The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak has announced a summer UK general election to take place on Thursday 4 July, months earlier than expected by the country.
It was widely anticipated that he would wait until autumn to call for the election, which is not required by law to take place until January 2025. However, he unexpectedly declared the first July election since 1945.
“Earlier today, I spoke with His Majesty, the king, to request the dissolution of Parliament. The king has granted this request and we will have a general election on the 4th of July.
“This election will take place at a time when the world is more dangerous than it has been since the end of the Cold War. These uncertain times call for a clear plan and bold action to chart a course to a secure future.
“You must choose in this election who has that plan. Who is prepared to take the bold action necessary to secure a better future for our country and our children?,” he said.
Sunak’s call a snap general election threw the fate of his embattled Conservative Party to a restless British public that appears eager for change after 14 years of Conservative government.
He was speaking from a rain-spattered lectern in front of 10 Downing Street, marking the starting gun for six weeks of campaigning that will render a verdict on a party that has led Britain since Barack Obama was America’s president.
But the Tories have discarded four prime ministers in eight years, lurching through the serial chaos of Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis, the New York Times reported. With the opposition Labour Party (LP) ahead in most polls by double digits for the last 18 months, a Conservative defeat has come to assume an air of inevitability, the paper said.
For all that, Sunak is calculating that Britain has had just enough good news in recent days — including glimmers of fresh economic growth and the lowest inflation rate in three years — that his party might be able to cling to power.
“Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future,” Sunak said, as pelting rain drenched his suit jacket. The choice for voters, he said, was to “build on the future you’ve made or risk going back to square one.”
Political analysts, opposition leaders and members of Sunak’s own party agree that the electoral mountain he must climb is Himalayan.
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Burdened by a weak economy, a calamitous foray into trickle-down tax policies, and successive scandals, the Tories have seemed exhausted and adrift, split by internal feuds and fatalistic about their future. They face a threat on the right from the anti-immigrant Reform UK party.
“The Conservatives are facing a kind of extinction-level event,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent who has advised Boris Johnson and other party leaders. “They look like they’re going to suffer an even bigger defeat than they did to Tony Blair in 1997,” he added.
Other political analysts were more cautious: Some pointed out that in 1992, the Conservative government of Prime Minister John Major overcame a deep polling deficit to eke out a narrow victory and stay in power.
Still, since the party won by a landslide in the 2019 elections on the slogan “Get Brexit done,” the Tories have bled support among young people, traditional Conservative voters in the England’s south and southwest and, crucially, working-class voters in the industrial Midlands and north of England, whose backing in 2019 was key to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s landmark victory.
Many are disillusioned by the scandals of Johnson’s tenure, including Downing Street social gatherings that breached Covid lockdown rules, and even more so by the fiasco of his successor, Liz Truss, who was toppled after just 44 days, following proposed tax cuts that rattled financial markets, caused the pound to torpedo and fractured the party’s reputation for economic competence.
While Sunak, 44, steadied the markets and has run a more stable government than his predecessors, critics say he never developed a convincing strategy to recharge the country’s growth.
Under British law, Sunak was obliged to hold an election by January 2025. Political analysts had expected him to wait until the fall to allow more time for the economy to recover.
But in the wake of an announcement on Wednesday that inflation had fallen to an annual rate of 2.3 per cent — just above the Bank of England’s target of 2 per cent — he may have gambled that the news was as good as it is going to get.
Sunak may also be calculating that the government can put a first flight carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda in the air before the vote. That would allow him to claim progress on another of his priorities, the report said.