Next United Kingdom general election

Next United Kingdom general election
The next United Kingdom general election is scheduled to be held no later than 28 January 2025. It will determine the composition of the House of Commons and the next Government of the United Kingdom. It is expected to be the first UK general election held under the reign of Charles III. Significant constituency boundary changes will be in effect, the first such changes since before the 2010 general election.
Background
The next election is scheduled to be held no later than 28 January 2025, with Parliament being dissolved no later than 17 December 2024, after the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 repealed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. Although a general election campaign encompassing the Christmas period is seen as unlikely by analysts, it is widely expected that the incumbent Conservative Party will delay the election as long as possible while it remains behind in opinion polling.
The results of the 2019 general election are given below, alongside the current numbers in the House of Commons. Numbers have changed through by-elections, defections and suspensions of Members from their party that have taken place throughout the present Parliament.
Before this general election, in March 2022 the Labour Party had abandoned all-women shortlists, citing legal advice that continuing to use them for choosing parliamentary candidates would become an unlawful practice again under the Equality Act 2010.
Following the Supreme Court's decision in November 2022 that a proposed second Scottish independence referendum is beyond the authority of the Scottish Parliament, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) announced her intention to treat the next general election as a de facto independence referendum. Unionist parties have rejected this characterisation. Sturgeon announced her resignation as SNP leader and first minister on 15 February 2023, and was succeeded on 27 March by Humza Yousaf.
Electoral system
General elections in the United Kingdom are organised using first-past-the-post voting. The Conservative Party, which won a majority at the 2019 general election, included pledges in its manifesto to remove the 15-year limit on voting for British citizens living abroad, and to introduce a voter identification requirement in Great Britain. Provisions for these changes have been enacted in the Elections Act 2022.
Boundary reviews
The Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, which proposed reducing the number of constituencies from 650 to 600, was commenced in 2011, but temporarily stopped in January 2013. Following the 2015 general election, each of the four parliamentary boundary commissions of the United Kingdom recommenced their review process in April 2016. The four commissions submitted their final recommendations to the Secretary of State on 5 September 2018 and made their reports public a week later. However, the proposals were never put forward for approval before the calling of the general election held on 12 December 2019, and in December 2020 the reviews were formally abandoned under the Schedule to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020.
A projection by psephologists Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of how the 2017 votes would have translated to seats under the 2018 boundaries suggested the changes would have been beneficial to the Conservative Party and detrimental to the Labour Party.
In March 2020, Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith confirmed that the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies would be based on retaining 650 seats. The previous relevant legislation was amended by the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 and the four boundary commissions formally launched their 2023 reviews on 5 January 2021. They were required to issue their final reports prior to 1 July 2023. Once the reports have been laid before Parliament, Orders in Council giving effect to the final proposals must be made within four months, unless "there are exceptional circumstances". Prior to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020, boundary changes could not be implemented until they were approved by both Houses of Parliament.
The boundary changes took effect from the end of October 2023, meaning that the general election will be contested on these new boundaries.
Notional 2019 results
The election will be fought under new constituency boundaries established by the Sixth Boundary Review in 2023. Consequently, media outlets tend to report seat gains and losses as compared to notional results. These are the results if all votes cast in 2019 were unchanged, but regrouped by new constituency boundaries. Notional results in the UK are always estimated, usually with the assistance of local election results, because vote counts at parliamentary elections in the UK do not produce figures at any level below the whole constituency.
In England, seats will be redistributed away from Northern England and towards Southern England due to the different rates of population growth. North West England and North East England will lose two seats each whereas South East England will gain 8 seats and South West England will gain 3 seats. Based on historic voting patterns, this is expected to help the Conservatives. A number of seats with unchanged names but changed boundaries would have been won by a different party in 2019 based on these new boundaries. The Conservatives would have won Wirral West and Leeds North West instead of the Labour Party, but Labour would have won Pudsey and Filton and Bradley Stoke instead of the Conservatives. Liberal Democrat Tim Farron's Westmorland and Lonsdale constituency is now notionally a Conservative seat. The town of Walsall, previously split between the constituencies of Walsall North (Conservative) and Walsall South (Labour), will be reunited in the new constituency of Walsall and Bloxwich, which would have seen a very narrow Conservative victory in 2019. The new seat of Spen Valley would be notionally Conservative despite being primarily created out a Labour constituency, Batley and Spen and the new seat of Blyth and Ashington would be notionally Labour despite the town of Blyth previously being the largest town of a Conservative constituency, Blyth Valley.
In Scotland, the notional general election results would have had the following changes due to Scotland losing two seats: The Scottish National Party benefits the most from the boundary changes as they would have won 49 seats instead of 48. The Scottish Conservatives would have only won five seats instead of six. Scottish Labour would have retained Edinburgh South, the sole constituency they won in 2019. Scottish Liberal Democrats would have only won two seats (Edinburgh West and Orkney and Shetland) under the new boundaries if they had been contested in the 2019 general election, instead of the four they did win in 2019.
Under the new boundaries, Wales will lose eight seats, electing 32 MPs instead of the 40 they elected in 2019. Labour would have won 18 instead of the 22 MPs they elected in 2019, and the Welsh Conservatives 12 instead of 14. Due to the abolition and merging of rural seats in West Wales, Plaid Cymru would have only won two seats instead of four. Nonetheless, the boundaries are expected to cause difficulty for the Conservatives as more Labour-favourable areas are added to some of its safest seats.
In Northern Ireland, the notional results are identical to the 2019 general election in Northern Ireland.
Campaign
Liberal Democrats
The Scottish Liberal Democrats aim to use the ferry fiasco to regain their former seats in the Scottish Highlands.
Scottish National Party
On 24 June 2023, at an event at the Caird Hall in Dundee, Humza Yousaf announced his support for using the general election as a referendum to demand Scottish independence.
Date of the election
Legal requirements
At the 2019 general election, in which the Conservatives won a majority of 80 seats, the manifesto of the party contained a commitment to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act due to "paralysis at a time when the country has needed decisive action". The pledge was confirmed in the first Queen's Speech following the election.
In December 2020, the government published a draft Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (Repeal) Bill, later retitled the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022.
The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 received royal assent on 24 March 2022 and entered into force the same day. The prime minister can again request the monarch to dissolve Parliament and call an early election with 25 working days' notice. Section 4 of the Act provided: "If it has not been dissolved earlier, a Parliament dissolves at the beginning of the day that is the fifth anniversary of the day on which it first met."
The Electoral Commission has confirmed that the 2019 Parliament must be dissolved, at the latest, by 17 December 2024, and that the next general election must take place no later than 28 January 2025.
Possible dates
In September 2021, Oliver Dowden, the newly appointed chairman of the Conservative Party, told party staff to prepare for a general election. In March 2022, Dowden announced that the Conservatives would start a two-year election campaign in May, implying an election date of May 2024. It was reported in April 2023 by The Telegraph that autumn 2024 was the preferred date of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for the election to be held. In September 2023, the announcement of Rishi Sunak's planned shift on green policies led many politicians and political pundits to believe it was possibly the warming up of an election campaign for May 2024. In October 2023, it was suggested that Sunak is planning to hold the election on 31 October 2024 (Halloween).
Candidates
MPs not standing for re-election
As of 26 October 2023, a total of 76 current members of Parliament have announced their intention not to stand for re-election (Conservative: 49, Labour: 14, Scottish National Party (SNP): 8, Independent: 3, Plaid Cymru: 1, Green: 1). Three MPs - Nadine Dorries (Conservative), Nigel Adams (Conservative), and Chris Pincher (Independent) - announced their intention not to stand again but later resigned from Parliament before the election.
MPs deselected or otherwise seeking a new constituency
Some sitting MPs have not been selected by their party to recontest their seat (or a successor seat). Options available to these MPs include standing down, challenging their non-selection, seeking selection for another seat, and contesting the election under a different banner.
MPs changing constituencies
Due to boundary changes, most MPs standing for re-election will seek to represent a seat at least slightly different from their present seat. However, in some cases sitting MPs have secured selection to stand in a substantially or completely different seat from their present seat. They may happen because their seat is marginal and is likely to be lost by their party, boundary changes abolish their present seat or their present seat is redrawn in an unfavourable way in boundary changes.
Opinion polling
See also
Next United Kingdom general election in Scotland
Next United Kingdom general election in Wales
Notes
References
General elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom