2024 United Kingdom general election

A general election was held in the United Kingdom on 4 July 2024 to elect all 650 members of the House of Commons. The opposition Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, won a landslide victory over the governing Conservative Party under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, ending 14 years of Conservative government.

Labour secured 411 seats and a 174-seat majority, the third-best showing in the party's history and its best since 2001. The party's vote share was 33.7%, the lowest of any governing party on record, making this the least proportional general election in British history. They became the largest party in England, Scotland and Wales. The Conservatives suffered their worst-ever defeat, winning 121 seats with 23.7% of the vote and losing 251 seats, including those of the former prime minister Liz Truss and 12 Cabinet ministers.

Smaller parties saw record support, with 42.6% of the total vote. The Liberal Democrats, led by Ed Davey, became the third-largest party with 72 seats, their best result ever and better than any Liberal Party result since 1923. Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, won five seats and 14.3% of the vote, the third-highest vote share, and the Green Party won four seats. For both parties this was their best parliamentary result to date.

In Scotland the Scottish National Party dropped from 48 to 9 seats, losing its status as Scotland's largest party. In Wales, Plaid Cymru won four seats. In Northern Ireland, which has a distinct set of political parties, Sinn Féin retained seven seats; the first election in which an Irish nationalist party won the most seats in Northern Ireland. The Democratic Unionist Party dropped from eight to five seats.

Campaign issues included the economy, healthcare, housing, energy and immigration. There was relatively little discussion of Brexit, which was a major issue during the 2019 general election. This was the first general election under the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022, the first with photo identification required to vote in Great Britain, and the first contested using the new constituency boundaries implemented following the 2023 review of Westminster constituencies.

Background

Political background of the Conservatives before the election

The Conservative Party under Boris Johnson won a large majority at the 2019 general election and the new government passed the Brexit withdrawal agreement. The COVID-19 pandemic saw the government institute extensive public health restrictions, including limitations on social interaction, that Johnson and some of his staff were later found to have broken. The resulting political scandal (Partygate), one of many controversies during Johnson's premiership, saw the Conservatives lose their poll lead. These scandals culminated in the resignation of over 50 ministers from the Government following allegations of sexual misconduct against a government minister. Johnson announced his resignation in July 2022, to become effective from the election of a successor. He resigned as an MP the following year, after an investigation unanimously found that he had lied to Parliament.

Liz Truss won the resultant leadership election and succeeded Johnson. Truss announced large-scale tax cuts and borrowing in a mini-budget on 23 September, although many of its measures were reversed following financial instability. She resigned in October, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, and was succeeded unopposed by Rishi Sunak.

During his premiership, Sunak was credited with improving the economy and stabilising national politics following the premierships of his predecessors, although many of his pledges and policy announcements ultimately went unfulfilled. He did not avert further unpopularity for the Conservatives who, by the time of Sunak's election, had been in government for 12 years. Public opinion in favour of a change in government was reflected in the Conservatives' poor performance at the 2022, 2023 and 2024 local elections.

Political background of other parties before the election

Keir Starmer won the Labour Party's 2020 leadership election, succeeding Jeremy Corbyn. Under his leadership, Starmer repositioned the party away from the left and toward the political centre, and emphasised the elimination of antisemitism within the party. Starmer's leading his party rightward in order to improve its electability has been widely compared to Tony Blair's development of New Labour in the 1990s. The political turmoil from the Conservative scandals and government crises led to Labour having a significant lead in polling over the Conservatives, often by very wide margins, since late 2021, coinciding with the start of the Partygate scandal. Labour made gains in local elections: in the 2023 local elections, Labour gained more than 500 councillors and 22 councils, becoming the largest party in local government for the first time since 2002.

Ed Davey, who previously served in the Cameron–Clegg coalition, won the Liberal Democrats' 2020 leadership election, succeeding Jo Swinson, who lost her seat in the previous general election. Davey prioritised defeating the Conservatives and ruled out working with them following the election. The Liberal Democrats made gains in local elections: in the 2024 local elections, the Liberal Democrats finished second for the first time in a local election cycle since 2009.

Like the Conservatives, the Scottish National Party (SNP) suffered political turmoil and saw a decrease in their popularity in opinion polling, with multiple party leaders and First Ministers (Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf and John Swinney) and the Operation Branchform police investigation. Sturgeon claimed occupational burnout was the reason for her resignation, while Yousaf resigned amid a government crisis following his termination of a power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens. When Swinney assumed the leadership after being elected unopposed to succeed Yousaf, the SNP had been in government for 17 years.

Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay took over leadership of the Green Party of England and Wales from Siân Berry and Jonathan Bartley in 2021. Rhun ap Iorwerth took over leadership of Plaid Cymru. The Brexit Party rebranded as Reform UK, and was initially led by Richard Tice in the years preceding the election before Nigel Farage resumed leadership during the election campaign. Edwin Poots took over as the Democratic Unionist Party leader in May 2021 but lasted only 20 days. He was replaced by Jeffrey Donaldson, who resigned in March 2024 after being arrested on charges relating to historical sex offences. He appeared in court on 3 July, the day before polling day, to face additional sex offence charges. Gavin Robinson initially took over as interim leader, and then became the permanent leader in May.

New political parties who made their campaign debuts in this election included the Alba Party, led by former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, and the Workers Party of Britain, led by anti-war activist George Galloway, who won the 2024 Rochdale by-election in a political upset three months before the election was called – advertising himself as a protest candidate against Labour's stance on the Gaza war and appealing to the constituency's sizeable Muslim population.

Changes to the composition of the House of Commons before the election

This table relates to the composition of the House of Commons at the 2019 general election and its dissolution on 30 May 2024 and summarises the changes in party affiliation that took place during the 2019–2024 Parliament.

Date of the election

Originally, the next election was scheduled to take place on 2 May 2024 under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. At the 2019 general election, in which the Conservatives won a majority of 80 seats, the party's manifesto contained a commitment to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. In December 2020, the government duly published a draft Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (Repeal) Bill, later retitled the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022. This entered into force on 24 March 2022. Thus, 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 confirmed that the 2019 Parliament would, therefore, have to be dissolved, at the latest, by 17 December 2024, and that the next general election had to take place no later than 28 January 2025.

With no election date fixed in law, there was speculation as to when the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, would call an election. On 18 December 2023, Sunak told journalists that the election would take place in 2024 rather than January 2025. On 4 January, he first suggested the general election would probably be in the second half of 2024. Throughout 2024, political commentators and MPs expected the election to be held in the autumn. On 22 May 2024, following much speculation through the day (including being asked about it by Stephen Flynn at Prime Minister's Questions), Sunak officially announced the election would be held on 4 July with the dissolution of the Parliament on 30 May.