The UK will hold a national election on Thursday, July 4. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Conservative Party) announced this on Wednesday, in a coming announcement as a big surprise in political circles in London. Most media as well as politicians predict Sunak will not call a House of Commons election until next autumn.

“Now is the time for Britain to choose what our future looks like,” Sunak said at his announcement. There has been speculation in Westminster politics for months about the timing of the election. In the United Kingdom, it is the Prime Minister’s personal prerogative to determine the exact date of a general election, as long as the election takes place within a parliamentary term of up to five years.

The deadline for holding elections is the end of January next year. The general assumption is that Sunak will wait as long as possible, because the Conservative Party has consistently trailed the opposition Labor Party in almost all opinion polls. Appreciation of Sunak as Prime Minister is also low. He wanted to have as long a chance as possible, the thinking goes, to improve the polls.

Inflation falls, approaches to migration

But Sunak said on Wednesday that the priorities he had set out were “working well”. Earlier on Wednesday it was announced that inflation in the UK was falling further, from 11.1 percent when Sunak took office at the end of October 2022 to 2.3 percent last April. The Conservative government also hopes the first flight of asylum seekers to Rwanda will depart soon, a key policy move to show it is doing something about the high number of migrants coming to the UK.

This was one of Sunak’s most important promises to halve inflation and that promise has been achieved. But as for other promises he made while in office, that doesn’t apply. Waiting lists for the NHS national health service are increasing. And migrants are still making the dangerous crossing over the English Channel from France, despite his pledge to stop it.

This election could end an era of fourteen years of government rule – four consecutive terms – of the Conservative Party. The Tories took power from the Labor Party in 2010, led by Prime Minister David Cameron. It has never happened in Britain that voters gave a party a fifth term in office.

During Sunak’s announcement, protesters played loudly outside the street near the official residence Things are getting better af, the D:ream song used by Labor leader Tony Blair for his election campaign in 1997. Blair achieved a landslide victory at the time and Labor remained in power until 2010. Current Labor leader Keir Starmer said in response on Wednesday that Labor “will stop the chaos in this country.” If the Conservative Party remains in power for another five years, nothing will change, he said.

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