You are not currently logged in. Please create an account or log in to view the full course.
The Next General Election
- About
- Transcript
- Cite
UK Politics Digest – April 2024
In this course, Professor Andrew Blick (King’s College London) looks at recent events in UK politics from November to April 2024. In the first module, we look at the potential next General Election. Then we focus on the issue of collective cabinet responsibility. After this, we look at the connection between foreign policy and domestic politics in more detail. Following on from this, we explore the issue of racism and political extremism in UK politics. In the penultimate lecture, we look at the issue of immigration and asylum. Finally, we turn to look at the threat to democracy.
The Next General Election
In this module, Professor Andrew Blick (King’s College London) looks at the potential next General Election. In particular, we focus on: (i) the timing of the UK General Election; (ii) the impact of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act and its repeal on election cycles; (iii) the electoral strategy of the key parties and political landscape currently, including a look at recent polling figures; (iv) the potential shift in government from Conservative to Labour; and (v) the influence of Reform UK on next General Election.
Hello.
00:00:05I'm Andrew Blick,
00:00:06professor of politics and contemporary history at King's
00:00:07College London.
00:00:10At the moment in UK politics,
00:00:12we are waiting for something to happen,
00:00:14namely a general election when the whole of the country
00:00:17gets to vote on who will represent them as a member of
00:00:21parliament in the House of Commons.
00:00:25And that will also have,
00:00:27determine who actually gets to form the government of the
00:00:29United Kingdom after that election.
00:00:32We know a general election is coming,
00:00:35but we don't know exactly when it's going to happen.
00:00:37All we know for certain is that it's got to happen by
00:00:40January twenty twenty five.
00:00:45It will probably happen before then,
00:00:47but no one can say for certain.
00:00:49The reason for this uncertainty is the power to actually call a
00:00:52general election or to be precise,
00:00:57ask the king to grant a general election through dissolving
00:01:00parliament rests in reality with one person,
00:01:03the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, at the moment.
00:01:07The prime minister, therefore,
00:01:11gets to make the final decision about when the general election
00:01:13will take place.
00:01:18And in making that decision,
00:01:19they're obviously gonna be thinking about political factors.
00:01:21When is the best time to hold it? Should they go now?
00:01:24Should they wait a while?
00:01:28Should they wait longer?
00:01:30Also, what kind of signal should they send out?
00:01:31Should they try and wrong foot the opposition by making them
00:01:34think they are or are not going to hold a general election when
00:01:37in fact they are or are not going to hold a general election?
00:01:41All of those factors come into play.
00:01:44For a while in this country,
00:01:47between twenty eleven and twenty twenty two,
00:01:49we had a different system.
00:01:52We had what's called the fixed term parliaments act.
00:01:53This was introduced by the coalition government that was
00:01:56formed in twenty ten between the conservatives and nimble democrats.
00:01:58Partly, it was done as a deal.
00:02:03It was an arrangement of convenience between those two
00:02:05parties so that they knew when the next the next election was going to be.
00:02:08But there had been before then a lot of discussion about
00:02:12whether the arrangement we've now come back to of the prime
00:02:15minister really having to say was the right one.
00:02:18There was criticism of the fact that maybe all that power
00:02:21shouldn't be in the hands of the prime minister.
00:02:24It shouldn't be something that the prime minister gets to control.
00:02:26Also, critics of this system held, it
00:02:29was likely to lead to uncertainty,
00:02:33difficulties in planning,
00:02:35many of the things you could argue we're seeing now with
00:02:36with all the uncertainty about when the general election would be.
00:02:40However, the fixed term parliaments act, as it was drawn up,
00:02:43didn't work that well from the point of view of a lot of politicians.
00:02:48They felt that it stopped them from having general elections
00:02:51when general elections were needed,
00:02:54and others also felt it wasn't really an effective barrier to
00:02:56early general elections.
00:02:59So it didn't seem to deliver on many of the things that were hoped of it,
00:03:00and some just felt that this kind of constraint shouldn't be
00:03:04imposed upon politics.
00:03:08So in twenty twenty two, that act was abolished,
00:03:09and we're back to where we started with the prime minister
00:03:13having the power.
00:03:16I suppose another question when we think about general
00:03:18election, aside from the mechanics of it,
00:03:20when it's going to happen, is who's going to win?
00:03:22And that obviously factors into all these discussions about
00:03:25when it might happen.
00:03:28And as I'm speaking now, all the credible opinion
00:03:29polling is pointing towards were general elections happen tomorrow.
00:03:33I'm not saying when it does happen, this will be the
00:03:38result, but were a general election have happened tomorrow.
00:03:40All the all the all the sensible evidence suggests
00:03:43a big defeat for the Conservative government led by
00:03:46Rishi Sunak and a big win for the Labour opposition led by
00:03:49Sir Keir Starmer,
00:03:53who will thereby be able to become prime minister after the
00:03:54general election and form a government.
00:03:57If this happens if this happens,
00:03:59it'll be the first big change in government since two
00:04:02thousand and ten when Labour were last in power,
00:04:05lost at the general election,
00:04:09and the conservative liberal democrat Coalition was formed.
00:04:10The conservatives have been in government either in a
00:04:14coalition with the Lib Dems for the first five years or on
00:04:16their own for a while with supporting parliament from the
00:04:19Democratic Unionist Party.
00:04:22They've been in government ever since.
00:04:23So this will be a significant change.
00:04:25Another thing that we need to think about as the general
00:04:28election approaches is not only will the conservatives be
00:04:30losing a lot of ground to Labour,
00:04:35but what other things will be going on?
00:04:37One thing that's happened is there's this party called
00:04:39Reform UK, who in some ways are successor to earlier parties
00:04:42which operate on what you might call the right to the
00:04:47Conservative party, like UKIP,
00:04:50like the Brexit party before them,
00:04:52some of the same people involved.
00:04:54And what we're waiting to see is how many votes can they
00:04:56perhaps take off the conservatives,
00:04:59how much damage they can they go to conservatives.
00:05:01They seem to be polling increasingly well at the moment.
00:05:04Their poll rating is into the teens.
00:05:07It's almost catching up with the conservative poll rating in
00:05:08in some in some opinion polls and they're running very much
00:05:12on a kind of nationalist
00:05:17right wing program, for instance,
00:05:19take in favor of taking a very tough line on immigration and asylum.
00:05:22So those kind of issues are a threat to the Conservative party,
00:05:26so really they're being squeezed by Labour to the left
00:05:29of them or to the center of them and by Reform UK to the right.
00:05:32So it'd be interesting to see what actually happens.
00:05:36Does reform UK under electoral system lose the conservative seats?
00:05:39Does it by perhaps gifting them to Labour in effect?
00:05:43Or does it perform UK actually manage to win a seat at a
00:05:46general election?
00:05:50At the moment, they've got one MP,
00:05:51but he joined them as a defector for Conservatives.
00:05:53They haven't won an actual constituency election yet,
00:05:55maybe this will happen this time, maybe it won't,
00:05:58we'll wait to see.
00:06:01We have to wait to see what happens.
00:06:01We have also have to wait to find out when the general
00:06:04election will actually be.
00:06:06
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Blick, A. (2024, April 18). UK Politics Digest – April 2024 - The Next General Election [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/uk-politics-digest-april-2024/foreign-policy-and-domestic-politics
MLA style
Blick, A. "UK Politics Digest – April 2024 – The Next General Election." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 18 Apr 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/uk-politics-digest-april-2024/foreign-policy-and-domestic-politics