2015 United Kingdom general election

The **2015 United Kingdom general election** was held on Thursday, 7 May 2015 to elect 650 Members of Parliament (or MPs) to the House of Commons. It was the first general election held under the rules of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. Local elections took place in most areas on the same day.

Opinion polls and political commentators had predicted that the results of the election would cause a second consecutive hung parliament whose composition would be similar to the previous Parliament, which was in effect from the previous national election in 2010. While the opinion polls were right in predicting a hung parliament, they turned out to have underestimated the Labour Party, however, as they won 273 of the 650 seats (the same as the incumbent Conservatives and 33.3% of the votes, more than the Conservatives (with exactly 859,531 more votes). Consequently, David Cameron, due to the poor showing of his party, resigned as Prime Minister.

The Scottish National Party won close to a landslide victory in Scotland, mainly at the expense of Labour, who had held a majority of Scottish seats in the House of Commons at every general election since 1964. Labour were reduced to just 9 seats in Scotland, their lowest amount of seats since 1931. The SNP won 46 of the 59 Scottish seats and became the third-largest party in the House of Commons.

The Liberal Democrats, led by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, had their worst result since their first election in 1988, losing 25 of their 57 seats. The UK Independence Party came third in terms of votes with 13.3% but won only two constituencies, Clacton and the party leader Nigel Farage's contested seat of South Thanet. The Green Party won its highest ever vote share of 3.4% and retained their only seat. In Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionist Party returned to the Commons with two seats after their five-year long absence, and the Alliance Party lost its only seat despite an increase in their vote share.

The election is considered to have begun a political realignment in the UK, marking the end of the traditional three-party domination of the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats seen throughout the 20th century.

## Election process

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 led to the dissolution of the 55th Parliament on 30 March 2015 and the scheduling of the election on 7 May. There were Local elections on the same day in all of England, with the exception of Greater London. No elections were scheduled to take place in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

All British, Irish and Commonwealth citizens over the age of 18 residing in the UK that weren't in prison, a mental hospital or on the run from law enforcement on the date of the election were permitted to vote. In British general elections, voting takes place in all constituencies in the United Kingdom to elect members of parliament (or MPs) to the House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament in the UK. Each constituency elects one MP to the House of Commons using the first-past-the-post voting system. If one party obtains a majority (326) of the 650 seats, then that party is entitled to form the Government. If no party has a majority, then there is what is known as a hung parliament. In this case, the options for forming the Government are either a minority government (where one party governs alone despite not having the majority of the seats) or a coalition government (where one party governs alongside party in order to get a majority of seats).

Although the Conservative Party planned for the number of constituencies to be reduced from 650 to 600, through the Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, the review of constituencies and reduction in seats was delayed by the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013. The next boundary review was set to take place in 2018; and so the 2015 general election was contested using the same constituencies and boundaries as in 2010. Of the 650 constituencies, 533 were in England, 59 were in Scotland, 40 were in Wales and 18 were in Northern Ireland.

In addition, the 2011 Act mandated a referendum in 2011 on changing from the first-past-the-post voting system to an alternative vote system for general elections. The Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government agreed to holding a referendum. The referendum was held in May 2011 and resulted in the retention of the existing voting system. Before the previous general election the Liberal Democrats had pledged to change the voting system, and the Labour Party had pledged to hold a referendum on any such change. The Conservatives, however, promised to keep the first-past-the-post system, but to reduce the number of constituencies to 600. Liberal Democrats' plan was to reduce the number of MPs to 500, and for them to be elected using a proportional vote system.

The Government increased the amount of money that parties and candidates were allowed to spend on campaigning during the election by 23%; a move decided against the advice of the Electoral Commission. The election saw the first cap on spending by parties in individual constituencies during the 100 days before Parliament's dissolution on 30 March: £30,700, plus a per-voter allowance of 9p in county constituencies and 6p in borough seats. An additional voter allowance of more than £8,700 is available after the dissolution of Parliament. In total, parties spent £31.1m in the 2010 general election, of which the Conservative Party spent 53%, the Labour Party spent 25% and the Liberal Democrats 15%. This was also the first UK general election to use individual rather than household voter registration.

## Date of the election

An election is called following the dissolution of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The 2015 general election was the first to be held under the provisions of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. Prior to this, the power to dissolve Parliament was a royal prerogative, exercised by the sovereign on the advice of the prime minister. Under the provisions of the Septennial Act 1716, as amended by the Parliament Act 1911, an election had to be announced on or before the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the previous parliament, barring exceptional circumstances. No sovereign had refused a request for dissolution since the beginning of the 20th century, and the practice had evolved that a prime minister would typically call a general election to be held at a tactically convenient time within the final two years of a Parliament's lifespan, to maximise the chance of an electoral victory for his or her party.

Prior to the 2010 general election, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats pledged to introduce fixed-term elections. As part of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement, the Cameron ministry agreed to support legislation for fixed-term Parliaments, with the date of the next general election being 7 May 2015. This resulted in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which removed the prime minister's power to advise the monarch to call an early election. The Act only permits an early dissolution if Parliament votes for one by a two-thirds supermajority, or if a majority of MPs pass a vote of no confidence and no new government is subsequently formed within 14 days. However, the prime minister had the power, by order made by Statutory Instrument under section 1(5) of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, to fix the polling day to be up to two months later than 7 May 2015. Such a Statutory Instrument must be approved by each House of Parliament. Under section 14 of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was amended to extend the period between the dissolution of Parliament and the following general election polling day from 17 to 25 working days. This had the effect of moving forward the date of the dissolution of the Parliament to 30 March 2015.

### Timetable

The key dates were:

 Friday 8 May | No party wins a majority, with both the Labour Party and the Conservatives tied on 273 seats.

## MPs not standing for re-election

While at the previous election there had been a record 148 MPs not standing for re-election, the 2015 election saw 90 MPs standing down. Out of these MPs, 38 were Conservatives, 37 were Labour, 10 were Liberal Democrats, 3 were Independents, 1 was Sinn Féin and 1 was Plaid Cymru. The highest-profile members of parliament leaving were: Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister, and William Hague, the former Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition. Alongside Brown and Hague, 17 former cabinet ministers stood down at the election, including Stephen Dorrell, Jack Straw, Alistair Darling, David Blunkett, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Dame Tessa Jowell. The highest profile Liberal Democrat to stand down was their former leader Sir Menzies Campbell, while the longest-serving MP, Sir Peter Tapsell, also retired, having served as an MP continuously since 1966, or for 49 years.

## Contesting political parties and candidates

### Overview

On 9 April 2015, the deadline for standing for the general election, there were 464 political parties registered with the Electoral Commission. Candidates who did not belong to a party were either labelled as an Independent or not labelled at all.

The Conservative Party and the Labour Party had been the two biggest parties since 1922, and had supplied all the UK's prime ministers since 1935. Opininion polls had predicted that the two parties would receive a combined total of anywhere between 65% and 75% of votes, and would receive anywhere between 80% and 85% of the seats; and that, as such, the leader of one of the two parties would become the Prime Minister after the election. The Liberal Democrats had been the third largest party in the UK for many years; but as described by various political commentators, other parties had risen relative to the Liberal Democrats since the 2010 election. In order to emphasise this, *The Economist* stated that "the familiar three-party system of the Tories, Labour, and the Lib Dems appears to be breaking down with the rise of UKIP, the Greens and the SNP." Ofcom ruled that the major parties in Great Britain were the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP, the SNP a major party in Scotland, and Plaid Cymru a major party in Wales. The BBC's guidelines were similar but removed UKIP from their list of major parties, and instead stated that UKIP should be given "appropriate levels of coverage in output to which the largest parties contribute and, on some occasions, similar levels of coverage". Seven parties (Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, UKIP, SNP, PC and Green) participated in the election leadership debates. Northern Ireland's political parties were not included in any debates, despite the DUP, a party based in Northern Ireland, being the fourth largest party in the UK going into the election.

### National

Several parties operate in specific regions only. The main national parties, standing in most seats across all of the country, are listed below in order of the amount of seats that they contested:

* Conservative Party: The Conservative Party was the senior party in the 2010-15 coalition government, having won the most seats (306) at the 2010 election. The party stood in 647 seats (every seat except for two in Northern Ireland and the Speaker's seat).
* Labour Party: Labour had been in power from 1997 to 2010. The party was Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition after the 2010 election, having won 258 seats. It stood in 631 constituencies, missing only the Speaker's seat, and all seats in Northern Ireland.
* Liberal Democrats: The Liberal Democrats were the junior member of the 2010–15 coalition government, having won 57 seats. They contested 631 seats, and like Labour, only not contesting the Speaker's seat and all seats in Northern Ireland.
* UK Independence Party (or UKIP): UKIP won the fourth-most votes at the 2010 election, but failed to win any seats. They went into the election with two seats; due to winning two by-elections. They also won the most amount of votes of any British party at the 2014 European election. It contested 624 seats across the United Kingdom.
* Green Party: The Green Party went into the election with only one seat. However, they won the fourth-most votes in the 2014 European election. In 2010, Caroline Lucas became the party's first ever MP. In this election they received 3.8% of the vote. This made them the sixth largest party in terms of how many people voted for them. They stood in 573 seats.

#### Minor parties

Dozens of minor parties stood in this election. The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition of Parties stood 135 candidates and was the only minor party to have more than forty candidates. The Respect Party, who came into the election with one MP who was elected at the 2012 Bradford West by-election, stood four candidates. The British National Party, who finished fifth with 1.9% of the vote and stood 338 candidates at the 2010 general election, stood only eight candidates this year following a collapse in their support.

### Northern Ireland

The main parties in Northern Ireland in order of their amount of seats were:

* Democratic Unionist Party (DUP): the DUP won eight seats in 2010, making it the largest party in Northern Ireland and the fourth biggest in the UK. The party also won the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election, and came in second out of the Northern Irish parties at the 2014 European election. It contested 16 of the 18 Northern Irish constituencies, having entered into an electoral pact to abstain from the two other seats with the Ulster Unionist Party.
* Sinn Féin: Sinn Féin won the most votes in Northern Ireland in 2010, but came second in the amount of seats, winning five. They came second at the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election and they came in first out of the Northern Irish parties in the 2014 European election. In the House of Commons Sinn Féin are abstentionists, and so they have never taken up the seats that they have won there. The party also operates in Ireland, where it does take seats in parliament. It stood in all 18 Northern Irish constituencies.
* Social Democratic and Labour Party (or the SDLP): The SDLP came third in terms of both votes and seats in the 2010 general election and 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election, and fourth in the 2014 European election. Going into this election, the party had three MPs. The SDLP has a relationship with the Labour Party , with the SDLP's MPs generally following the Labour whip. In the case of a hung parliament, the party would have entered into a confidence-and-supply-agreement with the party. They contested all 18 Northern Irish constituencies at the election.
* Ulster Unionist Party (or the UUP): in 2010 the UUP entered into an electoral alliance with the Conservative Party, and finished fourth in terms of votes in Northern Ireland, but won no seats. The party has one MEP, having placed third in the 2014 European elections. They came fourth in the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election. The UUP contested 15 of the 18 Northern Irish seats; the party did not run in two seats because of its electoral pact with the DUP, and also did not nominate a candidate against former party member, Sylvia Hermon.
* Alliance Party of Northern Ireland: The Alliance Party had one MP going into this election, Naomi Long, who had been elected for the first time in 2010. They came fifth in the 2010 election by vote share. They have a relationship with the Liberal Democrats. However, the Alliance's one MP elected in 2010 sat on the opposition benches in the Commons and not with the Liberal Democrats on the government benches. The party contested all 18 Northern Irish constituencies in 2015.

Smaller parties in Northern Ireland included the Traditional Unionist Voice, who won no seats at this election but had one member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Conservatives and UKIP (both are major parties in the rest of the UK, but are minor parties here).

### Scotland

* Scottish National Party (or the SNP): The SNP only contested seats in Scotland and stood in all 59 Scottish constituencies. The party received the second-most votes in Scotland and the sixth-most overall in 2010, winning six seats. It won the 2011 election to the Scottish Parliament and had a surge of support since the Scottish independence referendum in September 2014, in which it was the main political party behind the losing Yes campaign. Most projections suggested that it would be the third-largest party overall after the 2015 election, in terms of seats won, overtaking the Liberal Democrats.

Smaller parties in Scotland include the Scottish Libertarian Party, but none of the smaller parties make much of an impact in general elections in Scotland.

### Wales

* Plaid Cymru: led by Leanne Wood, who was a member of the Welsh Assembly and did not stand in the general election. Plaid Cymru organises only in Wales, where it contested all forty Welsh constituencies. The party has three MPs and was fourth in Wales (eighth overall) by vote share in 2010, later finishing third in the 2011 Welsh Assembly elections.

Wales has a number of smaller parties which, again, do not tend to make much impact in the general elections. In 2015, the Labour Party continued to dominate Welsh politics at the general elections.

### Pacts and possible coalitions

Coalitions have been rare in the United Kingdom, because the first-past-the-post system has usually led to one party winning an overall majority in the Commons. However, with the outgoing Government being a coalition and with opinion polls not showing a large or consistent lead for any one party, there was much discussion about possible post-election coalitions or other arrangements, such as confidence and supply agreements.

Some UK political parties that only stand in part of the country have reciprocal relationships with parties standing in other parts of the country. These include:

* Labour (in Great Britain) and SDLP (in Northern Ireland)
* Liberal Democrats (in Great Britain) and Alliance (in Northern Ireland)
* SNP (in Scotland) and Plaid Cymru (in Wales)
	+ Plaid Cymru also recommended supporters in England to vote Green, while the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said she would vote for Plaid Cymru were she in Wales, and Green were she in England. However, Sturgeon also said that, if their candidate was the most progressive, she would vote for Labour were she in England.
* Green Party of England and Wales (in England and Wales), Scottish Greens (in Scotland) and the Green Party in Northern Ireland (in Northern Ireland)

On 17 March 2015 the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party agreed an election pact, whereby the DUP would not stand candidates in Fermanagh and South Tyrone (where Michelle Gildernew, the Sinn Féin candidate, won by only four votes in 2010) and in Newry and Armagh. In return the UUP would stand aside in Belfast East and Belfast North. The SDLP rejected a similar pact suggested by Sinn Féin to try to ensure that an agreed nationalist would win that constituency. The DUP also called on voters in Scotland to support whichever pro-Union candidate was best placed to beat the SNP.

### Candidates

The deadline for parties and individuals to file candidate nomination papers to the acting returning officer (and the deadline for candidates to withdraw) was 4 p.m. on 9 April 2015. The total number of candidates was 3,971; the second-highest number in history, slightly down from the record 4,150 candidates at the last election in 2010.

There were a record number of female candidates standing in terms of both absolute numbers and percentage of candidates: 1,020 (26.1%) in 2015, up from 854 (21.1%) in 2010. The proportion of female candidates for major parties ranged from 41% of Alliance Party candidates to 12% of UKIP candidates. According to UCL's Parliamentary Candidates UK project the major parties had the following percentages of black and ethnic minority candidates: the Conservatives 11%, the Liberal Democrats 10%, Labour 9%, UKIP 6%, the Greens 4%. The average age of the candidates for the seven major parties was 45.

The youngest candidates were all aged 18: Solomon Curtis (Labour, Wealden); Niamh McCarthy (Independent, Liverpool Wavertree); Michael Burrows (UKIP, Inverclyde); Declan Lloyd (Labour, South East Cornwall); and Laura-Jane Rossington (Communist Party, Plymouth Sutton and Devonport). The oldest candidate was Doris Osen, 84, of the Elderly Persons' Independent Party (EPIC), who was standing in Ilford North. Other candidates aged over 80 included three long-serving Labour MPs standing for re-election: Sir Gerald Kaufman (aged 84; Manchester Gorton), Dennis Skinner (aged 83; Bolsover) and David Winnick (aged 81; Walsall North).

A number of candidates—including two for Labour and two for UKIP – were suspended from their respective parties after nominations were closed. Independent candidate Ronnie Carroll died after nominations were closed.

## Campaign

### By party

#### Conservative

David Cameron launched the Conservative campaign in Chippenham on 30 March.

#### Labour

The Labour campaign was launched on 27 March at Olympic Park in London. Ed Miliband's EdStone was a major feature of the campaign which was covered by the media. Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman embarked on a pink bus tour as part of her Woman to Woman campaign.

### Issues

#### Constitutional affairs

The Conservative manifesto committed to "a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017". Labour did not support this, but did commit to an EU membership referendum if any further powers were transferred to the European Union. The Lib Dems also supported the Labour position, but explicitly supported the UK's continuing membership of the EU.

The election was the first following the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. None of the three major party manifestos supported a second referendum and the Conservative manifesto stated that "the question of Scotland's place in the United Kingdom is now settled". In the run-up to the election, David Cameron coined the phrase "Carlisle principle" for the idea that checks and balances are required to ensure that devolution to Scotland has no adverse effects on other parts of the United Kingdom. The phrase references a fear that Carlisle, being the English town closest to the Scottish border, could be affected economically by preferential tax rates in Scotland.

#### Government finance

The deficit, who was responsible for it and plans to deal with it were a major theme of the campaign. While some smaller parties opposed austerity, the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP and the Greens all supported some further cuts, albeit to different extents.

Conservative campaigning sought to blame the deficit on the previous Labour government. Labour, in return, sought to establish their fiscal responsibility. With the Conservatives also making several spending commitments (*e.g.* on the NHS), commentators talked of the two main parties' "political crossdressing", each trying to campaign on the other's traditional territory.

#### Possibility of a hung Parliament

Hung Parliaments have been unusual in post-War British political history, but with the outgoing Government a coalition and opinion polls not showing a large or consistent lead for any one party, it was widely expected and predicted throughout the election campaign that no party would gain an overall majority, which could have led to a new coalition or other arrangements such as confidence and supply agreements. This was also associated with a rise in multi-party politics, with increased support for UKIP, the SNP and the Greens.

The question of what the different parties would do in the event of a hung result dominated much of the campaign. Smaller parties focused on the power this would bring them in negotiations; Labour and the Conservatives both insisted that they were working towards winning a majority government, while they were also reported to be preparing for the possibility of a second election in the year. In practice, Labour were prepared to make a "broad" offer to the Liberal Democrats in the event of a hung Parliament. Most predictions saw Labour as having more potential support in Parliament than the Conservatives, with several parties, notably the SNP, having committed to keeping out a Conservative government. The Conservatives described a potential Labour-led hung parliament as a "coalition of chaos", and David Cameron described (in a tweet) the electoral choice as one between "stable and strong government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband". The political turmoil in Britain in the wake of the 2015 election has since made the tweet "infamous".

Conservative campaigning sought to highlight what they described as the dangers of a minority Labour administration supported by the SNP. This proved effective at dominating the agenda of the campaign and at motivating voters to support them. The lack of a Labour majority was "widely put down to the success of the anti-Labour/SNP warnings", according to a BBC article and others. Labour, in reaction, produced ever stronger denials that they would co-operate with the SNP after the election. The Conservatives and Lib Dems both also rejected the idea of a coalition with the SNP. This was particularly notable for Labour, to whom the SNP had previously offered support: their manifesto stated that "the SNP will never put the Tories into power. Instead, if there is an anti-Tory majority after the election, we will offer to work with other parties to keep the Tories out". SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon later confirmed in the Scottish leaders' debate on STV that she was prepared to "help make Ed Miliband prime minister". However, on 26 April, Miliband ruled out a confidence and supply arrangement with the SNP too. Miliband's comments suggested to many that he was working towards forming a minority government.

The Liberal Democrats said that they would talk first to whichever party won the most seats. They later campaigned on being a stabilising influence should either the Conservatives or Labour fall short of a majority, with the slogan "We will bring a heart to a Conservative Government and a brain to a Labour one".

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats ruled out coalitions with UKIP. Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, asked about a deal with UKIP in the Scottish leaders' debate, replied: "No deals with UKIP." She continued that her preference and the Prime Minister's preference in a hung Parliament was for a minority Conservative government. UKIP said they could have supported a minority Conservative government through a confidence and supply arrangement in return for a referendum on EU membership before Christmas 2015. They also spoke of the DUP joining UKIP in this arrangement. UKIP and DUP said they would work together in Parliament. The DUP welcomed the possibility of a hung Parliament and the influence that this would bring them. The party's deputy leader, Nigel Dodds, said the party could work with the Conservatives or Labour, but that the party is "not interested in a full-blown coalition government". Their leader, Peter Robinson, said that the DUP would talk first to whichever party wins the most seats. The DUP said they wanted, for their support, a commitment to 2% defence spending, a referendum on EU membership, and a reversal of the under-occupation penalty. They opposed the SNP being involved in government. The UUP also indicated that they would not work with the SNP if it wanted another independence referendum in Scotland.

The Green Party of England & Wales, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party all ruled out working with the Conservatives, and agreed to work together "wherever possible" to counter austerity. Each would also make it a condition of any agreement with Labour that Trident nuclear weapons was not replaced; the Green Party of England and Wales stated that "austerity is a red line". Both Plaid Cymru and the Green Party stated a preference for a confidence and supply arrangement with Labour, rather than a coalition. The leader of the SDLP, Alasdair McDonnell, said: "We will be the left-of-centre backbone of a Labour administration" and that "the SDLP will categorically refuse to support David Cameron and the Conservative Party". Sinn Féin reiterated their abstentionist stance.

## Television debates

The first series of televised leaders' debates in the United Kingdom was held in the previous election. Following much debate and various proposals, a seven-way debate with the leaders of Labour, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru was held. with a series of other debates involving some of the parties.

The campaign was notable for a reduction in the number of party posters on roadside hoardings. It was suggested that 2015 saw "the death of the campaign poster".

## Endorsements

Main article: Endorsements in the 2015 United Kingdom general election
Various newspapers, organisations and individuals endorsed parties or individual candidates for the election. For example, the main national newspapers gave the following endorsements:

## Results

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After all 650 constituencies had been declared, the results were: