UK general election on July 4, PM Rishi Sunak announces (2024)

In the UK, voters don’t elect a prime minister directly. Instead, they elect a member of parliament (MP) to represent their local constituency.

The leader of the party that wins a majority of the UK’s 650 constituencies automatically becomes prime minister. That means 326 is the magic number.

If there’s no majority, they need to look for help elsewhere, ruling as a minority government or forming a coalition.

A campaign takes just six weeks -- a breeze compared to the mammoth US presidential election calendar.

Technically, the King has to allow an election to take place and allow parliament to be dissolved, which will occur in the next few days for the rest of the campaign.

But this role is symbolic; King Charles III will not go against the advice of his prime minister or the votes of the British public.

Rishi Sunak is looking to do in six weeks what he hasn't been able to do in the 20 months since he took power: overturn a polling deficit.

Labour have been leading in general election opinion polls since late 2021, and that lead has been huge for the entirety of Sunak's premiership.

They are around 20 points up on average, with the Tories often closer to third party challengers like Reform and the Liberal Democrats than they are to Labour.

When converted to a projection of seats in parliament, those figures indicate either a comfortable Labour win or a potential electoral wipeout for the Conservatives.

But for Sunak's team, some deeper numbers provide some comfort. While Keir Starmer leads Sunak in polling on the question of who would make a better prime minister, that lead is much smaller than the overall party voting gap -- suggesting Sunak will seek to keep the focus on a "me versus him" message.

Some polling experts also suggested that recent local elections may indicate a slimmer Labour win than polling does, but it is notoriously difficult to extrapolate nationwide forecasts from local votes in only some parts of the country.

Sunak may also take heart from an unlikely source: former left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who started the 2017 general election facing a similar deficit and eventually forced a hung parliament, in a narrow loss to Theresa May.

However he looks at it, the polls are dire for Sunak. He has six weeks to change that.

Sunak’s speech was delayed by over 10 minutes. Speculation among those standing around on Downing Street was that he was waiting for the rain to clear.

A let-up in the weather was shortly followed by the prime minister's emergence from his official residence. The heavens almost immediately opened again, drenching Sunak.

His back luck continued as protesters outside blasted the song “Things Can Only Get Better” by D-Ream, the anthem of Labour’s 1997 victorious election campaign. At this point it was virtually impossible to hear the PM.

If his tone was flat, his message was somewhat uninspiring. Big speeches on Downing Street are usually surround by a buzz of excitement. Such speeches are reserved for big moments in politics: resignations, major policy announcements, or indeed, calling elections.

This was a list of what Sunak sees as his biggest selling point: a safe pair of hands at a difficult time.

He spoke of his first major political intervention, when he implemented a furlough scheme to pay the wages of those who could not go to work during Covid lockdowns. He elaborated on how as the world becomes less secure, he is the stable hand that Britain needs.

It was a riff on a speech he made last week, in which he outlined the challenges Britain faces, from a belligerent Russia waging war on the continent to the threats posed by AI.

And he said that the opposition Labour Party doesn’t have a plan and cannot be trusted. It was all quite negative, but that might be all that Sunak and his party have left after 14 years in power.

He is trying to pitch himself as a change candidate with fresh ideas, which might be the case.

But the key question any voter will now ask ahead of this long-awaited election is: why should you be given another go?

Starmer outlined a three-prong pitch to voters as he set out Labour's electoral offering for the first time under his leadership.

He said the election is "a vote to stop the chaos," promising "a politics that treads more lightly in all our lives" -- a rebuke of a turbulent few period in Westminster that has seen five Tory prime ministers in eight years.

Secondly, he hit out at the Conservatives' economic record, framing his party as the one more in touch with the financial struggles of voters across the UK.

And thirdly, he promised "a long-term plan to rebuild Britain," said he would "reset" the country and its politics.

"Time and again they have pursued their own interesting rather than tackling the issues that affect your family. And if they get another five years, they will feel entitled to carry on exactly as they are. Nothing will change," Starmer said.

"Tonight the prime minister has finally announced the next general election," opposition leader Keir Starmer said in response to PM Rishi Sunak's announcement.

He framed the vote as a "chance to change for the better - your future, your community, your country."

"It will feel like a long campaign, I'm sure of that, but no matter what else is said and done, that opportunity for change is what this election is about," Starmer said.

He begins the vote about 20 points ahead in the polls, so he will be running as a favorite as well as a challenger.

Rishi Sunak’s speech outside Downing Street gave a glimpse into what Britons can expect to hear from the prime minister as he looks to defy gloomy expectations for his party and retain power.

He sought to diffuse criticism of his record, pointing to two major challenges — Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine — that he said amounted to “the most challenging times since the Second World War.”

Critics say that, while every country has dealt with those forces, many comparable economies are coping better than Britain’s. But Sunak said he had restored “hard-earned economic stability.”

Sunak touched heavily on illegal migration, which is expected to be a major plank of his electoral campaign.

He claimed “we are stopping the boats with our Rwanda partnership,” though that deal — which finally became law last month — has not yet led to a single asylum-seeker being deported to the African country.

He also noted other policies — like saying Britain’s will be the first generation “to grow up smoke-free” — a key, legacy-defining plan from Sunak that hasn’t, and now won’t, make it to parliament before the election.

And he attacked the policy record of Keir Starmer, saying the Labour leader hasn’t been clear about what he stands for.

Rishi Sunak was drenched by rain and had to compete with blaring music being played by protesters, in a speech that did not provide the flawless optics staff would have hoped for in a set-piece election announcement.

The recent trend has been for prime ministers to announce elections outside the famous front door of Number 10.

But that does leave them open to the elements -- and pouring rain soaked the back of Sunak's suit in the minutes in which he was speaking, which was evident as he turned away from cameras and walked back into the building.

Meanwhile, the D:Ream song "Things Can Only Get Better" -- the campaign song for the Labour Party before its landslide victory in 1997 -- almost drowned out Sunak's voice on the TV broadcast of his speech, disrupting Sunak's attempts to deliver a clear message to cameras and, by extension, voters.

Sunak had the option to deliver his remarks indoors in a media briefing room built specially for big speeches. One might wonder if he regrets the choice to fight the weather and noise instead.

The first few members of Rishi Sunak's cabinet have filtered out of Downing Street after the prime minister's speech in which he fired the starting gun on a July general election.

They smiled broadly to journalists as they walked quickly through the rain, but failed to respond to questions shouted by reporters about the poll.