Passed virtually unnoticed in September 2011, the fixed-term Parliaments Act guarantees, barring one of two contingencies, that the next general election will be held on Thursday 7 May 2015.
No longer is the freedom to set the date of national polls in the gift of the prime minister. As a general rule of thumb, governments confident of their chances would try their chances after four years, as Thatcher did in 1983 and 1987, and Blair in 2001 and 2005. Less popular administrations l tended to hold out for a full five years, as evinced by Major in 1992 and 1997 and Gordon Brown in 2010.
Under the new Act, it would take the House of Commons to pass a vote of no confidence that couldn't be overturned within a fortnight, or a motion passed by two thirds of MPs, on current figures 434 out of 650, to trigger a call to ballots.
Last week the political and constitutional reform Committee reported on the early implications of the shift to fixed terms. Although we're just beyond the half-way point, Whitehall has seen many emerging benefits for financial, strategic and legislative planning
Safe in the knowledge ministers won't cut and run after three of four years allows for more effective prioritisation of policies and better forecasting. Mandarins can securely allocate staff and resources in line with clearly directed aims, giving greater consistency of effort and strategic clarity.
Of most note, it means the laborious and time-intensive efforts to push Bills into law are less at risk of being lost in the ‘wash up' period between the announcement of a general election and Parliament being dissolved.
The Department for Transport's Road Safety Bill was a notable casualty of this frustration in 2005.
A five-year stretch gives certainty, turns down the heat of political speculation and pressure. It gives ministers time to embed administrative reforms, from cross-departmental management information cultures to flagship welfare changes such as Universal Credit.
But politics remains a rough and tumble sport, and it's not possible to legislate for errant ministers, random mischance and the sheer run of events. The permanent secretaries for the departments for health and education told the committee that ministerial reshuffles, which are often even more disruptive for Whitehall than elections - when they can get on with their real job of running the country unencumbered by politicians – should be limited to one a term.
But Whitehall's first sally at managing under a fixed-term system has been heavily coloured by the pressures of Coalition. Without this restriction, the chancellor would have delivered a genuine Comprehensive Spending Review, rather than a stop-gap one-year spending round, to set the fiscal boundaries beyond April 2015.
