The UK does not have term limits for party or PM. It is still a highly functioning democracy.
48. This provision reflects the maximum term currently permissible under the Septennial Act 1715, as amended by the Parliament Act 1911. In introducing the 1911 Act, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, told the House of Commons:
- "We propose to shorten the legal duration of Parliament from seven years to five years, which will probably amount in practice to an actual legislative working term of four years. That will secure that your House of Commons for the time being, is always either fresh from the polls which gave it authority, or—and this is an equally effective check upon acting in defiance of the popular will—it is looking forward to the polls at which it will have to render an account of its stewardship."
49. Asquith's expectation of
four year parliamentary terms has been broadly borne out. There have been 18 post-war general elections, and the average length of time between general elections since 1945 is three years and ten months.
Excerpt from
CHAPTER 3: The length of the parliamentary term and election timing, Fixed-term Parliaments Bill - Constitution Committee