I was just thinking about the way the British constituiton works. I know that it is in the hands of the PM to decide when Parliament is to be dissolved and a GE is to be called. But if a majority in Parliament wanted a snap election yet the PM was refusing to call one, then couldn’t they just pass a bill declaring an early election, which would bypass the PM due to the principle of parliamentary supremacy?
As other people have pointed out, a vote of no confidence is the conventional way of doing this. Passing a bill is complicated and requires multiple readings, whereas a vote of no confidence is a single division.
The House of Commons Library has a page on VONCs, with links to more information explaining exactly how they work. As the page explains, a VONC doesn’t have to lead to a general election, but it normally does.
Oh, that makes sense. I was going to ask whether that means the Early General Election Act 2019 had to go through this complicated process too, but I see that Wikipedia says:
Yes, if the government wants things done fast, it can generally make it happen! Now that the Fixed Term Parliaments Act has been repealed, the PM again has the power to call elections more or less unilaterally, so they won’t need to do something similar in future.