Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, anointed in rainwater and undeterred by a poor showing in recent opinion polls, stood behind a podium in front of No. 10 Downing Street on 22 May 2024. To the surprise of many, he gambled on his political future, to the impromptu background musical accompaniment of ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by D: Ream, as he announced a snap general election on 4 July 2024.
Mr. Sunak took comfort in his role as the nation’s saviour during the COVID pandemic, followed by his interventions to restore economic stability in the face of the Ukraine conflict. He portrayed himself as the person with “a clear plan”, capable of bold actions. He claimed to have “tackled inflation, controlled debt, cut workers’ taxes, and increased the state pension”, while lowering taxes on investment and putting “record amounts of funding into our NHS”. He had reformed education, committed to increased defence spending, invested in local transport, planned for fairer welfare system, and was “stopping the boats” with his “Rwanda partnership”, while envisioning a smoke-free future for the country.
Cynical commentators noted the coincidence of Sunak’s announcement with official figures confirming a drop in the Consumer Price Index to 2.5 per cent and core inflation to 3.9 per cent, even as services inflation reached 5.9 per cent in April 2024. This indication of a turn-around in the nation’s economic fortunes thus seemed an opportune moment to turn to a grateful citizenry with a mandate for re-election.
Sunak set in motion a sequence of events. Parliament will be prorogued on 24 May and then dissolved on 30 May, well before its automatic dissolution on its five-year anniversary on 17 December 2024. This process is in keeping with the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022, which repealed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. The intervening ‘wash-up period’ will provide an opportunity to fast-track important pending legislation. Once Parliament is dissolved, MP’s staffers will tie up loose ends as they complete any remaining casework. All MPs will cease to be members of the House of Commons, and all Parliamentary business will end. Ministers will retain their titles, in keeping with the separation of functions between the legislature (Parliament) and the executive (Government).
Voters will go to the polls twenty-five working days after the dissolution of Parliament. Polling day has conventionally been held on a Thursday ever since 1935, for reasons unknown. UK citizens and resident Irish citizens, aged 18 or over, will be able to vote at local polling stations between 7 am and 10 pm on the appointed day, provided they can produce suitable photographic ID- for the first time in a British general election. The results of an exit poll of voters leaving polling stations will be announced after 10 pm, once voting closes.
Britain’s less-than-perfect parliamentary democracy is crying out for reform. Voter apathy means that election results disenfranchise the ‘silent majority’, demanding Australian-style compulsory voting to set matters straight. The electoral system has its own issues. Elections to the 650 seats in the House of Commons follow the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system. Voters choose their single preferred candidate from a list of candidates, and the candidate who receives the most votes is declared winner. This system favours the two dominant parties, to the exclusion of smaller parties with a significant share of the vote, creating ‘safe seats’ and ‘swing seats’ and disincentivising those who favour neither of the two big parties.
There is a choice of other electoral systems to consider within the UK, including the Alternative Vote (AV) system, in which candidates are ranked in order of preference but only one candidate can eventually win with more than 50 per cent of the vote after one or more rounds, the Single Transferable Vote (STV)(Northern Ireland Assembly), under which multiple representatives can be elected in each constituency, and the Additional Member system (Scottish Parliament; Welsh Assembly; Greater London Assembly), which gives each voter two votes-one for a local candidate and the other for the political party of their choice. The STV system is commonly referred to as Proportional Representation (PR). This system allows candidates from smaller parties or those standing as independents to become MPs, but also has the potential to create instability from fragile coalitions, as seen in some European countries.
Despite the recommendations of the four Boundary Commissions for England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, there are still far too many parliamentary constituencies in the UK, each with a population within 5 per cent of the ‘electoral quota’ of 73, 393.
The workings of the House of Commons also warrant re-evaluation. Proceedings in the chamber are frequently dominated by poorly behaved ex-public-schoolboys, entrepreneurs, financiers, and other political chancers, all to the detriment of informed and dignified political debate. The informal seating arrangements are conducive to sleep or the surreptitious use of smartphones, in contrast to the formal seating arrangements in many Western parliaments, where desktop computers on tables and benches give a professional look to lawmakers in parliamentary session.
Voters will be informed by Party manifestos and the personal manifestos of individual candidates. Prospective members of the House of Commons will avail of as many photo opportunities as possible, including holding babies and shaking the hands of, or hugging the bodies of, prospective voters, their supporters will knock on doors, and election leaflets will make extravagant promises. Candidates will further impress their audiences at hustings with their oratorical and debating skills. Contesting parties and parliamentary candidates will dazzle voters with promises-many unachievable, unfunded, or both-with the proviso that promises are only made but to be broken. Come 5 July 2024, we will have a new Prime Minister. But we have a long wait ahead for any tangible results of this election, given the reported state of the public finances. But vote we must, as wasted votes will only further perpetuate mediocrity in the political landscape.
Ashis Banerjee