Fixed terms and fixed wisdom

Chancing to watch Question Time last night (nowadays rarer than a post on this blog), I became enraged during a discussion on elections and term limits. Much gangway was given to the usual blasts of hoofy self-righteousness about "the gift of the Prime Minister" and related plaints concerning his use of the timing of an election to his advatange. Sir Menzies Campbell, in his usual role as Question Time's human amphetamine, proffered a lengthy speech in favour of fixed terms which went drearily unchallenged. A member of the audience, evidently hoping to galvanise the other panellists to the same level of agitation as Sir Menzzzzzies (I know that makes no sense as a spoken pun), asked if there were arguments against fixed term elections. Here, I thought, was George Osborne's chance to prove he knew something. Depressingly, Osborne offered only a mathematical argument: that occasionally elections might be too close and who wants weak governments to hang around for four years when you can have another poll? This was rightly swatted away by Dimbles, who pointed out that coalitions must be built rather than telling the electorate that they got it wrong and they'll just have to have another go.

No-one mentioned the following: that fixed terms make politics much more expensive and much less productive. When the Prime Minister calls an election, as far as I know it must happen within six weeks. That is, within six weeks of an election being called, a new government is being formed. This keeps campaigns short and cheap. If, on the other hand, on the day of an election everyone knows exactly when the next one will be, four years thence, then campaigns will get longer and longer, and more and more expensive. The more expensive campaigns get (a cost that is met by the parties themselves, of course), the more the parties will be in the debt of the rich people who fund them: the more they will be beholden to them. Less time to concentrate on the job they were elected to do, and more corruption in the doing: this is the result of fixed term elections.