The next election is scheduled to be held no later than 28 January 2025,[1] with Parliament being dissolved no later than 17 December 2024. The date falls on a Tuesday, and there is a convention that British general elections are held on Thursdays, but this is not a strict requirement of the law.[3] The
election of 1931 was held on a Tuesday, and all UK general elections held since 1935 have been held on Thursdays.
Originally the next election was scheduled to take place on 2 May 2024, however the
Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was repealed under the
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022, thus the incumbent prime minister can choose to dissolve Parliament before the fifth anniversary of its first meeting and call an early election.
The results of the
2019 general election are given below, alongside the current numbers in the House of Commons. Numbers have changed through
22 by-elections and a number of defections and suspensions of members from their party that have taken place throughout the present parliament.
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 be an unlawful practice under the
Equality Act 2010, since the majority of Labour MPs were now women.[10]
In March 2024
Reform UK announced an electoral pact with the Northern Irish unionist party
TUV.[11] The parties will stand mutually agreed candidates in Northern Ireland constituencies in the election.[12]
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.[13] Provisions for these changes have been enacted in the
Elections Act 2022.
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.[14][15][16] The four commissions submitted their final recommendations to the Secretary of State on 5 September 2018[17][18] and made their reports public a week later.[19][20][21][17] 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.[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.[25][26] The previous relevant legislation was amended by the
Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020[27] and the four boundary commissions formally launched their 2023 reviews on 5 January 2021.[28][29][30][31] They were required to issue their final reports prior to 1 July 2023.[22] 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,[32] and came into force on 29 November 2023,[33] meaning that the general election will be contested on these new boundaries.[34]
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 all votes cast in 2019 were unchanged, but regrouped by new constituency boundaries.[35] Notional results in the UK are always estimated, usually with the assistance of local election results, because vote counts at parliamentary elections in the UK do not produce figures at any level below the whole constituency.
In
England, seats will be redistributed away from
Northern England and towards
Southern England due to the different rates of population growth.
North West England and
North East England will lose two seats each whereas
South East England will gain seven seats and
South West England will gain three seats.[36] Based on historic voting patterns, this is expected to help the Conservatives.[37] Based on these new boundaries, different parties would have won several constituencies with unchanged names but changed boundaries
in 2019. For example, the Conservatives would have won
Wirral West and
Leeds North West instead of the Labour Party, but Labour would have won
Pudsey and
Heywood & Middleton instead of the Conservatives.
Westmorland and Lonsdale, the constituency represented by former Liberal Democrat leader
Tim Farron, is now notionally a Conservative seat.
In
Scotland, 57 MPs would be elected, down from the
59 in 2019, with the following notional partisan composition of Scotland's parliamentary delegation:[38] The
Scottish National Party would remain steady on 48 seats, despite two of their constituencies being dissolved. The
Scottish Conservatives would likewise remain unchanged on six seats.
Scottish Labour would have retained
Edinburgh South, the sole constituency they won in 2019. The
Scottish Liberal Democrats would have only won two seats (
Edinburgh West and
Orkney and Shetland) under the new boundaries if they had been contested in the 2019 general election, instead of the four they did win in 2019, due to the expanded electorates in the other two overcoming their slender majorities.
Under the new boundaries,
Wales will lose eight seats, electing 32 MPs instead of the 40 they
elected in 2019.
Welsh Labour would have won 18 instead of the 22 MPs they elected in 2019, and the
Welsh Conservatives 12 instead of 14. Due to the abolition and merging of rural constituencies in
West Wales,
Plaid Cymru would have only won two seats instead of four. Nonetheless, the boundaries are expected to cause difficulty for the Conservatives as more Labour-favourable areas are added to some of their safest seats.[39]
At the 2019 general election, in which the Conservatives won a majority of 80 seats, the manifesto of the party contained a commitment to repeal the
Fixed-term Parliaments Act due to "paralysis at a time when the country has needed decisive action".[40] In December 2020, the government published a draft Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (Repeal) Bill, later retitled the
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022.[41] This entered into force on 24 March 2022. The prime minister can again request the monarch to dissolve Parliament and call an early election with 25 working days' notice. Section 4 of the Act provided: "If it has not been dissolved earlier, a Parliament dissolves at the beginning of the day that is the fifth anniversary of the day on which it first met."
The
Electoral Commission has confirmed that the 2019 Parliament must be dissolved, at the latest, by 17 December 2024, and that the next general election must take place no later than 28 January 2025.[42][43]
Possible dates
As per the legal requirements above, the next election must take place in 2024, or in January 2025. The latter possibility is seen as unlikely by analysts, because it would require the general election campaign to encompass the
Christmas holiday period. However, it is widely expected that the incumbent
Conservative government will delay the election as long as possible while it trails the opposition
Labour Party in opinion polling.[44][45][46] On 18 December 2023, Sunak told journalists that the general election will take place in 2024, rather than January 2025.[2] On 4 January, he suggested the general election would probably be in the second half of 2024,[47] and later confirmed that, contrary to widespread speculation, it would not be held on the same day as the local elections in England on 2 May.[48]
Whitehall officials discouraged the election being held around 5 November 2024, to prevent clashing with the
2024 United States presidential election, for major security and market implications could result if two
Five Eyes countries were to hold elections at the same time. The last time elections in the two countries overlapped was in
1964, when the elections were held less than three weeks before the
United States presidential election that year.[49][50]
As of 26 March 2024, a total of 96 current members of Parliament have announced their intention not to stand for re-election. Four MPs —
Nadine Dorries,
Nigel Adams,
Chris Skidmore (all Conservative) and
Chris Pincher (independent, elected as Conservative) — announced their intention not to stand again but later resigned from Parliament before the election.[51][52][53][54][55][56]
Some sitting MPs have not been selected by their party to recontest their seat (or a successor seat). Options available to these MPs include standing down, challenging their non-selection, seeking selection for another seat, and contesting the election under a different banner.
Members of Parliament deselected, suspended or expelled
Expelled from the Conservative Party and now sits as an independent MP after joining the
Reclaim Party for a time; he plans to contest his current seat at the next election as an independent[155][156]
Due to boundary changes, most MPs standing for re-election will seek to represent a seat at least slightly different from their present seat. However, in some cases sitting MPs have secured selection to stand in a substantially or completely different seat from their present seat. They may happen because their seat is marginal and is likely to be lost by their party, boundary changes abolish their present seat or their present seat is redrawn in an unfavourable way in boundary changes.
While there are no significant changes to Anderson's current seat, it is a marginal Conservative seat, whereas South Shropshire is likely a safe Conservative seat. He had initially announced he would not stand for re-election but subsequently reversed his decision.[93]
Has announced that he will not stand in any of the successor seats to the abolished Pudsey constituency, but has not ruled out standing elsewhere.[167]
Selected for
North Shropshire after his current seat is being abolished in boundary changes. North Shropshire, which the Liberal Democrats gained in a
2021 by-election, contains none of Baynes' present seat.[168]
Selected for Winchester in July 2023 as her present seat is being abolished. The reconfigured Winchester seat contains about 25% of the Meon Valley seat. Drummond sought selection for the proposed Fareham and Waterlooville seat, which contains a larger proportion of her current seat and is forecast to be much safer for the Conservatives than Winchester (a key Liberal Democrat target), but was defeated by
Suella Braverman, the MP for
Fareham and then–Home Secretary.
Selected for
Tamworth as his current constituency is being abolished, and the main successor seat of
Walsall and Bloxwich was considered significantly more vulnerable to the Labour Party than Tamworth, where the incumbent MP
Chris Pincher announced he would be standing down following a
scandal.[171] Pincher resigned in September 2023 and Labour's
Sarah Edwards won
the subsequent by-election; Hughes has nevertheless since maintained his candidacy for this constituency.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt was selected for the newly created
Godalming and Ash constituency in January 2023,[172] as his current constituency is set to be abolished. The western part of the existing seat, comprising the majority of the electorate and including the towns of Farnham and Haslemere will be combined with parts of the District of East Hampshire to create the new
Farnham and Bordon constituency. The
Godalming and Ash seat will comprise Godalming and the area of the North Downs to the south of the existing constituency.[173]
Selected for
Birkenhead due the abolition of her present constituency, defeating incumbent MP for Birkenhead
Mick Whitley in the selection process.[174] The reconfigured Birkenhead contains a small part of her present seat.[175]
Selected for
Wetherby and Easingwold due to his current seat being abolished and broken up between four other seats. Wetherby and Easingwold will take in the Harewood and Wetherby wards of Leeds, but is otherwise based in North Yorkshire rather than West Yorkshire.[176]
Elected for
Mid Bedfordshire at a
by-election in October 2023. Announced in January 2024 that he would contest the new constituency of
Hitchin which will include a small part of his current seat around his home town of
Shefford.[178]
^
abAt the time of the 2019 election this party did not exist.
^Both of the Alba Party's MPs were elected for the
Scottish National Party (SNP) before leaving to join Alba in 2021.[7]
^ Six were elected as Conservative MPs at the 2019 general election, including Andrew Bridgen, who defected to Reclaim in May 2023 but left the party in December 2023 and now sits as an independent. The remaining 10 independent MPs all come from the opposition benches.
^The seven members of Sinn Féin abstain, i.e. they do not take their seats in the House of Commons;[8] the Speaker and deputy speakers (currently three Conservative and one Labour) have only a tie-breaking vote constrained by conventions.[9]
^Deputy speaker Eleanor Laing (Con, Chair of Ways and Means) is on an extended leave of absence, and Roger Gale (Con) has been temporarily appointed as acting Chair of Ways and Means.
^Party affiliation of retiring MPs at the time of the 2019 general election.
^Originally elected as the MP for
Peckham in the 1982 by-election.