Polls suggest Labour could win its strongest majority in the lower house since the post-war period.
In the United Kingdom, voters must go to the polls this Thursday to choose the 650 new members of the House of Commons. Already, the polls are showing a resolutely Labor wave, which few would have believed in during the previous election in 2019.
Five years ago, the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, won a comfortable Conservative majority in Parliament, and a mandate heavy with symbols, intended to “Getting Brexit Done”The tenant of 10 Downing Street had won the votes stolen from Labour strongholds, particularly on the side of the “Red Belt” from the north of England to the Midlands, strongholds of the working class.
The UK has since officially left the European Union, but the post-Brexit era has proven complicated for the Conservative Party.
Today, Labor, led by their leader Keir Starmer, hopes to win back the pro-Brexit voters they lost in 2019, while the Tories of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could suffer the worst defeat of their existence, dating back to 200 years.
Some polls give Labour a 20-point lead over the Conservatives, meaning Keir Starmer could become prime minister with a majority of more than 200 seats, the largest of any post-war government.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, risk being swept aside in parts of the country, and Rishi Sunak could become the first sitting prime minister in history to lose his seat.
Tories in crisis
Support for the Conservatives – who have been in office for the past 14 years, with five different leaders – has steadily declined since 2021, when investigations were launched into the parties organized at 10 Downing Street.
After the Boris Johnson debacle, Liz Truss made a lightning-fast transition, and her cut-throat budget sent sterling to its lowest level in 37 years. Her successor, Rishi Sunak, a former investment banker, quickly took over, but on closer inspection of the polls, he has failed to convince voters that he can get the British economy back on track.
In addition to the economy, housing and the health system, the question of immigration was also included in the campaign.
Mr. Sunak tried to mobilize voices, attempting to respond to concerns linked to illegal immigration which affects British shores, putting at the heart of his re-election project the externalization of borders, which consists in the expulsion of asylum seekers to Rwanda.
A particularly divisive project. The supporters of this option, on the contrary, display a certain frustration, and see it only as an announcement effect, having still not seen a single flight take off for two years.
Subsequently, Rishi Sunak came under fire on several occasions, notably when he slipped away from a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the landings to give a television interview.
Most recently, five people linked to the Conservative Party – including Sunak’s bodyguard – were accused of betting on the date of the next election just before it was announced by the Prime Minister himself. Enough to further damage his image.
Will Labour win?
Although a victory for the Labor Party has seemed assured for months, sources close to the party say they fear a backlash, banking on the fact that such a comfortable and steady lead in the polls could lead to a certain relaxation on the part of voters .
The formation of a Labour government seems to be only a matter of days in any case.
The party has made the cost of living issue the cornerstone of its program, promising to “create wealth” for the working classes.
Proposals castigated by the conservatives, assuring that they would inevitably be accompanied by an increase in taxes, if growth stalls.
Labour also plans to tackle the NHS’s long waiting lists, build 300,000 new homes a year to tackle the sector’s crisis, and invest £24 billion (€28.5 billion) in green technologies.
ADVERTISEMENTMr Starmer also promises to crack down on smugglers who take migrants across the Channel illegally. He assures that the Labor Party would reduce net migration to the United Kingdom, without providing a quantified objective.
Reform UK and the Liberals hope to score well
The election could also see staunch Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage enter the House of Commons for the first time. At the beginning of June, the former Member of the European Parliament created a surprise by announcing that he would stand in his constituency of Clacton, in Essex, under the banner of Reform UKduring this eighth attempt to obtain a seat as a deputy.
Mr Farage’s announcement has helped his platform rise in the polls and put him on the heels of the Conservatives. However, even if he manages to secure 16% of the vote, as some polls suggest, he may not win any seats, given the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system.
His recent comments – when he claimed that the West had provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – during a television interview sparked disaffection among a number of voters.
Mr Farage’s party proposes to freeze all immigration “superfluous”to abandon the objectives of carbon neutrality, and to break with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which the party describes as a “foreign” court in Strasbourg.
ADVERTISEMENTThe Liberal Democrats are also hoping to rise from the ashes after their bitter defeat in the last election. According to some polls, they could win more than 60 seats.
The party has drawn up a four-step plan that foresees gradual integration into European programs and, ultimately, into the EU single market. Its leader, Ed Davey, has declared reintegration into the European Union his ultimate long-term goal.
