Forcing a general election

There's frequent ourpouring of angst on the blogosphere about how the British People would like a general election, but Prime Minister Gordon Brown refuses to give us one. Instead waiting it out until the full term until July 2010. Whilst there have been occasional mutterings that there'll be a September election, giving the new speaker a few weeks to bed in, this is still out of the British People's hands.

There's got to be a way to force a General Election.

Last month when Chris Qwagham was calling people fuckwits for signing the Number10 petition to get rid of Brown, one of the thing is the arguement was that getting rid of Brown doesn't automatically trigger a General Election.

We don't have fixed terms in the UK, just five year term limits. But on many occasions the government has called an election early. We just need to make that happen.

A motion of no confidence in the government might do it. Such a thing would restore some degree of confidence to MPs who voted in favour, and hound out those who don't. The British People have lost confidence in the the government and parliament, and the MPs that reflect this would get bonus points. Actually, wikipedia has a list of Prime Ministers who've lost motions of no confidence. There's loads of them, three last century and seven the century before then. There's nothing irregular about this sort of thing, it happens all the time.

Lord North (1782)
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1866)
Benjamin Disraeli (1868)
William Gladstone (1885)
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1886)
William Gladstone (1886)
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1892)
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1895)
Stanley Baldwin (January 1924)
Ramsay MacDonald (October 1924)
James Callaghan (1979)

So aye, more of that sort of thing.

Another option would just be to hound MPs out of office, crank up the psychological pressure a la Julie Kirkbride, until Labour's majority has gone. According to the Parliament website, the government's majority is/was 63. These MPs who are 'stepping down at the next election, they're dropping like flies, its as good as resigning right now, and I reckon it eats into the majority.

Assassination wouldn't work to trigger a general election.

Mobs on the streets with pitchforks perhaps?

Come on, this is a democracy and we are the demos. Even if the British People make up the rules as they go along it still counts.