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If Rishi Sunak has a strong suit, it isn’t timing. At 5 p.m. GMT on Wednesday, the prime minister called a press conference outside Downing Street to confirm that the next UK general election will be held on July 4, with the announcement coinciding precisely with an intense rainstorm.
“Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future,” the Conservative leader told the nation while looking like a joyless version of Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. Adding to the farcical nature of proceedings: the fact that protesters seized the opportunity to blast D Ream’s “Things Can Only Get Better,” the New Labour anthem, at top volume while Sunak attempted to rattle off a list of everything he had accomplished in office.
Keir Starmer welcomed the news as the “moment the country needs and has been waiting for,” with six weeks of intense campaigning ahead for both party leaders. Calling for a general election this summer is a risky move on Sunak’s part—especially given his party’s recent crushing defeat in local elections—but the PM is hopeful that the latest drop in inflation might bolster his popularity. “Only a Conservative government led by me will not put our hard-earned economic stability at risk,” he told the press.
For his part, Starmer isn’t letting Labour’s encouraging numbers go to his head. “Polls are not for inhaling,” the leader of the opposition told British Vogue in its March 2024 issue. “We must never, ever let up on our single-minded determination to win this election.” The Conservative party has, after all, been in power in the UK for 14 years, starting with David Cameron’s premiership in 2016 and then, in the wake of Brexit, a series of shorter-lived prime ministers: Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and now Sunak, whose tenure has been almost as contentious as those who immediately preceded him.