Next United Kingdom general election: Difference between revisions
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Election to the 59th United Kingdom House of Commons
The next United Kingdom general election is to be held no later than 28 January 2025.[2] Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in December 2023 that he intends to hold the election in 2024.[3]
It will determine the composition of the House of Commons, which determines the next Government of the United Kingdom. Significant constituency boundary changes will be in effect, the first such changes since before the 2010 general election.
Background[edit]
The next election is scheduled to be held no later than 28 January 2025,[2] with Parliament being dissolved no later than 17 December 2024. However, the incumbent government can choose to call the election before then, since the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was repealed under the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022.
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.
For full details of changes during the current Parliament, see By-elections and Defections, suspensions and resignations.
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.[10]
Electoral system[edit]
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.[11] Provisions for these changes have been enacted in the Elections Act 2022.
Boundary reviews[edit]
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.[12][13][14] The four commissions submitted their final recommendations to the Secretary of State on 5 September 2018[15][16] and made their reports public a week later.[17][18][19][15] 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.[20]
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.[21][22]
In March 2020, Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith confirmed that the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies would be based on retaining 650 seats.[23][24] The previous relevant legislation was amended by the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020[25] and the four boundary commissions formally launched their 2023 reviews on 5 January 2021.[26][27][28][29] They were required to issue their final reports prior to 1 July 2023.[20] 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 were approved at a meeting of the Privy Council on 15 November 2023,[30] and came into force on 29 November 2023,[31] meaning that the general election will be contested on these new boundaries.[32]
Notional 2019 results[edit]
The election will be contested 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…
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