It is amazing how the two Tony Blair “reforms” - the creation of a Supreme Court independent of the Queen in Parliament in 2009 and the Fixed Term Parliaments Act in 2011 - have essentially destroyed the inner workings of the Westminster System, which had worked tolerably well since 1660.
If 1/3 + 1 of Parliament is afraid of a General Election, they can keep a powerless “government” in place for almost five years, while the lawyers and radical Left run wild. And the law prevents the safety valve intervention of HMQ ordering a dissolution to force an election.
Perhaps that was the point of it all.
Both of these were enacted well past Tony Blair’s term in office - why do you say they were Tony’s “reforms”?
I do agree that the Fixed term parliaments act has destroyed the inner workings of Westminster, but that act was enacted by David Cameron as a sop for his coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
Just to clarify the origins of those two reforms... the Supreme Court was undoubtedly conceived by Blair, even though not launched until after he’d handed over to Brown: but the FTPA was all Cameron, part of his coalition deal with the LibDems.
As for ‘1/3 of Parliament afraid of a general elction’, I don’t think that’s true. Everybody wants an election, and knows that there’ll have to be one. But Corbyn isn’t going to agree to an election on a date fixed for Johnson’s convenience. One of the unintended consequences of the FTPA is that the date of an election earlier than the fixed term becomes in itself a political football, since it requires bipartisan agreement. That was never the case previously