British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announces the date for the General Election at Downing Street in London on May 22.Peter Nicholls/Getty Images
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has called an election for July 4 in a surprise move that he hopes will capitalize on early signs that the economy has begun to turn around.
Standing in a downpour outside Downing Street on Wednesday, Mr. Sunak pointed to encouraging economic figures, including a sharp fall in inflation, as proof that the governing Conservative Party’s plan was working.
“Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future,” he said, adding, “I will earn your trust and I will prove to you that only a Conservative government led by me will not put our hard-earned economic stability at risk.”
Mr. Sunak, who left the podium drenched, at times during his remarks had to compete with a protester blaring the song, Things Can Only Get Better. Tony Blair, the former leader of the Opposition Labour Party, used the song by D:Ream during the 1997 campaign, which resulted in his party’s landslide victory.
The decision to have an election in July, subverting expectations of a fall date, is a bold one by Mr. Sunak, given that the Conservatives trail Labour by as much as 20 percentage points in most opinion polls. The Tories also lost around half of their council seats in local elections earlier this month and was defeated in a by-election where their candidate won just 17.5 per cent of the vote and nearly finished third in a seat the party held.
The resurgent Reform UK party, founded by arch-conservative Nigel Farage, has also been polling at around 12 per cent and could take away Conservative votes in marginal ridings. In the last election, when Reform was called the Brexit Party, Mr. Farage did not field candidates in ridings the Conservatives held so as not to split the right-wing vote. But Reform Leader Richard Tice has ruled out a similar deal this time.
Explainer: What happens in a U.K. general election, and what will be the role of the King
Mr. Sunak, who became Prime Minister in October, 2022, will also have to convince voters that the Conservatives deserve re-election even though the party has been in government for 14 years and has gone through four leaders since 2019. And he will have to distance the Tories from his predecessor, Liz Truss, whose tenure as leader and prime minister lasted just 49 days and caused so much havoc in currency markets that backbench Tory MPs forced her to resign.
“It’s time for change,” Labour Leader Keir Starmer said in a statement Wednesday, adding that, “on the fourth of July, you have the choice and together we can stop the chaos, we can turn the page, we can start to rebuild Britain and change our country.”
Mr. Starmer’s campaign is likely to focus on health care waiting times, the rising cost of living and Mr. Sunak’s immigration policies. But he will face hurdles: Despite Labour’s large lead in the opinion polls, many voters remain uncertain about the leader, who can come across as indecisive. Polls show that he is only marginally more popular than Mr. Sunak.
Mr. Starmer will also have to distance himself from his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, who moved the party to the left and led Labour to its worst election result in 84 years in 2019. The current leader has also faced questions about what some supporters see as his lack of support for Palestinians in Gaza.
The election had to be called by January, 2025, and Mr. Sunak said for months that he planned to hold a vote in the second half of the year. But most observers, and many Conservative caucus members, expected that to mean sometime in the fall, rather than July.
“I had assumed that we would go for an autumn election, giving us enough time for the improvements in the economy to sharpen people’s pockets,” senior Tory MP David Davis told The Daily Telegraph. He added that “it’s a gamble, because in the polls we’re behind. But it may be a smart gamble.”
Mr. Sunak is betting heavily on recent indicators that show the economy has been improving, albeit slightly. Figures released earlier this month showed the economy grew by the most in nearly three years in the first quarter of 2024 at 0.6 per cent. That also marked the end of technical recession that began in the second half of last year. Inflation has fallen to 2.3 per cent.
The Prime Minister will also be campaigning on his flagship policy to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda to have their refugee applications adjudicated. Mr. Sunak has argued that the Rwanda scheme was the best way to stop small boats crossings from France, which have soared in recent years.
More than 29,000 migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries made the perilous journey across the English Channel last year, an annual figure that has more than tripled since 2020, according to the Home Office.
The Rwanda policy has yet to be implemented because of years of legal challenges and modifications. In April, Mr. Sunak vowed to press ahead, and he promised that the first flights would take off in July.
Mr. Starmer has vowed to scrap the Rwanda program if Labour wins the election but has not spelled out a detailed plan on how he would stop the crossings.
With Mr. Sunak’s decision to call such an early election, he “has got the element of surprise that comes from him taking the initiative, and it’s possible that some voters might admire him for taking a gamble,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.
“But the fundamentals still don’t look good,” Prof. Bale added. If Mr. Sunak can pull off a victory, or even stops Labour from winning a majority, “he’ll have performed something of a miracle.”