2024 United Kingdom general election

The 2024 United Kingdom general election was held on 4 July 2024. It determined the composition of the House of Commons, which determines the next Government of the United Kingdom. In addition, this was the first UK general election where physical forms of voter identification were needed to vote in Great Britain.

The Labour Party won with a landslide majority, leading to Keir Starmer replacing Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister. The Conservative Party lost 244 seats, giving them their lowest number of seats (121) in the party's history.

 Background 
Boris Johnson, the Conservatives leader, had won the last election in a landslide. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, resigned and was replaced by Keir Starmer.

Shortly after winning the election, Johnson passed the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and the UK left the EU on 31 January 2020. Around the same time cases of Covid-19 started happening in the UK. Whilst Johnson and the Conservatives stayed ahead in the polls for most of 2020-2021, at the end of 2021 stories about parties in Downing Street during lockdown started appearing in the news (Partygate). Johnson's popularity suffered, and he was forced to resign later that year due to the Chris Pincher scandal.  

Johnson was replaced as Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister by Liz Truss in September 2022. Truss made huge unfunded tax cuts which caused economic problems, and was forced to resign after just 50 days. She was replaced by Rishi Sunak.

When Sunak took over, the Conservatives were now far behind Labour in the polls. In May 2024 he called for an election to be held on 4 July of that year.

 Results 
+2024 Brtish general electionPartySeatsLeader/LeadersLabour Party411 seatsKeir StarmerConservative Party121 seatsRishi SunakLiberal Democrats72 seatsEd DaveyScottish National Party9 seatsJohn SwinneySinn Féin7 seatsMary Lou McDonaldReform UK5 seatsNigel FarageDemocratic Unionist Party5 seatsGavin RobinsonGreen Party of England and Wales4 seatsCarla Denyer  Adrian RamsayPlaid Cymru4 seatsRhun ap IorwerthSocial Democratic and Labour Party2 seatsColum EastwoodAlliance Party of Northern Ireland1 seatNaomi LongUlster Unionist Party1 seatDoug BeattieTraditional Unionist Voice1 seatJim AllisterSpeaker1 seatLindsay Hoyle

Sinn Féin's MPs do not go to the UK Parliament to take their seats because of the party's policy on not doing so.

Notes

References

Category:United Kingdom general elections
Category:2024 elections in Europe
Category:2024 in the United Kingdom
Category:July 2024 events