U.K. Prepares for General Election

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking at a campaign event. (Wikimedia Commons)

The United Kingdom will hold its 2019 General Election on Thursday, December 12 across 650 constituencies in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, according to the Daily Telegraph.  The election is the result of an October 29 parliamentary vote on whether or not to hold the election.

Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has called for the election in the hopes of increasing the number of seats held by the Conservative Party in Parliament to a large enough majority in order to advance the vote for Brexit. The Conservatives have held a plurality in the U.K. Parliament since the 2016 Brexit referendum.

The main opposition to the Conservative Party is the Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn. The Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party (SNP), and other regional parties also hold small minorities in Parliament. 

The latest poll aggregation by the Financial Times on November 14 shows Boris Johnson and the Conservatives at 40 percent, followed by Labour’s 29 percent, and the Liberal Democrats at 16 percent. 

According to polling expert John Curtice, if the Conservatives are able to hold on to a 10 point lead in the polls, it is more than likely that a Conservative majority will be large enough to allow Johnson’s Brexit deal to pass through Parliament. 

Despite this, as Members of Parliament are elected individually in first-past-the-post constituencies, general polling does not necessarily determine the eventual makeup of Parliament, since tactical voting is also a possibility.

New polling data on November 15 suggests that Johnson cannot rely on the Democratic Union Party in Northern Ireland to form a majority coalition, as many voters are concerned by a Brexit deal that can threaten peace along the border. Meanwhile, Scotland is also now no longer considered to be a Labour stronghold as it had been for many years, with the SNP gaining strength at the expense of Labour. 

.Conservatives are targeting Labour constituencies in Northern England and Wales, termed the “red wall,” where many voters had voted “Leave” in the Brexit referendum.

The Conservatives are the obvious frontrunners to push for a Brexit deal, although Labour under Jeremy Corbyn has committed to renegotiate a Brexit deal with the EU in six months and to hold a new referendum. Both the SNP and Liberal Democrats are staunch on reversing the Brexit process. 

According to Bloomberg, both the Conservative and Labour parties have economic policies focused on investing in infrastructure, with Labour also seeking to increase taxes on the highest earners. The Liberal Democrats and the SNP have policies geared towards raising taxes to promote education and schools. The Conservative Party also plans on investing billions in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) by 2023, while the Labour Party supports the creation of a state-owned drug company to keep medicine prices low. This is in addition to increasing spending on the NHS.

While the Conservative Party is holding on to a plurality in current polls, if no party reaches a majority and no coalitions can be agreed upon, the U.K. may face another election in 2020, according to Bloomberg.