Hague urges early election

THE Prime Minister should scrap fixedterm parliaments and call an early election, Lord Hague says today, as a poll showed a collapse in support for Jeremy Corbyn among Labour members.

The former Conservative leader warns that “trouble is coming” over the next two years as the Government tries to implement Brexit, and says Theresa May needs a bigger Commons majority to force through change.

The next general election is due to take place in May 2020, but Lord Hague argues in today’s Daily Telegraph that if the Fixed-term Parliaments Act did not exist, the case for an election this spring would have been “very strong indeed”.

“We have a new Prime Minister and Cabinet facing the most complex challenges of modern times,” he says. “There is no doubt that they would be in a stronger position to take the country through these challenges successfully if they had a large and decisive majority in the Commons and a new

full term ahead of them.” That argument was strengthened yesterday by a YouGov poll that found that half of Labour members believe Mr Corbyn should step down as leader before the next election. Thirty-six per cent believe he should quit immediately, with another 14 per cent saying he should resign before 2020.

Mr Corbyn already lacks support among MPs, but the poll is highly significant because it was Labour members who chose him as leader.

The Tories’ Copeland by-election win last month prompted calls from some MPs for an early election. But Mrs May has made it clear she does not want this, and fixed-term parliaments can only be overridden by support from two-thirds of MPs, or by a vote of no confidence in the Government.

Lord Hague suggested that repealing the Act was the only answer.