2 days Ago By Salma Ouaguira
The UK heads to the polls on Thursday to cast their votes in a general election to set the country’s political trajectory over the next five years. While populist parties are enjoying success on mainland Europe, victory looks likely to go to the centre-left Labour Party, according to opinion polls during the campaign. Under Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, candidates who secure the most votes in each of the 650 races for a parliamentary seat automatically enter the House of Commons .
The party which wins in a majority of constituencies secures the right to form a government. Following 14 years of Conservative rule, marked by austerity, Brexit, the Covid pandemic and an inflationary crisis, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has retained a commanding lead in polling over the course of the six-week campaign. Rishi Sunak is the third Tory leader since Britain’s last general election in 2019, having been installed by the party after the implosion of his predecessor Liz Truss’s premiership, who herself had taken over from Boris Johnson after he was ousted by MPs.
Mr Sunak is battling to avoid a historic defeat, pre-election polls suggest , as he faces the fresh challenge of the ascendant hard-right Reform UK party, led by Brexit architect and former Ukip leader Nigel Farage ..
