Today, the British people elect the House of Commons. The elections could bring historic results.

According to a YouGov poll, the Liberal Democrats can count on 72 seats, the SNP – 18, the right-wing British Reform Party and the Welsh Plaid Cymru – three each, and the Green Party – two.

This means that Labour will achieve its biggest victory in its history, winning more than double the number of seats it won before, while the Conservatives will suffer their worst defeat in history, losing more than two-thirds of their seats.

Sixteen of Rishi Sunak’s 26 cabinet members will lose their seats, including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. It will be the first time in history that a sitting Chancellor has not been elected to Parliament.

End of Conservative government

The elections could be a defeat for the conservatives who have ruled the country for 14 years.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s election date has proven to be a problem.

The election was widely expected to be held in October or November, but on May 22, Sunak unexpectedly announced that it would be held on July 4. He did so after a series of good economic data, particularly on inflation, in the hope that an improving economy would become a central theme of the campaign.

This did not happen because, firstly, opinion polls show that voters have more trust in Labour when it comes to the economy – as they do on all other issues – and, secondly, two issues emerged during the election campaign that attracted attention and undermined the already weak Conservative ratings. Firstly, it emerged that Sunak had left the 80th anniversary celebrations of the Normandy landings to record a television interview. Then it emerged that several Tory figures, including at least two MPs, had placed bets with bookmakers just before the election date was announced, and an investigation is underway into whether they used confidential information.

The erosion of support for the Conservative Party began when information about Downing Street’s Covid-19 pandemic began to emerge in late 2021, and has accelerated after Prime Minister Liz Truss’s tax cuts announced in the autumn of 2022, which do not balance the budget. Combined with the cost of living crisis exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the government’s inability to reform a health service struggling with long queues and underfunding, and its inability to curb immigration, this has meant that Labour has had to crack down on immigration. It has done almost nothing to win this election.

The New Blair

Before the election, Labour presented a very safe and conservative programme, which contained almost nothing that they had not already announced over the previous year and a half. But there is no answer to how they intend to fund their ideas, although this accusation is also made of other parties. Labour leader Keir Starmer has been compared to Tony Blair, mainly because he has made the party “electable to centrist voters”.

The Conservatives currently hold 344 seats in the House of Commons, while Labour holds 205.

Polling stations are open from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. local time. A record number of candidates have entered the elections – 4,515.