Going to the polls - again

General Election 2017

Here we go again. On 18 April 2017 Theresa May, PM of this fair land, announced a snap election after promising she would never announce a snap election. Yup, the woman who became PM simply because no one else stood against her a year ago has finally announced an early election. She needed 2/3 of the House of Commons to allow it though because back in 2011 an Act of Parliament was passed to make sure that elections could only happen every five years and any snap elections needed cross party support. Well she got it with 509-13 in favour and the country goes to the polls again on 8 June (belated birthday pressie for my brother there).

Election fatigue

There is some concern that there is election fatigue as since 2015 we have had a General Election and a referendum on Brexit. Go back another year and we had the referendum on Scottish Independence too. People may be thinking they are trotting off to the polls a little too often and it is going to be interesting to see what the turn out will be, especially with the local elections the month before.

Why now?

Labour are 20 points down in the polls and could be wiped out in this election (boo). 

Also, May wants to see Brexit through and an election this year would buy her more time. The next election would then be 2022 and not 2020. The Brexit negotiations would take about two years so that would be 2018. She is hoping that any negative fall out from events in 2018 will be sorted by 2022...no guarantee of that by 2020.

Didn't she say that she would never call a snap election?

Yup, only a couple of week's ago in fact. To make matters even more interesting she recently said that another Scottish Referendum would cause instability during the Brexit negotiations...but apparently this General Election will not.

Do we have to have another Tory government?

No, we do not. You can choose to vote tactically and The New European put together an info-graphic that tells you who to vote for if you already have a Tory MP (or who to vote for to keep them out - usually your current MP who is Labour or Lib Dem).

Of course this means you might be putting your true political beliefs to one side just to get the Tories out and that might make you uncomfortable. If you are undecided you can use this 2017 Election Tool to see who you should vote for.

Register to vote

Of course this is all worthless unless you register to vote. Go to the Government website and register today. You can make a difference!