Albo supports shifting from a PM called election within a 3 year term to a 4 year term of fixed length.
“If you’ve got a three-year cycle, in practice, that often means that you really only have a shorter window of perhaps a couple of years to bring about substantial reform, by which time you’re looking at the next election,” he said.
Having a fixed term of parliament would remove the ability for prime ministers to call early elections, as well, which typically favour the incumbent government.
The US has a weird political culture in a lot of ways. I know France and Germany have fixed term lengths and I certainly don’t get the impression that they have that problem.
My perception, based on the election cycles I followed, is that, in Europe, the campaign period tends to be bigger when it becomes clear there will be early elections.
For normal elections the campaign period is usually about 1 month. And for early elections there’s the entire dance around bringing the government down for a few weeks, and then everyone will be on full campaign mode until the election.
We already have parties getting into campaign mode way earlier than 1 month. The election probably won’t be until May, but there’s already a strong sense that they’re in campaign mode.