Why there won’t be an early British general election (probably)

Making predictions in politics is often a fool’s errand but never more so than with the date of a British general election. That’s because, barring a political earthquake, the choice is almost entirely in the power of one person — the current British prime minister (and Conservative Party leader) Rishi Sunak. We can speculate as to what he will do but, rightly or otherwise, it is Sunak’s choice.

Unlike in some other countries, in the UK there’s no set date for national elections to take place. After a brief existence the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, with remarkably little public debate, was repealed in 2022, giving the power back to the prime minister of the day to decide the date of a general election. The only current requirement is that a parliament must be dissolved at the beginning of the day that is the fifth anniversary of the day on which it first met. That means that the very last date that the next general election could take place is Tuesday January 28th 2025 — still more than a year away.

There’s been increasing political chatter that an early election could take place (early being defined as any date before the summer of 2024). Anything from October onwards would be considered a late election (early and late being somewhat arbitrary terms).