Date with democracy When will the next election take place? Only Sunak can say

If Rishi Sunak sounds tetchy when asked the question, it is nothing compared with the frustrations of many voters: when exactly will there be an election? And why, crucially, is it entirely up to him?

- Peter Walker

To give the short answer, this is just the way UK politics works. Barring a brief and largely botched recent experiment with fixed-term parliaments, election dates remain in the gift of a prime minister. To borrow a phrase sometimes used about jury trials, it is perhaps the worst system in the world, apart from all the other ones.

One thing is clear: when it comes to the overall stability of parliaments, the UK is not exactly a world leader. A study released last month by an electoral campaign group found the UK came fourth last out of 17 countries with broadly comparable political systems in terms of the proportion of parliamentary terms that reached their designated end point over the past 50 years. At 76%, the UK was worse than places including Italy and Belgium.

It is more a factor of political culture rather than rules. At the other end of the table were half a dozen countries with completion rates of between 98% and 100%. Of these, only one - Norway - has no constitutional provision for early elections.