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Fixed Term Parliaments Bill

Indeed. It might be that both those parties can see the advantage of incumbency and would like to hold on to that advantage. It is Labour's now but it will be ours at some point, and so it goes. The Liberal Democrats, I am afraid, have no chance whatever of benefiting from that incumbency, so I am not surprised that the hon. Gentleman wishes to introduce a Bill that reduces the advantage given to a current Prime Minister. I see why the matter arises now—because of what happened, as I said, last autumn. I recall that in its 1992 manifesto, ““It's time to get Britain working again””—it was not the most successful manifesto in history—the Labour party said:"““This general election was called only after months of on-again, off-again dithering which damaged our economy and weakened our democracy.””" Of course, that was not the case. The then Prime Minister, now Sir John Major, might have called a general election in 1991—I recall being ready for it myself, just in case—but he did not call it until the spring of 1992. In the intervening time, that did no harm to the economy or to the political process. Indeed, it did no harm to Sir John Major, either, or to the Conservative party, but it did do a lot of harm to the then leader of the Labour party and his campaign and campaigning style, and presumably affected the amount of campaigning that the then Opposition were doing. I do not know what sort of effect it had on Labour's party funds, but Labour felt strongly enough about the issue to have fixed Parliaments in its 1992 manifesto. Strangely, fixed-term Parliaments—what a surprise!—were not in the successful Labour party manifesto of 1997, when Labour eventually did get into government. My point is that it would appear that every Opposition want to use all the tools available to them—not surprisingly—to get rid of the Government. However, as soon as they get into government they do not want to do that.