UK general election-will June be the end of May?

Article by Ubique writer at large, Henry Schlechta

“At this moment of enormous national significance, there should be unity at Westminster, but instead there is division”

With those words, British Prime Minister Theresa May announced her intention to hold a general election, nearly three years ahead of schedule, on June 8 of this year. In accordance with law, the House of Commons approved the decision to hold the election by a two-thirds vote.

Mrs May ascended to the Prime Ministership following the resignation of her Conservative colleague David Cameron in late 2016, after Britain voted to leave the European Union by a 52-48 margin. May, along with Cameron, opposed Brexit during the referendum campaign but as Prime Minister she has supported plans for a ‘hard Brexit’, which would involve the UK leaving the European Union’s free trade area.

Leaving the EU is a unique challenge for Britain; no sovereign state has ever done so, and, while the two-year window for negotiations before Britain will leave appears to provide a great deal of time, the enormous number of perspectives from the different EU member states will make said negotiations a difficult process indeed.

Initially, after taking over the office, May had opposed an early election. However, Mr Cameron won only a narrow majority in the 2015 election; the Conservatives currently hold 330 seats in the 650 member House of Commons, and a minority in the unelected House of Lords.

The confidence May has that an election will bring her a majority comes from the poor standing of the opposition Labour Party. Following their 2015 election defeat, the Labour membership chose Jeremy Corbyn as their leader, a long-time backbench MP on the left wing of the party. Corbyn has put forward a series of leftist policies, such as government ownership of railways and higher taxation on the rich. He has also attacked May for making cuts to the National Health Service.

However, Corbyn has failed to win the confidence of his MPs, 81% of which voted no-confidence in his leadership in June last year. Nor has he achieved substantial public support. Britain Elects, a poll aggregator, shows Corbyn’s Labour Party sixteen percentage points behind May’s Conservatives. A recent poll in which respondents were asked to name their preferred Prime Minister showed Mrs May with 50% support and Corbyn at 14%, with 36% of respondents saying they didn’t know.

Corbyn also faces the challenge of crafting a Brexit policy amenable to both pro- and anti-EU voters. While the official policy of the Labour Party and Corbyn was in favour of the EU, a substantial minority of Labour voters voted to leave. Corbyn has to present a policy on how he would go about the process of Brexit that pleases both groups 

Source: Chris Hanretty estimates of constituency Brexit vote

Britain’s traditional third party, the Liberal Democrats, lost 65% of their vote and fell from 57 to nine seats at the 2015 election, after a controversial coalition with the Conservative Party. They are running on an explicitly anti-Brexit platform this time, promising to reverse the referendum result. Polls show them with slightly increased support. The UK Independence Party, strongly opposed to the EU, performed poorly in a by-election earlier this year amid leadership turmoil.

Given these advantages, May appears to be planning a low-risk campaign. She will not attend debates with other party leaders, and her speech announcing the election empathised what will likely be a key campaign argument: that only she can deliver “stability and strong leadership”. Nonetheless, given the myriad of challenges any government will face in negotiating Brexit, stability may be an unachievable goal.