There is some truth to this - the Fixed Term Parliament Act does clearly give the incumbent PM the role to set the date of the election, ie potentially after Oct 31st... but the physics of this manoeuvre, indeed even being seen to brief it could reap quite the opposite by Sept...
Here is the relevant bit of the FTPA - section 7. Even after a hypothetical loss of a vote of no confidence, and 14 days elapsing without regaining it “the polling day for election is to be appointed by HM by proclamation upon the recommendation of the PM”...
... but if seriously contemplated, you’d have a Government headed by a PM who lost confidence vote on 2nd Parliamentary sitting of his office, having never won one, nor won an election majority, pushing through a significant irreversible outcome, explicitly voted against by HoC..
... so technical legal path is there - but really? At this point people reach for the Cabinet Manual... and this is relevant bit which interacts with FTPA -
2.19: “there is a 14 day period during which an alternative Government can be formed from HoC as presently constituted”
... so in situation where a No Confidence vote was lost, there is no doubt, if it was clearly the case that an alternative PM could command the confidence of the House - the sitting PM must advise HM to call for him or her. It’s not the law, but it is the system...
so I’m presuming those saying there is no route/time to stop the PM going for No Deal in fact, not unreasonably believe that an alternative multi party anti no deal Government is far fetched and implausible. Can’t imagine they believe convention on confidence could be discarded
... but (& since June 2017 I have written about a bloc of 30 Tory MPs who I thought would do whatever it takes to stop No Deal Brexit - though some are now ministers)... the sort of situation where far fetched and implausible, become plausible and planned - more headlines like👆🏽
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Treasury effectively confirms debt rule loosening, by announcing its new “guardrails” to channel capital spending goes to a 10 year pipeline of major projects that generate economic returns that will help “depoliticise infrastructure”
Their view is independent accountable bodies, either new or given new powers will set & implement a 10 year infrastructure strategy integrated with 2 year spending reviews, and audit this, and assess value for money ensuring capital investment generates clear long term returns…
Ministers now openly call the impact of the Sunak debt rule “a mistake”, that it constrained some much needed public infrastructure investment, while not stopping bad investment in failing projects… capital needs to be properly quality controlled not arbitrarily constrained
“One monopolist serves as a gatekeeper for the delivery of nearly all live music in America today”
- US Govt’s attempt to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster announced in May in a court filing is quite a document… “platinum” pricing is mentioned 5 times … #Ticketonomics
Live Nation itself said this year that platinum pricing was in its 5th innings in the US but “in its first” in Europe and their intention to apply it “all along the way” until the concert “gates open up” is a “multi year opportunity to grow our top line/ bottom line”…
CEO Michael Rapino said earlier this year ”it’s just pricing smarter” & “it’s a skill” where LN/ Ticketmasters in-house team “works with artists, agents, managers” to “price the fronts better so the back sells out”… “rolling this around world” is “the great growth opportunity”
NAO confirms that HS2 without phase 2 will result in trains with less space between Manchester and Birmingham than current west Coast services, and might require demand management to dissuade passengers… bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
Non-consensus view, but having sunk the costs of phase 1, and then committed to the hybrid bill for HS2 north… the cost benefit ratio of completing the bit between Manchester airport and Birmingham will be very high… would require political consensus to be re-established though
Who can forget the Perm Sec’s amazing document from last year.. the strategic case on rebalancing Britain “no longer applies”
Shadow Chancellor Jeremy Hunt acknowledges to @bbclaurak when asked if Conservatives had won whether there would have been tax cuts in Autumn that “we wouldn’t have been able to do it immediately, no”
…
most notable thing re: Chancellor interview with Laura is this unusual Treasury analysis due in next fortnight which will “look at the state of the public services, the state of the public finances…public spending pressures we are under”
Q: why isnt the OBR doing this?
While fiscally eventful, it is not going to be a “fiscal event”… when first announced by Chancellor on her first Monday in office it sounded more like an audit of stalled spending and impact on public services, than an audit of the public finances…
Reassuringly, @demishassabis tells Blair at the @InstituteGC conference that Artificial Intelligence is only at the IQ level of a cat right now.. [although that is changing rapidly - surely will exceed humans in many tasks in this Parliament] 🐈⬛
Interesting to think Blair as PM famously never used his computer, or rarely did so…
Also has the scars, as it were, from that failed NHS IT contract… if only that had succeeded…
Interesting to know if this Govt is conscious of the ghosts of that and of botched PFI deals.
Chancellor’s Mais lecture did have sense of learning from some setbacks during the Blair era … havent seen a good analysis tho of where eg record on PFI and the NHS IT contract [perhaps Horizon too] forms part of this govt’s memory.
Coutinho co-opting the Treasury Permanent Secretary into backing idea that Labour will raise taxes by thousands…
All this arises because the OBR (unlike its equivalent in Ireland, Australia the US, the CBO) is prevented from doing comparable truly independent costings…
This whole “debate” is, for now, rather absurd, as next week we will get the actual policies in manifestos, the parties’ own assumptions and separate truly independent numbers on the implications for tax, spend & borrowing from the likes of the IFS & Niesr.
The Treasury Permanent Secretary who Coutinho deployed this morning to defend the £38bn/ £2k claim wrote to the Opposition to say it “should not be presented as having been produced by civil service”… this could be problematic…