Theresa May’s decision to call for snap elections will go down as one of the biggest political mistakes in history. It’s that bad.
Back in April, when May called for elections, she enjoyed an absolute majority in the United Kingdom’s Parliament, and thus a strong mandate to govern. By calling elections, May had hoped to extend that absolute majority, and thus gain more leverage. Instead, May lost seats and crucially, lost her absolute majority, which will make governing far more difficult.
So, what happened? After calling for elections, the Conservative Party ran a hilariously bad campaign by threatening to curb human rights and to install nanny-state internet surveillance efforts, all while denying that huge police force cuts would make the country any less secure. May also refused to participate in debates and threatened an “end of life” tax that would have seen the government seizing assets from the deceased to pay for health care (the UK has public, universal health care).
The nail in May’s coffin was arguably her response to the horrific London Bridge terrorist attack, which saw eight people killed. May immediately “reassured” British voters by letting them know that she’d eliminate their privacy on the internet. Doing so, apparently, would make the United Kingdom more secure and allow the government to more easily root out terrorism.
Experts have pointed out that trained terrorists would likely be able to get around any measures to monitor the Internet. The people most likely to see their rights curbed would be everyday Brits. However, it should be noted that family members of the terrorist who carried out the London Bridge attack claim that YouTube radicalized him, so the few instances of that could be reduced by increased internet surveillance.
May also promised to rip up human rights laws that she alleged make it more difficult to combat terrorism. She also threatened to institute curfews and laws allowing police to hold people for up to 14 days without charging them. Countless legal experts and public prosecutors have denied that human rights laws have so far been detrimental to the war on terror.
On the other hand, many experts have warned that the dramatic cuts to the UK’s police force, which has shrunk by 17,000 in recent years, would hamper efforts to combat extremism. These dramatic cuts were undertaken while May was Home Secretary. Future budgets and projections of conservative policies point to the police force shrinking by thousands more.
How UK’s Government Works
The United Kingdom uses a parliamentary system in which the Parliament itself forms a “government”, usually based on a majority of members of Parliament supporting the new government. Now, May and the Conservatives will have to try to form a coalition with another party. Her mandate and the Conservative’s ability to rule has been greatly reduced.
The “government” can be dissolved and new elections held at any time, assuming that the Royal Family grants permission for Parliament to do so, but no more than five years can pass without elections. Mandated elections are called general elections. Before calling for the “snap” elections, the next elections were due in 2020. Now, they are slotted for 2022.
When May called for elections back in April, her Party was enjoying historic highs. At the time, it looked like the Conservatives would add a huge number of seats, with some projecting as many as 45 seats gained, giving her a huge majority in Parliament, a stronger mandate, and making it much easier to pass new laws. Unfortunately for her, those projections were wrong.
