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United Kingdom - Elections 04 July 2024

Class remained the great, unspoken frame of the 2024 election: the knight of the realm with a chip on his shoulder against the second generation child of immigrant doctors fighting a losing battle against the sense that he is simply too rich to understand modern Britain.

British elections must be held at least every five years, but the timing is the prime minister’s choice. The next general election was due to take place May 2024 at the latest. Labour leader Keir Starmer had struggled to revive his party's fortunes since a disastrous national election in 2019. In the last election in December 2019, when Brexit was the dominant issue and Conservatives grabbed a string of seats across Labour's so-called "Red Wall" heartlands in northern England. Under the left-leaning leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, this was Labour's worst election result since 1935. Starmer was elected leader a year ago promising to rebuild the party and reconnect with its traditional voters. Starmer had already played down expectations for Labour, stressing: "I never thought we would climb the mountain we have to climb in just one year." He said "We've got to rebuild into the next general election – that is the task in hand".

On 06 May 2021, some 50 million voters were eligible to take part in scores of elections. Results covered local and mayoral elections across England and votes for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments. Voters in an opposition stronghold turned en masse to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives, boosting his parliamentary majority on Friday despite a high Covid-19 death toll, last year's record economic slump and cronyism charges. Hartlepool, a strongly pro-Brexit rust-belt constituency deep in traditional Labour heartlands that has never voted Conservative since its creation in 1974, saw a 16 percent swing to the Tories. Conservative Jill Mortimer beat Labour's candidate in Thursday's ballot by 15,529 votes to 8,589 to take the parliamentary seat for Hartlepool, a victory once unthinkable in a northeast English port town that for decades backed Britain's main opposition party. PM Johnson celebrated by quickly visiting Hartlepool, where he ascribed his party's success to its policies of delivering Brexit and ploughing money into areas where many voters have felt neglected by successive London-based governments. It was only the third time since the 1960s that a governing party had won a parliamentary by-election. Election analysts said it was the biggest swing of votes to the ruling party at a by-election since World War II.

The coronavirus pandemic delayed some of 2023's scheduled contests for local governments, making the 2024 voting the largest test of public opinion outside a general election in nearly half a century. The Tories also won 583 council seats up and down the country and took Northumberland, Dudley and several other councils from Labour, which lost dozens of seats. Many Labour Party supporters questioned whether Starmer was the right man to lead the party. Starmer faced a backlash from left-wing luminaries in his party for the disappointing early results. They said Starmer failed to connect with traditional working-class Labour voters, coming across as a “metropolitan technocrat” out of touch with their everyday concerns.

The Tories continued to slump after a campaign characterised by some of the most abject prime ministerial blunders imaginable. The Tories simply no longer looked like a serious party of government.

On 22 May 2024 British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a snap general election, choosing July 4 as the date for a vote his governing Conservatives are widely expected to lose to the opposition Labour Party after 14 years in power. Ending months of speculation as to when he would call a new poll, Sunak, 44, stood outside his Downing Street office on Wednesday and announced he was calling the election earlier than some had expected. “Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future,” he said, listing what he considers to be the highlights of his time in government, including the introduction of the so-called furlough scheme that helped businesses through the COVID-19 pandemic. “We will have a general election on July 4.”

Sunak heads into the election not only far behind the Labour Party in the polls but also somewhat isolated from some in his party, increasingly dependent on a small team of advisers to steer him through what is set to be an ugly campaign. Sunak took office less than two years ago and since then has struggled to define what he stands for, becoming increasingly frustrated that what he sees as his successes have failed to be appreciated.

Both parties have all but kicked off campaigning for an election, with the attack lines on the economy and on defence already firmly drawn. Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, said the election would give the country an opportunity to end the “chaos” of Sunak’s Conservative government. “No matter what else is said and done, that opportunity for change is what this election is about,” Starmer told supporters. “A vote for Labour is a vote for stability – economic and political, a politics that treads more lightly on all our lives; a vote to stop the chaos. It’s time for change.”

Sunak’s Conservatives were running way behind Labour in the opinion polls, and despite hailing a decline in inflation and an increase in defence spending, they have failed to make a dent in the opposition party’s lead. Sunak is the third Conservative prime minister since the last election in 2019. He managed to steady the economy, but without boosting the Conservatives’ popularity with the public. He may take heart from figures released Wednesday showing inflation in the UK fell sharply to 2.3 percent, its lowest level in nearly three years on the back of big declines in domestic bills.

But Labour held a lead over the Conservatives of around 20 points in opinion polls since late 2021 – before Sunak took office in October of that year. The timing of Sunak’s announcement was “curious”. It is hugely surprising that he’s decided to press the go button on a general election quite as early as he has. The assumption had been that he would going to wait at least until the autumn, giving his party that much longer to bounce back from its pretty awful situation in the polls – polling consistently, on average, about 20 points behind the opposition Labor party. Why would you go to the polls … when your party is riven with internal divisions, and rumoured dissatisfaction with his own leadership? Possibly because you think things are not going to get any better.

The Labour leader had carefully positioned himself as a moderating force in United Kingdom politics; a stable, centrist alternative to 14 years of incumbent “Tory chaos”. For this, he has been rewarded with a 20-point poll lead and the prospect of a crushing summer rout of Conservative seats. One survey, published at the start of June, even indicated that he could win the largest Westminster majority of any British politician since Stanley Baldwin in 1924.

Starmer’s assault on the Labour left produced a bonfire of progressive policies. His initial vows to scrap university tuition fees, raise taxes on top earners, nationalise Britain’s price-gouging energy companies, and end the incremental privatisation of the NHS had all been jettisoned or watered down. The UK is a poorer, weaker, and more divided place now than it was a decade and a half ago.