[Gay State Conservative]

IIRC a snap election in a country like Britain means an election that's not *required*.I think in Britain national elections must be held at least every 5 years but can be called earlier.

[naturalman1975]

What makes this one especially interesting is that Britain is supposed to have moved to fixed terms - May will need the permission of the House of Commons to call this election, and it basically makes a mockery of the fixed term ‘reform’ forced on David Cameron by the LibDems when he had to form a coalition.

[Sam Gamgee]

Britain is totally backwards in term of electoral reform, so there is a huge advantage for sitting governments as they have a large window in which to all an election. Naturally they won’t call one in the midst of a scandal, but will wait until the polls favor them.

They still have a House of Lords. They haven’t, for decades, recounted riding populations, like we do in Canada. In Canada, we adjust, basically adding ridings to keep all of them relatively the same in population size. So Labour Party ridings have actually saw a shrinkage in population, and rightly should lose some ridings. That is to their advantage that no counting has been done.