UK poised for political change as Labor aims for historic election victory

LONDON Britain goes to the polls on Thursday to elect 650 new members of the House of Commons, with opinion polls depicting Labor dominance that few would have believed possible during the previous vote in 2019.

This election saw Boris Johnson, then Prime Minister, secure a solid Conservative majority in Parliament and win a symbolic mandate to see Brexit through. He did this by conquering the main Labor centers of the traditionally working-class “red belt” of northern England and the Midlands.

The UK has since officially left the European Union – but life after Brexit has been cruel for the Conservative Party.

Now Labour and its leader Sir Keir Starmer are hoping to win back the pro-Brexit voters they lost in 2019, while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative party could suffer its worst election result in its 200-year history.

Some polls put Labor with a staggering 20 percentage 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 wiped out in elections in some parts of the country, and Sunak could become the first sitting prime minister in history to lose his seat.

Support for the Conservatives – who have governed for the past 14 years under five different leaders – has been in steady decline since 2021, when investigations were launched into parties breaking the lockdown at 10 Downing Street, authorized by Prime Minister Johnson.

After Johnson's fall, Liz Truss took over as prime minister for a short time, but without success. Her shoestring budget sent the pound to a 37-year low. Sunak, a former investment banker, quickly took over, but judging by the polls, he failed to convince voters that he was the right man to get the British economy back on track.

Along with the economy, housing and healthcare, immigration is one of the hottest issues of the campaign. Sunak has sought to win over voters concerned about the number of irregular migrants arriving on British shores by making his controversial plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda contingent on his re-election.

But the Rwandan plan sparked backlash and divided the nation, with even the Supreme Court ruling it illegal. Its supporters have been frustrated that no flights have taken off two years after the plan was first announced.

He officially called the election in the pouring rain at Downing Street as the song “Things Can Only Get Better” – famous for Tony Blair's landslide election victory in 1997 – blared in the background.

A series of public relations gaffes have since followed. Sunak faced a wave of condemnation when he left a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings early to give a television interview, prompting accusations of being out of touch with British values.

Most recently, five Conservative Party insiders – including Sunak's bodyguard – were accused of betting on the election date just before it was announced by the Prime Minister himself, in what is seen as a further blow to public confidence in the party.

Although a Labour victory has seemed a given for months, sources close to the party say there is some nervousness that such a comfortable and stable lead in the polls could make voters complacent and work against them.

But with such a lead, it seems almost certain that they will be in government in a few days.

The central thrust of their manifesto is to tackle the cost of living crisis by creating wealth for the working class. But the Conservatives immediately attacked their proposals, claiming that Labour would inevitably raise taxes if growth slowed.

Other Labour promises include cutting National Health Service waiting lists, building 300,000 new homes a year to tackle the housing crisis and investing $24 billion ($28.5 billion) in green technology.

Starmer also took a tough stance on migration, pledging to crack down on people smugglers who illegally traffic migrants across the Channel. He also claims that Labor will reduce the level of net migration to the UK, but has not set a specific target (the Conservatives have previously pledged to reduce net migration to several tens of thousands).

The election could also see Brexit campaigner and former MEP Nigel Farage enter the House of Commons for the first time. He shocked the nation at the start of June when he announced he would stand in his constituency of Clacton, Essex, for his Reform UK party, in what will be his eighth attempt to become an MP.

Farages' announcement saw the Reform UK party soar in the polls and close on the heels of the Conservatives. But even if he manages to get around 16% of the vote, as some polls suggest, he may not win any seats given the way the UK's first-past-the-post electoral system works.

Deeply controversial comments made in an interview last week – in which he claimed the West had provoked Russia's invasion of Ukraine – have seen support dwindle.

“It was clear to me that the expansion of NATO and the European Union further east was giving this man (Putin) a reason for his Russian people to say he's coming back for us and to go to war,” Farage told BBC Panorama.

We provoked this war, he added.

Farage's party proposes freezing all non-essential immigration, abandoning net-zero emissions targets and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which the party calls Strasbourg's foreign court.

The Liberal Democrats are also hoping to rise from the ashes after crushing defeats in previous elections, which some polls suggest could win more than 60 seats.

The party has previously campaigned to “stop Brexit” and is one of the most enthusiastic supporters of closer economic, trade and security ties with the EU.

The party has outlined a four-stage plan that involves gradual integration into European programmes and, eventually, into the European single market. Its leader Ed Davey has said that re-joining the bloc is its ultimate long-term goal. Euronews