasis – or chaos
A slight variant on the above would be the unprecedented but nonetheless plausible scenario in which Truss is persuaded by her fellow MPs to step down, and then the Conservative parliamentary party cannot agree on a consensus candidate and does not want to embark on a months-long formal contest.
One constitutional certainty is that the UK must always have a prime minister. If Truss’s time was ticking down and no one was confirmed to replace her, under constitutional norms, an election would follow.
A formal confidence motion is lost
Under the new system, put in place by the new Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act, an election can be called by the traditional method of a confidence vote – either the government tables one saying MPs have confidence in it, or the opposition tables one saying they do not.
Johnson’s 2019 majority of 80 has been winnowed down by byelections and MPs losing the whip, but it is still 71. This route would only bring an election if enough Conservatives decided they had had enough and would trust their fate to the public.
Another type of confidence motion is lost
This is slightly murkier, in that the post-Fixed-term Parliaments Act era takes us back to the world of constitutional conventions, where there is no legal requirement for a prime minister who loses such a vote to go.
Nevertheless, these conventions are very strong and if, for example, Truss lost the key vote on what remains of her mini-budget provisions, escaping an election would be very difficult.
Truss gives up and calls an election
Given the current polling, this would be what is traditionally known in UK politics as a “brave” initiative, but if you are prime minister, you have the power to go to the sovereign and seek a dissolution of parliament.
One significant caveat to this is the fact that if it seemed clear most Tory MPs did not support this, or they had a successor lined up, King Charles could refuse.
Under what is known as the Lascelles principles, named after the private secretary of George VI amid a constitutional crunch in 1950, a monarch can refuse a dissolution if the existing parliament is still seen as viable, if another prime minister could be reasonably found, or if an election might harm the economy.
We get to January 2025
This is the surest route of all, constitutionally – Truss simply runs out of time. Even if she was to somehow survive in No 10 for another two and a bit years, there would be no escaping an election then.
While the last election was on 12 December 2019, the five-year shelf life of a parliament dates from the day when MPs then sit, which was 17 December. That is the latest day on which parliament is dissolved, with an election taking place 25 working days later.
