Why hasn’t the PM called a GE

BTW those voting for Reform UK are most likely to be disenchanted Tories, so please do go ahead! That can only benefit the opposition parties.

Casdon

We can laugh at ourselves Freya5, mainly when people who know no better call us lefties.
Lammy is the shadow Foreign Secretary by the way, not the shadow Home Secretary. Yvette Cooper has run rings round all the Home Secretaries, and she’s never batshit (subtle joke for lefties), just watch PMQs.

Us “lefties”, (many of whom might actually be centralist), can and do laugh at ourselves, just as we laugh (or cry), at others who make far reaching comments like “jackboot of the EU” and even worse “Trump is a good man, who knows right from wrong” Trump is like Johnson then? “another good man who know right from wrong” These two men might KNOW right from wrong, but that doesn’t seemed to have deterred them from being consummate, professional liars!

Please do explain the many benefits of Brexits, as my family, friends and I are yet to recognise a single one!

BevSec

Cillafan is quite right, too many left leaning grans on here! Under the jackboot of the EU is spot on.i will be voting for Reform UK. So fearful of the country we will be bequeathing to our grandchildren.

Define "too many", BevSec. Would you prefer it if only the same number who approve of the current government/Trump/Reform were allowed to post from a different perspective? Maybe you think there are too many of us who don't approve of these things because you don't seem to be in the majority at the moment.

We can laugh at ourselves Freya5, mainly when people who know no better call us lefties.
Lammy is the shadow Foreign Secretary by the way, not the shadow Home Secretary. Yvette Cooper has run rings round all the Home Secretaries, and she’s never batshit (subtle joke for lefties), just watch PMQs.

Bloody hilarious. Shame lefties can't laugh at themselves as well. Just imagine Lammy in place of Cleverly, he'd be shouting "waycist".

Cillafan

Rishi will call an election when he feels the time is right, he will get my vote, labour will have us back under the jackboot of the EU, no thanks!

I think you need the men in white coats!

Can I suggest (more in hope than expectation) that those who say they do not understand what Keir Starmer stands for should read the excellent new biography by Tom Baldwin. I really don't think you can be in any doubt by the end. It is a very good read.
(I was particularly enchanted to find that he got the same bus to school as me, though not at the same time 😂).

Cillafan is quite right, too many left leaning grans on here! Under the jackboot of the EU is spot on.i will be voting for Reform UK. So fearful of the country we will be bequeathing to our grandchildren.

Its no exaggeration, its spot on!

But will the NHS be better with Labour in charge? NHS Wales is run by Labour in Wales and it’s worse! As is Education, we are in a dreadful state under Labour.

He'll get my vote too, Cillafan.

He's being quite sensible. Hoping to win some voters over with a few treats thrown away in the budget and then giving labour more time to drop a few more clangers.
I also think that maybe he's so self opinionated that he thinks he might just win the election.

The Tories need as much time as possible to:
A) - Feather their nests in preparation for a bleak future outside politics
B) - “Salt the earth and poison the wells” in order to sabotage Labour’s efforts to rescue us from 14 years of Tory incompetence and corruption.

That would be a long shot - asking the voter to believe a government who has lied, defrauded and taken part in corruption!

Some of the people and fools spring to mind😄

Maybe he's going to wait and see how his voter demographic reacts to the budget. There may be promises of attractive tax cuts if they win the next GE, for example in death duties etc...

I’ve just been reading that the Tories are polling as badly as they did at the worst of Truss’s premiership.

Oh I wish he'd just get on with it.

The longer they're in power the more time they have to set up lucrative NHS contracts and similar to their pals, thats why.

I'm not keen on Starmer, I don't like their plan to still use private services but they're a damn sight better than anything else so they get my vote.

They do plan to have a 'value for money' office to scrutinise public contracts and hopefully several services will return to being provided in-house when compared to renewing private contracts,

There do seem to be increasing rumours that he will in fact call an election for May, because it’s soon after the budget which will be aimed at getting voters onside, and there is nothing else that’s going to be good publicity in the pipeline. It’s likely the Tories would lose less seats than they might in the autumn, so maybe damage limitation, and logistically it would make sense to tie in the date with the local elections, it would certainly cost less to do that. I’ve seen it reported in a number of places recently. We’ll have to wait and see.

Presumably he doesn’t want to be blamed for a lot of MPs losing their jobs several months before they will have to.

Not sure about that - look what happened to Brown.

Calling a general election before time is usually seen as a sign of defeat, which is not, and never has been, any prime minister's desired way of starting an election campaign

The various parties are obviously busy planning their election campaigns and there is no advantage either to the individual parties, or to the country in them being forced to speed things up.

43Freya5
Many constituents would vote for a donkey if you stuck a red rosette on its backside. Oh and a wig on its head
Just heard Starmer bleating on about building more homes,my goodness come to my neck of the woods, everywhere you turn there's bloody houses going up.

Same here, in East Anglia, completely changing the environment, the villages are on the verge of becoming as big as towns without the facilities required for so many people.

The only bounce would be if Hunt increased the Personal Allowance threshold which of course has been frozen for the next three years anyway. This would make the biggest difference to struggling households. A vote winner but sadly a missed opportunity.

Latest theory is that if he gets a bounce from the budget (doubtful) then he will go for a May election.