I’m not convinced the Tories are going to let TMay fight a second general election as party leader and PM
Betfair exchange betting price from Betdata.io
The betting barely moves in spite of the speculation
Sundays are usually my day off and am only now catching up with the speculation over the weekend of an early election. The idea is to find a means of getting away from the Brexit deadlock and a different composition of the House of Commons would help. Clearly the problem is that it’s hard to see anything relating to Brexit commanding a majority of MPs.
Over the weekend the talk has been of a general election being planned for June the 6th which of course is the anniversary of D-Day. The headline looked dramatic in a Sunday paper but how realistic is this?
-
To my mind a big issue is TMay herself. After losing the Tory majority in June 2017 the message we were getting from large parts of the Conservative Party was that Theresa May would not be allowed to lead the blues into the next general election.
Indeed this was reinforced by commitments she was forced to make before Christmas when there was a confidence vote on her leadership by the parliamentary CON party.
Managing to move from CON poll leads of 20% plus when the election was called to a vote margin of just 2,5% on the day spoke volumes about her capabilities as a campaigner. This undoubtedly has impacted on her thinking and having burned her fingers once with an early election call she’s going to be even more ultra-cautious about doing the same again.
Against this is the massive pressure of the Article 50 timetable. We are just 53 days away from the planned exit and something has to happen.
I should add that my predictions in the past on TMay calling early general elections have been wrong. I was as taken aback as anybody by her announcement in April 2017.