‘Flexibility can be helpful’: why PM can choose UK general election date

While Lib Dems want to bring back fixed-term parliaments scrapped by Tories, Labour has no apparent interest

If Rishi Sunak sounds tetchy when asked the question, it is nothing compared with the frustrations of many voters: when exactly will there be an election? And why, crucially, is it entirely up to him?

To give the short answer, this is just the way UK politics is. Barring a fairly brief and largely botched recent experiment with fixed-term parliaments, election dates remain in the gift of a prime minister. To borrow a phrase sometimes used about jury trials, it is perhaps the worst system in the world, apart from all the other ones.