UK holds election with Labour favourites

In 2016, the United Kingdom went against the grain of continental Europe by approving a referendum to leave the European Union (known as Brexit). Eight years later, it appears to be going against its neighbors: while the right is winning elections in other European countries, the British are indicating that they will move to the left in the general elections this Thursday (4).

The most recent polls indicate that the Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, has around 40% of voting intentions and is expected to return to number 10 Downing Street (the British Prime Minister’s residence) after a 14-year hiatus.

The Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, have dominated the UK political scene since 2010, but have been in crisis since at least 2022, when then Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned over the Partygate scandal (members of the British government, including the prime minister, held parties during the Covid-19 pandemic, while lockdowns were in force in the country).

From Johnson’s departure to Sunak’s inauguration, the party suffered the embarrassment of having three prime ministers in less than two months (Liz Truss, elected in the Conservatives’ internal vote, resigned after the negative reaction to her economic plan), and the poor figures for the UK economy in 2023 kept the Tories in the spotlight.

So much so that Sunak decided to call elections only when the country’s economic data showed a slight improvement, in the first quarter of this year, and when his immigration reform also began to show results.

But the Conservatives’ run of bad luck appears to be continuing: in June, Sunak’s campaign manager stepped down after it emerged he was under investigation over suspicions of insider trading on the date of the election (a popular form of betting in the UK).

To top it all off, although some polls have indicated a conservative recovery in recent days, the party is even at risk of not even being the second force in the British Parliament, since Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s right-wing nationalist party, appeared in some polls in June ahead of the Tories.

In his presentation of an anti-illegal immigration plan last month, Farage, a major Brexit campaigner who has failed in seven previous attempts to be elected to parliament, said he had no illusions about governing the country but that the presentation of his programme was intended to highlight Reform UK as “a genuine opposition to a Labour government”.

The polls will show whether Britain’s historic two-party rivalry is over or heading that way.