Euronews: Britain is on the threshold of a major political transition

Some opinion polls suggest Labor is ahead of the Conservatives by a staggering 20 percentage points, meaning Keir Starmer could become prime minister with a majority of more than 200 seats, the most any government has received since the end of World War II.

Britons head to the polls on Thursday to elect 650 MPs in both houses of commons.

Opinion polls predict a landslide victory for Labor in a scene few expected in the 2019 legislative election.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a broad Conservative majority in the House of Commons and a symbolic mandate to complete the Brexit process.

This victory wouldn’t have happened had Johnson not won over voters in Labor strongholds within the so-called Red Belt, the working-class areas of northern England and the Midlands.

Since then, London and Brussels have divorced and the UK has officially left the EU – but life after Brexit has been tough for the Conservative Party.

Now, Labor and its leader, Sir Keir Starmer, are hoping to bring back the pro-Brexit voters they lost in 2019, while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is expected to record the worst electoral result in its two-century history.

At the same time, the Conservatives may miss entire electoral districts in some parts of the country, and Sunak could become the first prime minister in history to lose his seat.

The Conservatives – who have ruled the country for the past 14 years under the banner of five different leaders – have enjoyed broad public support but that support has steadily declined since 2021, when investigations into the 10 Downing Street shutdown scandal began with the support of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

After the latter’s departure, Liz Truss came to the presidency of the government for a short period that wasn’t successful as her austerity policy led to the pound falling to a 37-year low.

It was replaced by Richie Sunak, a former banker who worked at an investment bank. But opinion polls have shown he has failed to convince voters that he is the right man who can get the UK economy back on track.

In addition to the economy, housing and the health sector, immigration was one of the hotspots that emerged on the scene.

Sunak has tried to appeal to voters worried about the number of illegal immigrants arriving on British shores by trading his controversial plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda for re-election.

But the so-called Rwanda plan has provoked a backlash and divided Britons.

The Supreme Court even ruled that the measure was illegal.

Supporters of the plan have been frustrated that no flights to deport illegal migrants have taken off two years after the Rwanda plan was announced.

In rainy weather last May, from Downing Street, Ritchie Sunak officially called for the election to the tune of “Things Can Only Get Better” – best known for Tony Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997.

A series of PR errors followed.. Sunak faced widespread condemnation when he left early for a ceremony to mark the eightieth anniversary of the D-Day landings for a television interview, and critics accused him of being far from British values.

More recently, five prominent figures in the Conservative Party – including Sunak’s bodyguard – were accused of betting on the date of the election before it was even announced by the prime minister himself, an incident that is also seen as another blow to public confidence in the party.

Although Labor’s victory seemed certain for months, sources close to the party say there is tension among the party’s cadres fearing that such a comfortable and steady lead in opinion polls could cause voters to vote for the party out of courtesy, which could backfire.

But, with Labor’s significant lead in the polls, it seems almost certain that it will form the government in a few days.

In their program, workers focus on the need to address the cost-of-living crisis by creating wealth for working-class members, but the Conservatives immediately attacked their opponents’ proposals, arguing that Labor would inevitably raise taxes if growth slowed growth.

Labor’s other promises include cutting waiting lists in government hospitals, building 300,000 new homes a year to tackle the housing crisis, and investing 24 billion pounds (28.5 billion Euros) in green technologies.

Party leader Keir Starmer has also taken a firm stance on immigration.

He vowed to crack down on networks of people smugglers across the Channel.

He also says Labor will reduce the net immigration rate to the UK, but hasn’t set a specific target (the Conservatives have previously pledged to reduce net immigration to tens of thousands).

The election could also see Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, a former member of the European Parliament and the godfather of London’s exit from the bloc, enter the House of Commons for the first time.

He shocked Britons in early June when he announced that he would run in the Essex constituency of Clacton for the Reform Party, marking Farage’s eighth attempt to be a member of parliament.

Farage’s announcement of his candidacy led to a rise in the British reform movement’s shares in the polls and narrowed the gap between this organization and the Conservative Party, but even if he manages to win around 16% of the vote as some polls suggest, he could fail to win any seats given the way the UK’s electoral system works.

Farage’s party proposes freezing all non-essential immigration applications and withdrawing Britain from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which the party calls the foreign court in Strasbourg.

The liberal Democrats also hope to shake off the dust of defeat after their party’s heavy losses in the previous election. According to some polls, they could win more than 60 seats.

The party has previously campaigned “Stop Brexit” and is the most enthusiastic party for closer economic, trade and security ties with the EU.

The party has drawn up a four-step plan that includes gradual integration into European programs and the EU’s single market.